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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the Quarryman, by 
+Eugène Sue
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the Quarryman
+       A Tale from the Feudal Times
+
+Author: Eugène Sue
+
+Translator: Daniel De Leon
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34531]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PILGRIM'S SHELL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif, Michigan University Libraries and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+   THE PILGRIM'S SHELL
+
+      : : OR : :
+
+   FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN
+
+  A Tale from the Feudal Times
+
+      By EUGENE SUE
+
+  TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH BY
+      DANIEL DE LEON
+  NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY, 1904
+
+    Copyright 1904, by the
+   NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+In my introduction to "The Silver Cross; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth,"
+I said:
+
+"Eugene Sue wrote in French a monumental work--the _Mysteries of the
+People; or, History of a Proletarian Family_. It is a 'work of fiction';
+yet it is the best universal history extant. Better than any work,
+avowedly on history, it graphically traces the special features of the
+several systems of class-rule as they succeeded each other from epoch to
+epoch, together with the nature of the struggle between the contending
+classes. The 'Law,' 'Order,' 'Patriotism,' 'Religion,' etc., etc., that
+each successive tyrant class, despite its change of form, hysterically
+has sought refuge in in order to justify its criminal existence whenever
+threatened; the varying economic causes of the oppression of the
+toilers; the mistakes incurred by these in their struggles for redress;
+the varying fortunes of the conflict;--all these social dramas are
+therein reproduced in a majestic series of 'historic novels,' that cover
+leading and successive episodes in the history of the race."
+
+The present story--_The Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman_--is
+one of that majestic series, among the most majestic of the set, and,
+with regard to the social period that it describes--its institutions,
+its classes, its manners, its virtues and its crimes, and the characters
+that it builds--the most instructive treatise on feudalism, at the very
+time when the bourgeois or capitalist class was struggling for a
+foot-hold, and beginning to break through the thick feudal incrustation
+above. More fully than Molière's plays, and strangely supplemental of
+the best passages on the subject in the novels of George Eliot, _The
+Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman_ chisels the struggling
+bourgeois on the feudal groundwork and background, in lines so sharp and
+true that both the present fully developed and ruling capitalist,
+inheritor of the feudal attribute of plundering, is seen in the historic
+ancestor of his class, and his class' refuse, the modern middle class
+man, is foreshadowed, now also struggling like his prototype of feudal
+days, to keep his head above water, but, differently from his prototype,
+who had his future before him, now with his future behind. This double
+development, inestimable in the comprehension of the tactical laws that
+the Labor or Socialist Movement demands, stands out clear with the aid
+of this work.
+
+Eugene Sue has been termed a colorist, the Titian of French literature.
+It does not detract from his merits, it rather adds thereto, that his
+brush was also photographic. The leading characters in the
+story--Fergan, the type of the physically and mentally clean workingman;
+Bezenecq the Rich, the type of the embryonic bourgeois, visionary,
+craven and grasping; Martin the Prudent, the type of the "conservative
+workingman"; the Bishop of Laon, the type of usurping power in the
+mantle of religion; the seigneur of Plouernel, the type of the ingrain
+stupidity and prejudices that characterize the class grounded on might;
+a dazzling procession of women--Joan the Hunchback and Azenor the Pale,
+Perrette the Ribald and the dame of Haut-Pourcin, Yolande and Simonne,
+etc.--types of the variations in the form of woman's crucifixion under
+social systems grounded on class rule; Walter the Pennyless, the type of
+dispositions too indolent to oppose the wrongs they perceive, and crafty
+enough to dupe both dupers and duped; Garin, the type of the master's
+human sleuth--are figures, clad in historic garb, that either hurry or
+stalk imposingly over the boards, followed by mobs of their respective
+classes, and presenting a picture that thrills the heart from stage to
+stage, and leaves upon the mind rich deposits of solid information and
+crystalline thought.
+
+As a novel, _The Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman_ pleases,
+entertains and elevates; as an imparter of historic information and
+knowledge, it incites to thought and intelligent action. Whether as
+literature of pleasure or of study, the work deserves the broader field
+of the Socialist or Labor Movements of the English-speaking world,
+hereby afforded to it; and inversely, the Socialist or Labor Movements
+of the English-speaking world, entitled to the best, and none too good,
+that the Movements in other languages produce, can not but profit by the
+work, hereby rendered accessible to them.
+
+DANIEL DE LEON.
+
+New York, January 1, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Translator's Preface                                                 iii
+
+
+Part I.   The Feudal Castle.
+
+Chapter 1.   The Serfs of Plouernel                                    3
+
+Chapter 2.   Fergan the Quarryman                                     13
+
+Chapter 3.   At the Cross-road                                        22
+
+Chapter 4.   The Manor of Plouernel                                   32
+
+Chapter 5.   Azenor the Pale                                          36
+
+Chapter 6.   Feudal Justice                                           44
+
+Chapter 7.   Abbot and Monk                                           55
+
+Chapter 8.   The Chamber of Torture                                   66
+
+Chapter 9.   The Rescue                                               82
+
+Chapter 10. Cuckoo Peter                                              90
+
+
+Part II.   The Crusade.
+
+Chapter 1.    The Syrian Desert                                      109
+
+Chapter 2.    Serf and Seigneur                                      118
+
+Chapter 3.    The Emir's Palace                                      132
+
+Chapter 4.    Orgies of the Crusaders                                141
+
+Chapter 5.    The King of the Vagabonds                              151
+
+Chapter 6.    The Market Place of Marhala                            156
+
+Chapter 7.    The Fall of Jerusalem                                  169
+
+
+Part III.   The Commune of Laon.
+
+Chapter 1.   The Rise of the Communes                                185
+
+Chapter 2.   The Charter of Laon                                     189
+
+Chapter 3.    Episcopals and Communiers                              206
+
+Chapter 4.    The Ecclesiastical Seigniory of Gaudry                 214
+
+Chapter 5.   Bourgeois and Ecclesiastical Seigneur                   227
+
+Chapter 6.   The Gathering Storm                                     239
+
+Chapter 7.   "To Arms, Communiers!"                                  247
+
+Chapter 8.    Retribution                                            258
+
+Chapter 9.    Resting on Their Arms                                  267
+
+Epilogue                                                             278
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE FEUDAL CASTLE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE SERFS OF PLOUERNEL.
+
+
+The day touched its close. The autumn sun cast its last rays upon one of
+the villages of the seigniory of Plouernel. A large number of partly
+demolished houses bore testimony to having been recently set on fire
+during one of the wars, frequent during the eleventh century, between
+the feudal lords of France. The walls of the huts of the village, built
+in pisé, or of stones held together with clayish earth, were cracked or
+blackened by the flames. There were still in sight, half burnt out, the
+rafters of the roofings, replaced by a few poles wrapped in bundles of
+furze or reed-grass.
+
+The aspect of the serfs, just returned from the fields, was no less
+wretched than that of their hovels. Wan, emaciated, barely dressed in
+rags, they huddled together, trembling and uneasy. The bailiff,
+justiciary of the seigniory, had just arrived at the village,
+accompanied with five or six armed men. Presently, to the number of
+about three hundred, the serfs gathered around him, a fellow so ill
+disposed towards the poor, that, to his name of Garin, the nick-name
+"Serf-eater" had been attached. This dreaded man wore a leather casque
+furnished with ribs of iron, and a coat of goatskin like his shoes. A
+long sword hung by his side. He was astride a reddish-brown horse, that
+looked as savage as its master. Men on foot, variously armed, who made
+up the escort of Garin the Serf-eater, kept watch over several serfs,
+bound hands and feet, who were brought in prisoners from other
+localities. Not far from them lay stretched on the ground a wretched
+fellow, fearfully mutilated, hideous and horrible to behold. His eyes
+were knocked in, his feet and hands cut off--a common punishment for
+rebels. This unfortunate being, hardly covered in rags, the stumps of
+his arms and legs wrapped in dirty bandages, was waiting for some of his
+companions in misery, back from the fields, to find time to transport
+him upon the litter which he shared with the beasts of burden. Blind,
+and without hands or feet, he found himself thrown upon the charity of
+his fellows, who now ten years helped him to eat and drink. Other serfs
+of Normandy and Brittany, had, at the time of the revolt against their
+lords, been blinded, mutilated like this wretched fellow, and left upon
+the spot of their punishment to perish in the tortures of hunger.
+
+When the people of the village were gathered on the place, Garin the
+Serf-eater pulled a parchment out of his pocket and read as follows:
+
+"Witness the order of the very high and very mighty Neroweg VI, lord of
+the county of Plouernel, by the grace of god. All his serfs and
+bondsmen, subject to mortmain and taille at his pleasure and mercy, are
+taxed by the will of the said lord count to pay into his treasury four
+copper sous per head before the last day of this month at the latest."
+The serfs, threatened with this fresh exaction, could not restrain their
+lamentations. Garin the Serf-eater rolled over the assemblage a wrathful
+eye and proceeded: "If the said sum of four copper pieces per head is
+not paid before the expiration of the time fixed, it will please the
+said high and mighty lord Neroweg VI, Count of Plouernel, to cause
+certain serfs to be seized, and they will be punished, or hanged by his
+prevost from his seigniorial gibbets. Neither the annual tax, nor the
+regular dues, is to be lowered in the least by this extraordinary levy
+of four sous of copper, which is intended to indemnify our said lord for
+the losses caused by the recent war which his neighbor, the Sire of
+Castel-Redon, declared against him."
+
+The bailiff descended from his horse to speak to one of the men in his
+escort. Several serfs muttered to one another: "Where is Fergan? He
+alone would have the courage to humbly remonstrate with the bailiff
+that we are wretched, that the taxes, the services, the regular and the
+extraordinary dues are crushing us, and that it will be impossible for
+us to pay this tax."
+
+"Fergan must have remained behind in the quarry where he cuts stone,"
+remarked another serf.
+
+Presently, the bailiff continued to read as follows: "Lord Gonthram,
+eldest son of the very noble, very high and very mighty Neroweg VI,
+Count of Plouernel, having attained his eighteenth year, and being of
+knight's age, there shall be paid to him, according to the custom of
+Plouernel, one denier by each serf and villein of the domain, in honor
+and to the glory of the knighthood of the said Lord Gonthram. Payment to
+be made this month."
+
+"Still more!" murmured several of the serfs with bitterness; "it is
+fortunate that our lord has no daughter, we would some day have to pay
+taxes in honor of her marriage, as we shall have to pay them in honor of
+the knighthood of the sons of Neroweg VI. May God have mercy upon us."
+
+"Pay, my God! but wherewith?" interjected another serf in a low voice.
+"Oh, it is a great pity that Fergan is not around to speak for us."
+
+The bailiff having finished his reading, beckoned to a serf named Peter
+the Lame. Peter was not lame; but his father, by reason of that
+infirmity had received the nick-name which his son preserved. He
+advanced trembling before Garin the Serf-eater. "This is the third
+Sunday that you have not brought your bread to be baked at the
+seigniorial oven," said the bailiff; "nevertheless you have eaten bread
+these three weeks, seeing you are alive."
+
+"Master Garin ... my misery is such...."
+
+"You have had the impudence to have your bread baked under the ashes,
+you scurvy beggar!"
+
+"Oh, good Master Garin, our village was set on fire and sacked by the
+men of the Sire of Castel-Redon; the little clothing that we had has
+been burnt or pillaged; our cattle stolen or driven off; our crops
+devastated during the war. Have mercy upon us!"
+
+"I am talking to you about oven and not about war! You owe three deniers
+oven-dues; you shall pay three more as a fine."
+
+"Six deniers! Poor me! Six deniers! And where do you expect me to find
+so much money?"
+
+"I know your tricks, knaves that you are! You have hiding places, where
+you bury your deniers. Will you pay, yes or no, you earth-worm? Answer
+immediately!"
+
+"We have not one obole ... the people of the Sire of Castel-Redon have
+left us only our eyes to weep over our disaster!"
+
+Garin raised his shoulders and made a sign to one of the men in his
+suite. This one then took from his belt a coil of rope, and approached
+Peter the Lame. The serf stretched out his hands to the man-at-arms:
+"Take me prisoner, if it pleases you to, I do not own a single denier.
+It will be impossible for me to satisfy you."
+
+"That's just what we are about to ascertain," replied the bailiff; and,
+while one of his men bound the hands of Peter the Lame without his
+offering the slightest resistance, another took from a pouch suspended
+from his belt some touch-wood, a tinderbox and a sulphurated wick, which
+he lighted. Garin the Serf-eater, turning to Peter the Lame, who, at the
+sight of these preparations began to grow pale, said: "They will place
+this lighted wick between your two thumbs; if you have a hiding place
+where you bury your deniers, your pain will make you speak. Go ahead."
+
+The serf answered not a word. His teeth chattered with fear. He fell
+upon his knees before the bailiff, stretching out to him his two bound
+hands in supplication. Suddenly a young girl jumped out of the group of
+the villagers. Her feet were bare, and for only cover she had a coarse
+skirt on. She was called Pierrine the Goat because, like her sheep, she
+was savage and fond of rugged solitudes. Her thick black hair half hid
+her savage face, burnt by the sun. Approaching the bailiff without
+lowering her eyes, she said bluntly to him: "I am the daughter of Peter
+the Lame; if you want to torture someone, leave my father and take me."
+
+"The wick!" impatiently called out Garin the Serf-eater to his men,
+without either looking at or listening to Pierrine the Goat. "The wick!
+And hurry up! Night approaches." Peter the Lame, despite his cries,
+despite the heart-rending entreaties of his daughter, was thrown upon
+the ground and held down by the men of the bailiff. The torture of the
+serf was conducted in sight of his companions in misery, who were
+brutified with terror, and by the habit of serfdom. Peter uttered
+fearful imprecations; Pierrine the Goat no longer screamed, no longer
+implored the tormentors of her father. Motionless, pale, sombre, her
+eyes fixed and drowned with tears, she alternately bit her fists in mute
+rage, and murmured: "If I only knew where his hiding-place was, I would
+tell it."
+
+At last, Peter the Lame, vanquished by pain, said to his daughter in a
+broken voice: "Take the hoe, run to our field; rake up the earth at the
+foot of the large elm; you will there find nine deniers in a piece of
+hollow wood." Then, casting upon the bailiff a look of despair, the serf
+added: "That's my whole treasure, Sire Garin; I'm now ruined!"
+
+"Oh, I was certain that you had a hiding place"; and turning to his men:
+"Stop the torture; one of you follow this girl and bring back the money.
+Let her not be lost sight of."
+
+Pierrine the Goat went off quickly, followed by one of the men-at-arms,
+after having cast upon Garin a furtive and ferocious look. The serfs,
+terrified, silent, hardly dared to look at one another, while Peter,
+uttering plaintive moans, despite his punishment having ceased, murmured
+while he wept hot tears: "Oh, how shall I be able to till the ground
+with my poor hands wounded and sore!"
+
+Accidentally the bailiff caught sight of the blind serf, mutilated of
+his four limbs. Pointing at the unhappy being, he cried out in a
+threatening voice:
+
+"Profit by that example, ye people of the glebe! Behold how they are
+treated who dare rebel against their lords. Are you, or are you not
+subject to taille at the pleasure and mercy of your lord?"
+
+"Oh, yes, we are serfs, Master Garin," replied the wretches, "we are
+serfs at the mercy of our master!"
+
+"Seeing you are serfs, you and your race, why always stingying, cheating
+and pilfering on the taxes? How often have I not caught you in fraud and
+at fault. The one sharpens his plow-share without notifying me, that he
+may purloin the denier due to the seigniory every time he sharpens his
+sock; the other pretends he is free from the horn-dues under the false
+claim that he owns no horned cattle; others carry their audacity to the
+point of marrying in a neighboring seigniory; and so on, any number of
+enormities! Must you, then, miserable fellows, be reminded that you
+belong to your lord in life and death, body and goods? Must it be
+repeated to you that all there is of you belongs to him--the hair on
+your heads, the nails on your fingers, the skin on your vile carcasses,
+everything, including the virginity of your daughters?"
+
+"Oh, good Master Garin," an old serf, named by reason of his subtlety,
+Martin the Prudent, ventured without daring to raise his eyes, "oh, we
+know it; the priests repeat to us incessantly that we belong, soul, body
+and goods, to the lords whom the will of God sets over us. But there are
+those who say ... oh, it is not we who dare to say aught ... things
+contrary to these declarations."
+
+"And who is it dares contradict our holy priests? Give me the name of
+the infidel, the rashling."
+
+"It is Fergan the Quarryman."
+
+"Where is that knave, that miscreant? Why is he not here among you?"
+
+"He must have remained cutting stone at his quarry," put in a timid
+voice; "he never quits work until dark."
+
+"And what is it that Fergan the Quarryman says? Let's see how far his
+audacity goes," replied the bailiff.
+
+"Master Garin," the old serf went on to say, "Fergan recognizes that we
+are serfs of our lord, that we are compelled to cultivate for his
+benefit the fields where it has pleased him to settle us forever, us and
+our children. Fergan says that we are bound to labor, to plant, to
+gather in the harvests on the lands of the castle, to mount guard at the
+strongholds of the seigniory and to defend it."
+
+"We know the rights of the seigniory. But what else does Fergan say?"
+
+"Fergan pretends that the taxes imposed upon us increase unceasingly,
+and that, after having paid our dues in products, the little we can draw
+from our harvests is insufficient to satisfy the ever new demands of our
+lord. Oh, dear Master Garin, we drink water, we are clad in rags, for
+only nourishment we have chestnuts, berries, and, when in luck, a little
+bread of barley or oats."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the bailiff in a threatening voice, "you have all the
+good things, and yet you dare complain!"
+
+"No, no, Master Garin," replied the frightened serfs; "no, we do not
+complain! We are on the road to Paradise!"
+
+"If, occasionally, we suffer a little, it is all the better for our
+salvation, as the parish priest tells us. We shall enjoy the pleasures
+of the next world."
+
+"We do not complain. It is only Fergan who spoke that way the other day.
+We listened to him, but without approving his words."
+
+"And we even found great fault with him for holding such language,"
+added old Martin the Prudent, all in a tremble. "We are satisfied with
+our lot. We venerate, we love our lord, Neroweg VI, and also his helpful
+bailiff, Garin. May God preserve them long."
+
+"Yes, yes," exclaimed the serfs in chorus, "that's the truth, the pure
+truth!"
+
+"Vile slaves!" roared the bailiff in a rage mixed with disdain,
+"cowardly knaves! You basely lick the hand that scourges you. Don't I
+know that, among yourselves, you call the noble Lord Neroweg VI 'Worse
+than a Wolf,' and me, his helpful bailiff, 'Serf-eater!' These are our
+nick-names."
+
+"Upon our eternal salvation, Master Garin, it is not we who have given
+you that nick-name, Master Garin."
+
+"By my beard! We propose to deserve our surnames. Yes, Neroweg VI will
+be 'worse than a wolf' to you, you pack of idlers, thieves and traitors!
+And, as for me, I will eat you to the bone, villeins or serfs, if you
+try to cheat your lord of his rights. As to Fergan, that smooth talker,
+I'll come across him some other day, and I feel it in my bones that he
+will yet make acquaintance with the gibbet of the seigniory of
+Plouernel. He will be hanged high and dry!"
+
+"And we will not pity him, dear and good Master Garin. Let Fergan be
+accursed, if he has dared to speak ill of you and of our venerated
+lord!" answered the frightened serfs.
+
+At this moment, Pierrine the Goat returned, accompanied by the
+man-at-arms, who had been charged by the bailiff to disinter the
+treasure of Peter the Lame. The young serf had a somberer and wilder
+look, her tears had dried, but her eyes shot lightning. Twice she threw
+her thick black hair back from her forehead with her left hand, as she
+held her right hand behind her. She drew nearer to the bailiff step by
+step, while the man-at-arms, delivering to Garin a round piece of hollow
+wood, said: "It contains nine copper deniers, but four of them are not
+of the mintage of our Lord Neroweg VI."
+
+"Foreign coin in the seigniory! And yet I have forbidden you to accept
+any under penalty of the whip!"
+
+"Oh, Master Garin," explained Peter the Lame, still lying on the ground,
+and crying at the sight of his lacerated hands, "the foreign merchants
+who pass, and who occasionally buy a pig, a calf or a sheep, frequently
+have none but coin minted in other seigniories. What are we to do? If we
+refuse to sell the little we have, where are we to find the money to pay
+the taxes with?"
+
+The bailiff placed the deniers of Peter the Lame in a large leather
+pouch, and answered the serf: "You owe six deniers; among these nine
+pieces there are four of foreign coinage; I confiscate them. There
+remain five deniers of this seigniory. I take them on account. You will
+give me the sixth when you pay the next taxes. If you don't, look out!"
+
+"I propose to pay now!" shrieked Pierrine the Goat, striking the bailiff
+full in the face with a large stone that she had picked up on the road.
+Garin lost his balance with the violence of the blow, and the blood ran
+down his face; but he promptly recovered from the shock, and, rushing
+furiously upon the young serf, threw her down, trampled her under foot,
+and, half drawing his sword, was on the point of dispatching her, when,
+recollecting himself, he said to his men: "Bind her fast; take her to
+the castle; her eyes will be put out to-night; and, at dawn to-morrow,
+she shall be hanged from the patibulary forks."
+
+"The punishment of Pierrine the Goat will be well merited," exclaimed
+the serfs, hoping to turn away from themselves the wrath of Garin the
+Serf-eater. "Bad luck to the accursed girl! She has spilled the blood of
+the good bailiff of our glorious seigneur! Let her be punished as she
+deserves!"
+
+"You are a set of cowards!" cried Pierrine the Goat, her face and breast
+bruised and bleeding from the blows that Garin had given her while
+trampling on her. Then, turning to Peter the Lame, who was sobbing but
+dared not defend his daughter, or raise his voice to implore mercy for
+her, she said: "Adieu; to-morrow you will see ravens circling on the
+side of the seigniorial gibbet; they will be the living shroud of your
+daughter"; and showing her fists to the dismayed serfs, she went on:
+"Cowards! you are three hundred, and you are afraid of six men-at-arms!
+There is among you all but one man truly brave; that's Fergan!"
+
+"Oh!" yelled the bailiff, exasperated by the bold words of Pierrine the
+Goat, and staunching the blood that flowed from his face, "if I meet
+that Fergan on my route, he shall be your gibbet mate, the infamous
+blasphemer!" With that, Garin the Serf-eater remounted, and followed by
+his men, together with the serfs whom he had arrested, Pierrine the Goat
+among them, was soon lost to sight, leaving the inhabitants of the
+village struck with such terror, that on that evening they forgot to
+carry away the poor blind and mutilated old man, who was left to spend
+the night in the open.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN.
+
+
+It was long after the bailiff had led away his prisoners. The night grew
+rapidly darker. A young woman, pale, lean and deformed, clad in a
+tattered smock, her feet bare, her head half covered with a hood from
+which her hair escaped, held her face hidden in her hands, as she sat on
+a stone near the hearth of the hut which Fergan inhabited at the
+extremity of the village. A few chips of brush-wood were burning in the
+fire-place. Above rose the blackened walls, cracked by the recent
+conflagration; bunches of brush fastened on poles replaced the roof,
+through which here and there some brilliant star could be seen. A litter
+of straw in the best protected corner of the hovel, a trunk, a few
+wooden vessels--such was the furnishing of the home of a serf. The young
+woman, seated near the fire-place, was the wife of Fergan, Joan the
+Hunchback. Her forehead in her hands, crouching upon the stone which
+served her as a seat, Joan remained motionless. Only at intervals a
+slight tremor of the shoulders announced that she wept. A man entered
+the hut. It was Fergan the Quarryman. Thirty years of age, robust and
+large of frame, his dress consisted of a goat-skin kilt, of which the
+hair was almost worn off; his shabby hose left his legs and feet bare;
+on his shoulder he carried an iron pick and the heavy hammer which he
+used to break and extract the stones from the quarry. Joan the Hunchback
+raised her head at the sight of her husband. Although homely, her
+suffering and timid figure breathed an angelic kindness. Advancing
+quickly towards Fergan, her face bathed in tears, Joan said to him with
+an inexpressible mixture of hope and anxiety, while she interrogated
+him with her eyes: "Have you learned anything?"
+
+"Nothing," answered the serf in despair, throwing down his pick and
+hammer; "nothing, nothing!"
+
+Joan fell back upon the stone sobbing. She raised her hands to heaven
+and murmured: "I shall never again see Colombaik! My poor child is lost
+for ever!"
+
+Fergan, no less distressed than his wife, sat down on another stone
+placed near the fire-place, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his
+hands. Thus he remained for a long spell, gloomy, silent. Suddenly
+rising, he started to walk uneasily, muttering in a muffled voice: "That
+cannot remain so--I shall go--Yes, I shall! I must find him!"
+
+Joan, hearing the serf repeat: "I shall go! I shall go!" raised her
+head, wiped her tears with the back of her hand and asked: "Where is it
+you want to go?"
+
+"To the castle!" roared the serf, continuing his agitated walk, his arms
+crossed over his chest. Trembling from head to foot, Joan clasped her
+hands, and tried to speak. In her terror, she could not at first utter a
+word; her teeth chattered. At last she said in a faint voice:
+"Fergan--you must have lost your wits when you say you will go to the
+castle."
+
+"I shall go after the moon has set."
+
+"Oh! I have lost my poor child," rejoined Joan moaning, "I am going to
+lose my husband also." She moaned again. The imprecations and the
+foot-falls of the serf alone interrupted the silence of the night. The
+fire went out in the fire-place, but the moon, just risen, threw her
+pale rays into the interior of the hut through the open spaces left by
+the pole and bunches of brush that took the place of the burnt-out roof.
+The silence lasted long. Joan the Hunchback taking courage anew, resumed
+in an accent that was almost confident: "You propose to go to-night--to
+the castle--fortunately that's impossible." And seeing that the serf did
+not intermit his silent walk, Joan took his hand as he moved toward her:
+"Why do you not answer? That frightens me." He roughly withdrew his
+hand, and thrusting his wife back, exclaimed in an irritated voice:
+"Leave me alone, woman, leave me alone."
+
+The feeble creature fell down a few steps beyond among some rubbish, and
+her head having struck against a piece of wood, she could not hold back
+a cry of pain. Fergan walked back, and by the light of the moon he saw
+Joan rising painfully. He ran to her, helped her to sit down on one of
+the stones of the fire-place, and asked anxiously: "Did you hurt
+yourself falling?"
+
+"No, no, my dear husband."
+
+"My poor Joan!" exclaimed the serf alarmed, having placed one of his
+hands on the forehead of his wife, "you bleed!"
+
+"I have been weeping," she replied sweetly, staunching her wound with a
+lock of her long disheveled hair.
+
+"You suffer? Answer me, dear wife!"
+
+"No, no, I fell because I am feeble," answered Joan with her angelic
+mildness; "let's not think about that," and she added, smiling sadly and
+alluding to her deformity, "I need not fear being made ugly by a scar."
+
+Fergan imagined that Joan the Hunchback meant he would have treated her
+with less rudeness if she had been handsome, and he felt deeply grieved.
+In a tone of kind reproach he replied: "Apart from the hastiness of my
+temper, have I not always treated you as the best of wives?"
+
+"That's true, my dear Fergan, and my gratitude is great."
+
+"Have I not freely taken you for wife?"
+
+"Yes, notwithstanding you could have chosen from the serfs of the
+seigniory a companion who would not have been deformed."
+
+"Joan," replied the quarryman with sad bitterness, "if your countenance
+had been as beautiful as your heart is good, whose would have been the
+first night of our wedding? Would it not have belonged to Neroweg 'Worse
+than a Wolf,' or to one of his whelps?"
+
+"Oh, Fergan, my ugliness saved us this supreme shame."
+
+"The wife of Sylvest, one of my ancestors, a poor slave of the Romans,
+also escaped dishonor by disfiguring herself," was the thought that
+flashed through the quarryman's mind while he sighed, and pondered: "Oh,
+slavery and serfdom weigh upon our race for centuries. Will the day of
+deliverance, predicted by Victoria the Great,[A] ever come."
+
+Joan, seeing her husband plunged in meditation, said to him: "Fergan, do
+you remember what Pierrine the Goat told us three days ago on the
+subject of our son? She had, as was her custom, led her sheep to the
+steepest heights of the great ravine, whence she saw one of the knights
+of the Count of Plouernel rush on a gallop out of a copse where our
+little Colombaik had gone to gather some dead wood. Pierrine was of the
+opinion that that knight carried off our child under his cloak."
+
+"The suspicions of Pierrine were well founded."
+
+"Good God! What is it you say?"
+
+"A few hours ago, while I was at the quarry, several serfs, engaged in
+repairing the road of the castle which was partly destroyed during the
+last war, came for stone. For the last three days I have been like
+crazy. I have been telling everybody of the disappearance of Colombaik.
+I spoke about it to these serfs. One of them claimed to have seen the
+other evening, shortly before nightfall, a knight holding on his horse a
+child about seven or eight years, with blonde hair--"
+
+"Unhappy we! That was Colombaik."
+
+"The knight then climbed the hill that leads to the manor of Plouernel,
+and went in."
+
+"But what can they do to our child?"
+
+"What will they do!" exclaimed the serf shivering, "they'll strangle
+him, and use his blood for some infernal philter. There is a sorceress
+stopping at the castle."
+
+Joan uttered a cry of fright, but rage swiftly followed upon her fright.
+Delirious and running to the door she cried out: "Fergan, let's go to
+the manor--we shall enter even if we have to tear up the stones with our
+nails--I shall have my child--the sorceress shall not throttle him--no!
+no!" The serf, holding her by the arm, drew her back. Almost immediately
+she fainted away in his arms. Still, in a muffled voice, the poor woman
+muttered: "It seems to me I see him die--if my heart were torn in a vice
+I could not suffer more--it is too late--the sorceress will have
+strangled the child--no--who knows!" Presently seizing her husband by
+the hand, "You meant to go to the castle--come--come!"
+
+"I shall go alone when the moon is down."
+
+"Oh, we are crazy, my poor man! Pain leads us astray. How can one
+penetrate into the lair of the count?"
+
+"By a secret entrance."
+
+"And who has informed you of it?"
+
+"My grandfather Den-Brao accompanied his father Yvon the Forester in
+Anjou during the great famine in 1033. Den-Brao, a skillful mason, after
+having worked for more than a year in the castle of a lord of Anjou
+became his serf, and was exchanged by his master for an armorer of
+Neroweg IV, an ancestor of the present lord. My grandfather, now a serf
+of the lord of Plouernel, was engaged in the construction of a donjon
+which was attached to the castle. The work lasted many a year. My
+father, Nominoe, almost a child at the commencement of the structure,
+had grown to manhood when it was finished. He helped his father in his
+work, and became a mason himself. After his day's work, my grandfather
+used to trace upon a parchment the plan of the several parts of the
+donjon which he was to execute. One day my father asked him the
+explanation of certain structures, the purpose of which he could not
+understand. 'These separate stone works, connected by the work of the
+carpenter and the blacksmith,' answered my grandfather, 'will constitute
+a secret staircase made through the thick of the wall of the donjon, and
+it will ascend from the lowest depth of this edifice to the top, while
+it furnishes access to several reducts otherwise invisible. Thanks to
+this secret issue, the Lord of Plouernel, if besieged in his castle, and
+unable to resist his enemies, will be able to escape, and reach a long
+subterraneous gallery which comes out at the rocks that stretch to the
+north, at the foot of the mountain, where the seigniorial manor-house
+rises.' Indeed, Joan, during those days of continual wars, similar works
+were executed in all the strongholds: their owners always looked to
+preserving the means of escape from their enemies. About six months
+before the completion of the donjon, and when all that was left to do
+was the construction of the staircase and the secret issue, traced upon
+the plan of my grandfather, my father broke both of his legs by the fall
+of an enormous stone. That grave accident became the cause of a great
+piece of good fortune."
+
+"What say you, Fergan!"
+
+"My father remained here, at this hovel, unable to work by reason of his
+wounds. During that interval the donjon was finished. But the artisan
+serfs, instead of returning every evening to their respective villages,
+no longer left the castle. The seigneur of Plouernel wished, so it was
+said, to hasten the completion of the works and to save the time lost in
+the morning and evening by the traveling of the serfs. For about six
+months the people of the plain saw the movement of the workingmen
+gathered upon the last courses of the donjon, which rose ever higher.
+After that, when the platform and the turrets which crown it were
+finished, nothing more was seen. The serfs never re-appeared in their
+villages, and their bereaved families are still awaiting them."
+
+"What became of them?"
+
+"Neroweg IV, fearing they might reveal the secret issue constructed by
+themselves, had them locked up in the subterraneous place, that I stated
+to you. It is there that my grandfather, together with his fellow
+workingmen, twenty-seven in number, perished, a prey to the tortures of
+hunger."
+
+"That's horrible! What barbarity!"
+
+"Yes, it is horrible! My father, kept at home by his injuries, alone
+escaped this fearful death, overlooked, no doubt, by the seigneur of
+Plouernel. Trying to fathom the mystery of my grandfather's
+disappearance, my father recalled the information he had received from
+his father on the plan of the donjon and its secret issue. One night,
+accordingly, my father betook himself to that secluded spot, and
+succeeded in discovering an airhole concealed amid brushwood. He slid
+down this opening, and after walking long in a narrow gallery, he was
+arrested by an enormous iron grating. Seeking to break it, he passed his
+arm through the bars. His hand touched a mass of bones--human bones and
+skulls--"
+
+"Good God! Poor victims!"
+
+"It was the bones of the serfs, who, locked up in this subterraneous
+passage with my grandfather, had died of hunger. My father did not try
+to penetrate further. Certain of the fate of my grandfather, but lacking
+the energy to avenge him, he made to me this revelation on his
+death-bed. I went--it is a long time ago--to inspect the rocks. I
+discovered the subterraneous issue. Through it, to-night, will I enter
+the donjon and look for our child."
+
+"Fergan, I shall not try to oppose your plan," observed Joan after a
+moment of silence and suppressing her apprehensions; "but how will you
+clear that grating which prevented your father from entering the
+underground passage? Is it not above your strength?"
+
+"That grating has been fastened in the rock, it can be unfastened with
+my iron pick and hammer. I have the requisite strength for that job."
+
+"Once in the passage, what will you do?"
+
+"Last evening I took from the wooden casket, hidden yonder under the
+rubbish, a few strips of the parchment where Den-Brao had traced the
+plan of the buildings; I have posted myself on the localities. The
+secret gallery, in its ascent towards the castle, comes out, on the
+other side of the donjon, upon a secret staircase built in the thick of
+the wall. That leads, from the lowest of the three rows of subterranean
+dungeons, up to the turret that rises to the north of the platform."
+
+"The turret," queried Joan, growing pale, "the turret, whence
+occasionally strange lights issue at night?"
+
+"It is there that Azenor the Pale, the sorceress of Neroweg, carries on
+her witchcraft," answered the quarryman in a hollow voice. "It is in
+that turret that Colombaik must be, provided he still lives. It is there
+I shall go in search of our child."
+
+"Oh, my poor man," murmured Joan, "I faint at the thought of the perils
+you are about to face!"
+
+"Joan," suddenly interjected the serf, raising his hands towards the
+starry sky, visible through rifts in the roof, "before an hour the moon
+will have set; I must go now."
+
+The quarryman's wife, after making a superhuman effort to overcome her
+terror, said in a voice that was almost firm: "I do not ask to accompany
+you, Fergan; I might be an encumbrance in this enterprise. But I
+believe, as you do, that at all costs we must try to save our child. If
+in three days you are not back--"
+
+"It will mean that I have encountered death in the castle of Plouernel."
+
+"I shall not be behind you a day, my dear husband. Have you weapons to
+defend yourself?"
+
+"I have my iron pick and my hammer."
+
+"And bread? You must have some provisions."
+
+"I have still a big piece of bread in my wallet; you will fill my gourd
+with water; that will suffice me."
+
+While his wife was attending to these charges, the serf provided himself
+with a long rope which he wound around him; he also placed a tinder-box
+in his wallet, a piece of punk, and a wick, steeped in resin, of the
+kind that quarrymen use to light their underground passages. These
+preparations being ended, Fergan silently stretched his arms towards his
+wife. The brave and sweet creature threw herself into them. The couple
+prolonged this painful embrace a few moments, as if it were a last
+adieu. The serf then, swinging his heavy hammer on his shoulder and
+taking up his iron pick, started towards the rocks where the secret
+issue of the seigniorial manor ran out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AT THE CROSS-ROAD.
+
+
+The day after Fergan the Quarryman decided to penetrate into the castle
+of Plouernel, a considerable troop of travelers, men of all conditions,
+who had left Nantes the day before, were journeying towards the frontier
+of Anjou. Among them were found pilgrims, distinguishable by the
+cockle-shell attached to their clothes, vagabonds, beggars, peddlers
+loaded with their bundles of goods. Among the latter a man of tall
+stature, with light blonde hair and beard, carried on his back a bundle
+surmounted with a cross and covered with coarse pictures representing
+human bones, such as skulls, thighs, arms, and fingers. This man, named
+Harold the Norman, devoted himself, like many other descendants of the
+pirates of old Rolf,[B] to the trade of relics, selling to the faithful
+the bones which they stole at night from the seigniorial gibbets. By the
+sides of Harold marched two monks, who called each other Simon and
+Jeronimo. The cowl of the frock of Simon was pulled over his head and
+completely concealed his face; but that of Jeronimo, thrown back over
+his shoulder, exposed the monk's dark and lean visage, whose thick
+eye-brows, as black as his beard, imparted to it a savage hardness.
+
+A few steps behind these priests, mounted on a fine white mule, of
+well-fed form and skin sleek and shining like silver, came a merchant of
+Nantes, named from his great wealth, Bezenecq the Rich. Still in the
+vigor of years, of open, intelligent and affable mien, he wore a hood of
+black felt, a robe of fine blue cloth, gathered around his waist by a
+leathern belt, from which hung an embroidered purse. Behind him, and on
+a part of the saddle contrived for such service, rode his daughter
+Isoline, a lass of about eighteen years, with blue eyes, brown hair,
+white teeth and a face like a rose of May, as pretty as she was
+attractive. Isoline's long pearl-grey robe hid her little feet; her
+traveling cloak, made of a soft green fabric, enveloped her elegant and
+supple waist; under the hood of the mantle, lined in red, her fresh
+visage was partially seen. The feelings of tender solicitude between
+father and daughter could be divined by the looks and smiles of
+affection that they often exchanged, as well as by the little attentions
+that they frequently bestowed upon each other. The serenity of unalloyed
+happiness, the sweet pleasures of the heart, could be read upon their
+visages, which bore the impress of radiant bliss. A well-clad servant,
+alert and vigorous, led on foot a second mule, loaded with the baggage
+of the merchant. On either side of the saddle hung a sword in its
+scabbard. In those days, one never traveled unarmed. Bezenecq the Rich
+had conformed to the usage, although that good and worthy townsman was
+of a nature little given to strife.
+
+The travelers had arrived at a cross-road where the highway of Nantes to
+Angers forked off. At the juncture of the two roads there rose a
+seigniorial gibbet, symbol and speaking proof of the supreme
+jurisdiction exercised by the lords in their domains. That massive pile
+of stones bore at its top four iron forks fastened at right angles,
+gibbet-shaped. From the gibbet that rose over the western branch of the
+road three corpses hung by the neck. The first was reduced to the
+condition of a skeleton; the second was half putrified. The crows,
+disturbed in their bloody quarry by the approach of the travelers, still
+circled in the air over the third corpse, that of a young girl,
+completely stripped, without even the shred of a rag. It was the body of
+Pierrine the Goat, tortured and executed in the early morning of that
+day, as threatened by Garin the Serf-eater. The thick black hair of the
+victim fell over her face, pinched with agony and furrowed with long
+traces of clotted blood that had flowed from her eyeless sockets. Her
+teeth still held a little wax figure, two or three inches long, clad in
+a bishop's gown with a miniature mitre on its head, made out of a bit of
+gold foil. The witches, to carry out their diabolical incantations,
+often had several of these little figures placed between the teeth of
+the hanged at the moment when they expired. They called this magic
+"spell throwing." Beside this gibbet rose the seigniorial post of
+Neroweg VI, lord and count of the lands of Plouernel. The post indicated
+the boundaries of the domain traversed by the western road, and was
+surmounted by a red escutcheon, in the middle of which were seen three
+eagle's talons painted in yellow--the device of the Nerowegs. Another
+post, bearing for emblem a dragon-serpent of green color painted on a
+white background, marked the eastern route which traversed the domains
+of Draco, Lord of Castel-Redon, and flanked another gibbet with four
+patibulary forks. Of these only two were furnished; from one hanged the
+corpse of a child of fourteen years at the most, from the other the
+corpse of an old man, both half pecked away by the crows. Isoline, the
+daughter of Bezenecq the Rich, uttered a cry of horror at the sight of
+these bodies, and huddling close to the merchant, behind whom she was on
+horseback, whispered in a low voice: "Father! oh, father! Look at those
+bodies. It's a horrible spectacle!"
+
+"Look not in that direction, my child," answered sadly the townsman of
+Nantes, turning around to his daughter. "More than once on our road
+shall we make these mournful encounters. The patibulary forks are found
+on the confines of every seigniorial estate. Often even the trees are
+decked out with hanging bodies!"
+
+"Oh, father," replied Isoline, whose face, so full of smiles a minute
+before, had painfully saddened, "I fear this encounter may be of sad
+omen to our voyage!"
+
+"Beloved daughter," the merchant put in with suppressed agony, "be not
+so quick to take alarm. No doubt we live in days when it is impossible
+to leave the city and undertake a long trip with safety. It is that
+that kept me from paying a visit in the city of Laon to my good brother
+Gildas, whom I have not seen for many years. It is unfortunately a long
+way to Picardy, and I have not dared to venture on such a ride. But our
+trip will hardly take two days. We should not apprehend a sad issue to
+this visit to your grandmother, who wishes to see and embrace you before
+she dies. Your presence will sweeten her sorrow at the loss of your
+mother, whom she mourns as grieviously to-day as when my beloved wife
+was taken from me. Pick up courage and calm your mind, my child."
+
+"I shall pick up courage, father, as you wish. I shall surmount my idle
+terrors and my childish fears."
+
+"Were it not for the imperious duty that made us undertake this journey,
+I would say to you: 'Let's return to our peaceful home in Nantes, where
+you are happy and gay from morning to evening.' If your smile cheers my
+soul," Bezenecq added in a voice deeply moved, "every tear you drop
+falls upon my heart!"
+
+"Behold me," said Isoline. "Would you say I look apprehensive, alarmed?"
+And saying this she pressed against the merchant her charming face, that
+had recovered its serenity and confidence. The townsman contemplated for
+a moment in silence the beloved features of his daughter. A tear of joy
+then gathered in his eye, and endeavoring to subdue his emotion, he
+cried out: "The devil take these crupper saddles! They prevent one even
+from embracing his own child with ease!" Whereupon the young girl, with
+a movement full of gracefulness, threw her arms on her father's
+shoulders, and drew her rosy face so close to Bezenecq's that he had but
+to turn his head to kiss the lassie on her forehead and cheeks, which he
+did repeatedly with ineffable happiness.
+
+During this tender exchange of words and carresses between the merchant
+and his daughter, the other travelers, before proceeding upon either of
+the two routes that opened before them, had gathered in the middle of
+the crossing to consider which to take. Both roads led to Angers. One of
+them, that marked by the post surmounted with a serpent-dragon, after
+making a wide circuit, traversed a sombre forest; it was twice as long
+as the other. Each of the two roads having its own advantages and
+disadvantages, several of the travelers insisted upon the road of the
+post with the three eagle's talons. Simon, the monk whose face was
+almost wholly concealed under his cowl, strove, on the contrary, to
+induce his companions to take the other road. "Dear brothers! I conjure
+you;" cried Simon, "believe me ... do not cross the territory of the
+seigneur of Plouernel.... He has been nick-named 'Worse than a Wolf' and
+the reprobate but too well justifies the name.... Every day stories are
+heard of travelers whom he arrests and plunders while crossing his
+grounds."
+
+"My dear brother," put in a townsman, "I can testify, like you, that the
+keeper of Plouernel is a wicked man, and his donjon a terrible donjon.
+More than once from the ramparts of our city of Nantes have we seen the
+men of the Count of Plouernel, bandits of the worst stripe, pillage,
+burn, and ravage the territory of our bishop, with whom Neroweg was at
+war over the possession of the ancient abbey of Meriadek."
+
+"Is that the abbey where the prodigious miracle of about four hundred
+years ago happened?" inquired another bourgeois. "Saint Meroflede,
+abbess of the monastery, summoned by the soldiers of Charles Martel to
+surrender the place, invoked heaven, and the miscreants, overwhelmed by
+a shower of stones and fire, were asphyxiated in the fumes of burning
+sulphur and pitch, whither they were dragged by horned, clawed and hairy
+demons, frightful to behold. And so it happened that the venerable
+abbess died in the odor of sanctity."
+
+"An ineffable odor that has lasted down to our own days. The common
+people entertain a particular devotion for the chapel of Saint
+Meroflede, which has been raised on the borders of a large lake, close
+by the very place where the miracle was accomplished."
+
+"The chapel is never empty of the faithful. The offerings furnish a
+large revenue to the incumbent. As the abbess was of the house of the
+Nerowegs, the seigneur of Plouernel laid claim to, and sought to
+reacquire the property of the chapel. Hence the wars between the count
+and the Bishop of Nantes. Those were fearful wars, my friends. They
+happened at the season when the bishop was marrying his last daughter,
+whom he gave for a dower the benefice of Saint Paterne. It was a
+beautiful wedding. The wife and the daughter of his grace the bishop
+were beautifully ornamented. The young bride wore a necklace of
+inestimable value."
+
+The moment the name of the Bishop of Nantes was mentioned, Simon the
+monk pulled down the cowl of his cloak, trying to hide his face
+completely.
+
+"Sure enough, my beloved companions," interjected another townsman, "we
+know that the Sieur 'Worse than a Wolf' is a brigand. But do you imagine
+that the Sieur Draco, seigneur of Castel-Redon, is a lamb? It is as
+perilous to cross the territory of the one as of the other, and yet
+there is no other way out. The road to the east, barred by a river, runs
+out upon a bridge that is guarded by the men of the seigneur of
+Castel-Redon; the road to the west, bordered by vast swamps, runs out
+upon a path guarded by the men of the seigneur of Plouernel. By taking
+the shorter of the two routes we reduce by one-half the chances of
+danger."
+
+"This worthy man is right," said several voices. "Let's follow his
+advice."
+
+"Dear brothers, look out what you do!" cried Simon the monk. "The
+seigneur of Plouernel is a monster of ferocity. He is given up to
+sorcery with a female magician, his concubine ... a Jewess! He stands
+excommunicated; he is a pagan."
+
+"To the devil with the Jews!" exclaimed Harold the Norman, merchant of
+relics. "The Jews have all been hanged, burned, drowned, strangled,
+quartered, when they were hunted down in all the provinces, like wild
+beasts. There can not be one of them left alive in our land of Gaul."
+
+"Since the execution of the Orleans heretics, who perished by fire,"
+resumed the monk Jeronimo, "never was an extermination of unclean
+animals more meritorious than that of those accursed Jews, who
+instigated the Saracens of Palestine to destroy the Temple of Solomon at
+Jerusalem. Death to the Jews!"
+
+"What say you, dear brother?" inquired a townsman. "Did the Jews of this
+land of Gaul instigate the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem?"
+
+"Yes, my brother. The abominable mischiefs of those Jews defy time and
+space. But patience! Soon will the day come when, by divine will, no
+longer will it be isolated pilgrims that will travel to Jerusalem to
+there mourn and pray at the tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will be
+Christianity in mass that will march under arms to the Holy Land, in
+order to exterminate the infidels and deliver the sepulchre of the
+Saviour of the world from their sacrilegious presence. Death to all
+miscreants!"
+
+Bezenecq the Rich, who had just approached the group of debating
+travelers, and ascertained the subject of their discussion, apprehensive
+lest his daughter take new alarm, suggested: "Meseems we had better take
+the shorter route. As to your fears, they are exaggerated. When we shall
+have paid the toll-collectors of the seigneur of Plouernel for the right
+to travel over his roads and cross his burgs and villages, what else can
+he demand of us? We are neither his serfs nor his villeins.'
+
+"Can you, a grey beard, talk like that?" interjected Simon the monk. "Do
+you imagine these devilish seigneurs care aught for justice or
+injustice?"
+
+"But I do care a deal about that!" replied Bezenecq the Rich. "If the
+seigneur of Plouernel should do me violence, me a bourgeois of Nantes, I
+would appeal to William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, of whom the seigneur of
+Plouernel stands seized, the same as William IX holds of Philip I, King
+of the Franks. Each of these seigneurs has his suzerain."
+
+"Which would be like appealing from the wolf to the tiger," replied
+Simon, shrugging his shoulders. "You can not know William, Duke of
+Aquitaine. That sacrilegious criminal sought to force Peter, the Bishop
+of Poitiers, to give him absolution for his crimes by putting a dagger
+to his throat. William abducted Malborgiane, the wife of the Viscount of
+Castellerault, a shameless creature, whose picture he dares to carry
+painted on his shield. William had the effrontery to answer Gerard, the
+Bishop of Angouleme, who reproached him with this new act of adultery:
+'Bishop, I shall return Malborgiane when you frizzle your hair!' The
+prelate was bald. Such is the man to whom you would appeal from the
+violent acts of the seigneur of Plouernel."
+
+"That William is certainly a deep-dyed criminal;" put in Jeronimo, "but
+that much justice must be done him that he approved himself the most
+implacable exterminator of the Jews. Not one of those who lived on his
+domains escaped death!"
+
+"It is said that the mere sight of a Jew makes him pale with horror; and
+that, libertine though he is, a Jewess, be she never such a beauty, be
+she a maid like the Virgin Mary, would make him run away from her."
+
+"But that does not prevent," insisted Simon the monk, "that if you rely
+upon the Duke of Aquitaine for redress against the seigneur of
+Plouernel, you will be acting like a lunatic. On that subject your
+judgment is at fault."
+
+"If William IX does not do us justice," rejoined Bezenecq the Rich, "we
+shall appeal to King Philip. Oh! oh! we townsmen do not allow ourselves
+to be tyrannized without protest! We know how to draw up a petition!"
+
+"And what will King Philip care for your petition? That Sardanapalus!
+that glutton! that idler! that double adulterer! and what's worse, that
+dullard, whom the seigneurs, his large vassals, laugh at openly! It is
+to him you will go for justice, if refused by the Duke of Aquitaine?
+Moreover, even if the latter were so inclined, as the suzerain of the
+seigneur of Plouernel, to punish him for wrongs done to you, would he
+have the power?"
+
+"Certainly!" exclaimed Bezenecq. "He would enter the domain of the
+seigneur of Plouernel and besiege him in his castle."
+
+Simon the monk shook his head sadly. "The seigneurs reserve their forces
+to round up their domains and to revenge their own wrongs. Never do they
+protect the cause of small folks, however just it be."
+
+"We live, I know, in sad times; nor were the previous centuries much
+better," observed the townsman with a sigh, casting an uneasy look upon
+his daughter, who seemed again alarmed. "All the same, we should not
+exaggerate to ourselves the dangers of the situation. We have to choose
+between the two routes. Let's suppose the dangers of crossing them are
+equal. Common sense bids us to take the shorter, and that we hurry our
+steps."
+
+"The shorter route is the more perilous," repeated Simon the monk, who,
+more than anyone else, seemed to dread crossing the territory of the
+seigneur of Plouernel.
+
+"Oh! father," asked Isoline of the merchant, "have we really so many
+dangers to fear?"
+
+"No, no, my dear child. That poor monk's mind is upset with fear."
+
+The Norman dealer in relics, having overheard the last words of Isoline,
+approached her and said with much unction: "Pretty lassie, I have here
+in my box of relics a superb tooth, that comes from the blessed jaw of a
+holy man, who died in Jerusalem, a martyr to the Saracens. I shall let
+you have that tooth for three silver deniers. This sacred relic will
+protect you from all perils of the road." Saying which, Harold the
+Norman was about to exhibit the marvellous tooth, when Bezenecq said
+smiling to him, so as to reassure his daughter; "Not now, my friend; we
+shall look at your relic later on. Do you claim that it protects one
+against all the dangers of the road?"
+
+"Yes, worshipful townsman. I swear it upon my eternal salvation; upon my
+share of Paradise."
+
+"Seeing that you carry about you that holy relic, you will not be
+exposed to any accident; and seeing that we go with you, and are of your
+company, we shall profit by the miraculous protection. All of which
+should not hinder us, if you follow my advice, dear companions, to take
+the shorter route. Let those who share my views follow me," he added
+giving the spurs to his mule so as to put an end to the discussion, and
+with that he took the road that led over the territory of the seigneur
+of Plouernel. The majority of the travelers followed the example of
+Bezenecq, because, for one thing, he spoke wisely; then also, he was
+known to be rich, his daughter accompanied him, and he had too much at
+stake to take an imprudent resolution. Those who shared the
+apprehensions of the monk Simon, being reduced to a small number, dared
+not separate from the bulk of the troop, and joined it after a moment's
+hesitation. Likewise Simon the monk and Jeronimo, who feared risking
+themselves alone on the other road. Harold the Norman remained behind an
+instant, drew near one of the gibbets, pulled off the two legs and hands
+of a corpse, that was reduced to a mere skeleton, and placed them in his
+bag, counting upon selling them to the faithful for holy relics. He then
+rejoined the travelers, who were proceeding along the road of the
+seigniory of Plouernel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE MANOR OF PLOUERNEL.
+
+
+The castle of Neroweg VI--a somber retreat, situated, like the eyrie of
+a bird of prey, on the brow of a steep mountain--dominated the country
+for many miles around. The moment the watchman, posted on the platform
+of the donjon, espied from afar a troop of travelers, he sounded his
+horn. Immediately the band of the count, thievish and ferocious, would
+sally from the manor. These bandits, not satisfied with demanding the
+dues of passage and traffic, habitually pillaged the travelers, often
+even massacred them, or took them to the castle to be tortured and
+compelled to pay ransom. The face of Gaul bristled with similar haunts,
+raised by the Frankish seigneurs under the reign of Charles the Great.
+They were impregnable fortresses, from the heights of which barons,
+counts, marquises and dukes defied the royal authority, and desolated
+the country. The history of the Count of Plouernel is that of all these
+seigneurs who issued from the race of the first conquerors of Gaul. In
+the year 818, a Neroweg, second son of the head of this Frankish family
+that had been richly endowed in Auvergne since Clovis, was one of the
+chieftains in the army of Louis the Pious, when he ravaged Brittany,
+then in revolt at the call of Morvan and Vortigern. That Neroweg, in
+reward for his services during that war, received from the King a fief
+of the lands and county of Plouernel, which had reverted to the crown by
+the death of its last beneficiary, who left no heirs. Neroweg, in return
+for the cession of the county of Plouernel, was to own himself a vassal
+of Louis the Pious, render him fealty and homage as to his king and
+suzerain seigneur, pay him tribute, and support him in his wars by
+marching at the head of the men of his seigniory. In the country of
+Plouernel, as in the other provinces of Gaul, certain colonists named
+villeins had succeeded in emancipating themselves and again became
+owners of parcels of land. Neroweg I. (the first of the name of this
+second branch of the family) did not revolt against the authority of the
+King. His son, however, Neroweg II., had a strong castle built on the
+summit of the mountain of Plouernel, assembled there a numerous band of
+determined men, and then, with most of the other seigneurs, he said to
+the King of the Franks: "I do not recognize your sovereignty; I will no
+longer be your vassal; I declare myself sovereign on my domain, like you
+are on yours. The serfs, villeins and townsmen of my county become my
+men; they, their lands, their property belong to me only; I shall tax
+them at my will and impose upon them tributes, rent and taille which
+they shall pay to me only; they will go to war for me alone, and against
+you, should you dare come and besiege me in my fortress of Plouernel."
+The King did not go, seeing that most of the seigneurs held the same
+language to the descendants of Charles the Great or of Hugh le Capet,
+whose kingdom was gradually reduced to the possession of the bare
+provinces that he was able to defend and preserve, arms in hand. Neroweg
+III. and Neroweg IV. did as their ancestor and remained independent,
+masters, absolute and hereditary, of the country of Plouernel. A large
+number of Frankish seigneurs seized in the same way other parts of the
+territory of Gaul. Robert thus became Count of (the country of) Paris;
+Milo, Count of (the country of) Tonnerre; Hugh, Count of (the country
+of) Maine; Burcharth, Sire of (the country of) Montmorency; Landry, Duke
+of (the country of) Nevers; Radulf, Count of (the country of) Beaugency;
+Enghilbert, Count of (the country of) Ponthieu; etc. These and a number
+of other seigneurs, descendants of the leudes of Clovis or of the
+chieftains of the bands of Charles Martel, dropping their Frankish
+names, or joining to them the Gaulish names of the regions that they
+took possession of, had themselves called "seigneurs," "sires," "dukes"
+or "counts," of Paris, of Plouernel, of Montmorency, of Nevers, of
+Tonnerre, of Ponthieu, etc., etc. During those centuries of wars and
+brigandage the Nerowegs had fortified their castle, while they lived on
+rapine and on the extortion of their villeins and their serfs. Neroweg
+V., surnamed "Towhead," from the color of his hair, and Neroweg VI.,
+surnamed "Worse Than a Wolf" by the wretched people of his domains on
+account of his cruelty, proved themselves worthy of their ancestors.
+
+The manor of Plouernel raises its front on the summit of a rocky and
+arid mountain, washed on its western slope by a swift running stream,
+while on the east it beetles over a narrow path constructed over immense
+marshes, drained by a canal that feeds the vast ponds of the abbey of
+Meriadek, located several leagues off, and one time part of the large
+holdings of the diocese of Nantes. If a traveler follows the overland
+route he is compelled to cross this jetty on his way from Angers to
+Nantes, unless he be willing to make a wide detour by journeying over
+the domains of the seigneur of Castel-Redon. The vessels that sail into
+the Loire through the river of Plouernel, whose waters bathe the foot of
+the hills, pass close under the castle. The location of the lair is
+skilfully chosen. It dominates the two only routes of communication
+between the most important towns of the region. A stockade half bars the
+river of Plouernel, and serves as a shelter for the barges of the
+seigneur. Merchant vessels being signaled from the top of the donjon,
+men in arms immediately embark, board the trader, collect navigation
+dues, and not infrequently pillage the cargo. No less dangerous is the
+overland route. A palisade, into which a gate is cut, bars the passage.
+It can be crossed only upon paying a toll, arbitrarily imposed upon the
+travelers by the count's men, who, moreover, sack the baggages at their
+ease. If they suspect a traveler of being able to pay ransom they drag
+him to prison and there torture him until he consents to ransom himself.
+The ill-starred ones who may be too poor to pay the toll demanded are,
+both men and women, forced to submit to obscene affronts, ridiculous or
+cruel, to the great amusement of the men of the seigneur. On one of the
+gentler slopes of the mountain, towards the north, the little city of
+Plouernel rises in tiers, built in a semi-circle and equidistant from
+the manor and the valley, where lie scattered the villages that the
+villeins and serfs inhabit. A narrow path, winding and steep, and
+bordered here and yonder by precipices, leads up to the first fortified
+enclosure, whose ramparts, thirty feet high by two feet thick and
+flanked with large towers of brick, constitute one mass with the rock
+that serves as their foundation, a rock hewn with the pick and
+surrounded by abysses. The dizzy path that winds above the precipices
+ends in a massive door covered with iron sheets and enormous nails. It
+is the only access to the interior of the first enclosure, a somber
+court, where the sun penetrates only at noon, being otherwise kept out
+by the height of the numerous structures that lean from within upon the
+ramparts. These structures are intended for the lodgement of the
+men-at-arms, for the masons, the chapel, the bakery, the forge and
+several other workshops--a mint among them. The Count of Plouernel
+coined money like the other feudal seigneurs, and, like them, he minted
+it to his liking. In the center of the court rises the principal donjon.
+That building, square, over a hundred feet high, crowned with a platform
+from which the country is far away disclosed, rests upon three tiers of
+subterraneous cells, surrounded by a ditch full of water furnished from
+springs that also serve as cisterns. The donjon seems to rise from the
+midst of a deep pit, in which half of this massive structure appears
+hidden, its upper part rising merely above the skirt of the ditch, over
+which falls a draw bridge. Few and narrow windows, irregularly cut into
+the four sides, and almost as narrow as mere loop-holes, yielded a
+gloomy light to the several stories and to the ground floor. The
+stonework of all these buildings, blackened by the inclemencies of the
+weather and by age, rendered still more dismal the aspect of this
+fortress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AZENOR THE PALE.
+
+
+A narrow spiral staircase, built of stone, led from the bottom of the
+basement to the platform that surmounted the donjon of the manor of
+Plouernel. The men at arms, charged with the lookout on the platform,
+never failed to cross themselves when passing the door of an alcove,
+situated on the last story of the donjon, that had for its annex one of
+the turrets that rose from the four corners of the platform. It was
+whispered that the narrow window of that turret seemed internally
+illuminated at night by a glow of the color of blood, and these sinister
+lights were attributed to the sorceries of Azenor the Pale, the
+concubine of Neroweg VI. The seigneur of Plouernel had gathered in the
+chamber of his mistress a mass of precious objects, the fruits of his
+raids. A passage, concealed by a purple curtain, fringed with gold, gave
+admission to another turret, whose upper part, roofed on a level with
+the platform, served as the post for the lookout. Azenor the Pale, about
+twenty-five years of age, was of a perfect beauty. Her face was pale and
+her sensuous lips were the color of her skin, whence her surname. A
+turban of rich purple silk fabric in the shape of a chin-cloth, served
+as a frame for the visage of the sorceress, while it left exposed the
+strands of her hair, black like her eyebrows and her large eyes. Her
+tunic of silver cloth was negligently thrown over her shoulders. Her
+bosom and arms were worthy of figuring beside that beautiful Greek
+statue that has survived the centuries, and which, rumor has it, is
+still admired in the palace of the Dukes of Aquitaine. The tunic of
+Azenor, reaching only to her knees, left exposed below its silver folds
+the skirt of her dress, purple like her turban. The woman was at this
+moment engaged in molding a bit of pliable wax into two little figures
+similar to the one inserted that very morning between the teeth of
+Pierrine the Goat at the moment of her death agony. One of the puppets
+wore a bishop's robe, the other a species of armor represented by a
+dull-colored bit of cloth resembling iron. Azenor the Pale was inserting
+a certain number of needles, disposed in cabalistic order, on the left
+side of the breast of the two puppets, when the door of the alcove
+opened behind her. Neroweg VI. entered his mistress' retreat, carefully
+closing the door after him.
+
+The Count of Plouernel, surnamed "Worse than a Wolf," and at that time
+about fifty years of age, was of athletic frame. His hair no longer was
+dressed after the fashion of his ancestor, the Neroweg, leude of Clovis,
+nor after that of Neroweg, the "Terrible Eagle," savage chief of a
+savage tribe. The red hair of Neroweg VI., already grizzled, was shaven
+smooth to the middle of the temples and the skull, and then fell square
+down his neck and behind his ears. The men of war had themselves thus
+shaven in front to prevent their hair from interfering with their casque
+and standing in the way of the visor. Instead of cultivating long
+moustaches, like his ancestors, Neroweg VI. allowed to grow at full
+length only his thick and coarse beard, which thus framed in his savage
+countenance and his hooked nose. His heavy eyebrows met over his falcon
+eyes, round and piercing. Always ready for war upon his neighbors, or
+upon those troops of travelers that, at times, attempted to offer
+forcible resistance to the brigandage of the seigneurs, Neroweg VI. wore
+a casque, which he laid by on entering. His jacket and buff hose
+disappeared under a hauberk or iron coat of mail, held to his waist by a
+leathern belt, from which hung two swords, the shorter one at his right,
+the longer at his left. The hauberk guarded his arms down to the
+gauntlets, and fell slightly below his knees, which, like his legs, were
+protected by iron greaves, held together with leathern thongs. The face
+of Neroweg VI. betrayed a gloomy and troubled mind. Azenor the Pale,
+still engaged in inserting the needles into the left sides of the wax
+figures, was murmuring certain words in a strange tongue, and seemed not
+to notice the arrival of the Count. He drew slowly near, and said in a
+hollow voice: "Well, now, Azenor, is the philter ready?"
+
+Without answering, the sorceress continued her magic incantations, at
+the conclusion of which, holding up to Neroweg VI. the two puppets,
+representing a bishop and a warrior, she said: "Tell me again, which are
+the enemies whom you dread and hate the most?"
+
+"The Bishop of Nantes and Draco, Sire of Castel-Redon. These are my
+worst enemies."
+
+"Yesterday I shaped a figure like this. Has it been placed as I ordered,
+between the teeth of one about to expire on the gallows?"
+
+"One of my serfs struck my bailiff. She was hanged this morning from my
+seigniorial forks. At the moment when she gave up the ghost, the
+executioner placed the wax puppet between her teeth. Your orders have
+been carried out."
+
+"In keeping with my promise, your enemies will soon be in your power.
+Nevertheless, in order to complete the charm, these other two little
+figures will have to be buried under the root of a tree, that grows at
+the bank of a river, in which some man or woman was drowned."
+
+"That's easily done. There are large old willows growing on the banks of
+my river, and often do my men drown in it the stubborn sailors, or the
+men or women who refuse to pay the toll for my rights of navigation."
+
+"That magic spell must be cast by yourself. You will have to place these
+little figures in the designated place to-night, when the moon goes
+down, and you will pronounce three times the names of Jesus, of Astaroth
+and of Judas. The charm will then be at its full."
+
+"I do not like to see the name of Christ mixed up in all this. Are you,
+perchance, seeking to lead me into some sacrilege?"
+
+A sardonic smile played over the white lips of Azenor the Pale. "So far
+from that, I have placed the magic charm under the invocation of Christ;
+I pronounced a verse from the gospels with each needle that I buried in
+these puppets. The Lord will thus be our protector."
+
+"Had you not driven me to kill my chaplain, I might have been able to
+consult him and learn from him whether I would be committing sacrilege."
+
+"You killed the tonsured fellow because you suspected that holy man of
+improper relations with your wife, and of probably being the father of
+Guy----"
+
+"Hold your tongue!" cried Neroweg, with a voice full of anger. "Hold
+your tongue, accursed woman! Since that murder I have had no chaplain.
+No priest, consents to dwell here. Enough of that. Is the philter
+ready?"
+
+"Not yet. Have patience, seigneur Count."
+
+"What else do you want to concoct it? You wanted the blood of a young
+child; the young son of one of my serfs has been delivered to you----"
+
+"The child must be prepared for the sacrifice by magic formulas."
+
+"In a word, can you tell me when will that marvelous philter, that you
+have promised me, be ready?"
+
+"I shall work upon it this very night, during the hours between the
+rising and the going down of the moon; that's to say, for several
+hours."
+
+"That's another delay! My ailment grows apace! I suspect you of having
+cast upon me the evil spell under which I struggle, and which drives me
+to deeds of furious folly."
+
+"You are wrong in attributing to me such an influence over your fate."
+
+"Was it not you who incited me to kill my eldest son Gonthram?"
+
+"Your son tried to violate me. Of course I had to appeal to your
+intervention for protection against fresh outrages."
+
+"Had not my equerry Eberhard the Tricky thrown himself between me and
+Gonthram, I would have killed my son on his return from the hunt. He has
+insisted that you offered to yield yourself to him if he consented to
+stab me to death."
+
+"That was a dastardly calumny!"
+
+"Perhaps I should have plunged my dagger in your heart and be done with
+you."
+
+"And why did you not?"
+
+"Because you read in the stars that our lives were bound together, and
+that your death would precede mine by only three days. But if I am to
+die of the distemper that oppresses me, a curse upon you, sorceress! You
+shall not survive me. Garin the Serf-eater is charged with my vengeance.
+Oh, you will not leave this castle alive!" Neroweg pressed his forehead
+with both hands and proceeded in a spirit more and more dejected as he
+spoke: "The philter--Will it heal me? Since you cast your diabolical
+spell upon me, the days seem endless. I am indifferent to everything.
+After I make the rounds of my domains, shut in among the seigniories of
+my neighbors, all of them my enemies; after I have ravaged their lands,
+burned their houses, killed their serfs; after I have levied ransom on
+the travelers, had justice executed by my bailiff, my provost and my
+hangman; after all that I feel sadder, wearier, more than ever tired of
+life. I have even surprised myself wishing for death!"
+
+"You wage war, you eat, you drink, you hunt, you sleep and you take your
+female serfs to your bed when they marry. What is it you lack?"
+
+"I am tired, cloyed with gross enjoyments. Wine tastes sour to me. I
+feel uneasy when I hunt in my forests, fearful of some ambush prepared
+by my neighbors. I find my donjon sepulchral like a tomb. I choke under
+its stone vaults. If I leave the manor, I have ever under my eyes the
+same saddening landscape."
+
+"Leave the country, you stupid and savage wolf!"
+
+"Whither shall I go and be happier? Here I am master. What would my fate
+be elsewhere? During my absence, my neighbors would descend upon my
+domains like a flock of vultures. The devil! I am bound to my seigniory
+like my serfs to the glebe!"
+
+"Your fate is that of all the nobles, your peers."
+
+"But they are not weighed down by their existence like I. Only a few
+years ago, during the life of my wife Hermengarde, I attacked my
+neighbors as much for the pleasure of it as to appropriate their lands
+and to sack their castles. I went on the hunt for caravans of merchants
+with joy and spirit. I put the prisoners to the torture and delighted at
+their grimaces. In short, I felt that I lived; I was happy; I ate and
+drank enormously, and then fell asleep in the arms of one of my female
+serfs. The next morning I attended mass and departed for the chase, to
+battle or on a pillaging expedition; that is, on a new round of
+pleasures." After a moment's silence the seigneur of Plouernel added,
+with a sigh: "Those days I was a good Catholic! I practiced the faith of
+my fathers, and every morning, after mass, the chaplain gave me
+absolution for the deeds of the previous day! To-day, thanks to your
+wicked contrivances, all my beliefs are overthrown. I have become a
+pagan!--Aye, a pagan!"
+
+"You, poor imbecile, who carry under your hauberk four relics blessed by
+the Pope!"
+
+"Will you dare to mock me for my faith in relics?" bellowed Neroweg in a
+towering rage. "Without the relics that I carry about me you might by
+this time have dragged me to the bottom of hell, you worthy wife of
+Satan!"
+
+"Maychance you speak truth, seigneur Count!"
+
+"There is nothing human about you! Your lips are cold as marble; your
+kisses are frozen!"
+
+"When a reciprocal love shall inflame my veins, then my lips will grow
+purple, and my kisses will be of fire!"
+
+"Oh, I know it; you never loved me!"
+
+"As well love a wolf of the forest as a Neroweg. You carried me off by
+force, and I have had to submit to your lust. The man whom I adore, whom
+I have long loved, even without seeing him, is William the Ninth, the
+handsome Duke of Aquitaine."
+
+"William!" exclaimed Neroweg in an accent of ferocious jealousy. "That
+sacrilegious wretch, who carries on his shield the portrait of
+Malborgiane, his mistress!"
+
+"William is a poet; he is young, handsome, bold, bright and gay. All
+women dream of, and all men dread him. You are his vassal. Woe unto you
+should you dare cross him! He would leave not one stone on the other in
+your castle. He would make you grovel on the ground on hands and knees;
+he would clap a saddle on you and ride on your back a hundred steps at a
+stretch, agreeable to the right of a sovereign over his revolted vassal.
+You are as far removed from the handsome Duke of Aquitaine as the dull
+buzzard is from the noble falcon that darts towards the sun making its
+golden bells tinkle!"
+
+Neroweg uttered a cry of rage, and, drawing his dagger, rushed upon
+Azenor. But her marble figure remained impassive, her white lips curled
+in disdainful smile. "Kill me, coward knight, assassin!"
+
+After a moment of savage irresolution, Neroweg returned his dagger to
+the scabbard: "Oh, damned be the day I captured you on the road to
+Angers. It is you who brought down the curse that rests upon this
+castle. But will ye, nill ye, you shall yourself break the spell you
+have thrown upon me and my children, who, like their father, are
+becoming somber and silent."
+
+"That's the business of the philter, which I am preparing."
+
+The conversation was at this point interrupted by two raps on the door
+from without. Neroweg asked roughly: "Who's that?"
+
+"Seigneur Count," a voice answered, "you are waited to open the session
+of the court in the stone hall!"
+
+Neroweg made a gesture of impatience, and, donning the iron casque which
+he had laid on a settee, replied: "Once the homage of my vassals pleased
+my vanity. To-day everything annoys, everything is irksome to me. Oh,
+sad is my life!"
+
+"To-morrow, thanks to my philter, nothing more will weigh upon you--nor
+upon yours," observed Azenor, and, placing in the Count's hands the two
+little wax images, she added: "Your two enemies--the Sire of
+Castel-Redon and the Bishop of Nantes--will soon fall into your hands,
+provided you yourself place these magic figures where I have told you,
+while you pronounce three times the names of Judas, of Astaroth and of
+Jesus."
+
+"It is hard for me to pronounce the name of Jesus in connection with
+this sorcery," remarked Neroweg, raising his head and receiving almost
+fearfully the two little figures. "To-night the philter; if not, you die
+to-morrow!" Then, bethinking himself, "Where is the child?"
+
+"In that alcove," answered Azenor.
+
+Neroweg walked towards the turret, raised the curtain and saw little
+Colombaik, the son of Fergan the Quarryman, lying on the floor. The
+innocent creature was sound asleep at the foot of a stand loaded with
+vases of bizarre form. The walls of the turret, paneled with marble
+slabs, rose bare to the ceiling, the floor of whose upper story was on a
+level with the platform of the donjon. Neroweg, after contemplating the
+child for an instant, stepped out of the donjon, double-locking the door
+after him, and taking care to withdraw the key and place it in his
+jerkin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+FEUDAL JUSTICE.
+
+
+Eberhard the Tricky, one of the equerries of the seigneur of Plouernel,
+awaited his master outside of the retreat of Azenor, in company with
+Thiebold, justiciary provost of the seigniory. The latter addressed
+Neroweg, who was slowly descending the stone staircase.
+
+"The chatelain of the fort of Ferte-Mehan signed the relinquishment of
+his fief of Haut-Menil at the third wedge struck into his knee by the
+gaoler. The Sire of Breuil-le-Haudoin died of the results of the
+torture. The Abbot Guilbert offers three hundred silver sous for his
+ransom. But he has not yet been put to the torture, and such offers mean
+nothing. We shall proceed in order."
+
+"And then? What other cases are there?"
+
+"That's all. There is to-day nothing else on hand."
+
+While carrying on this conversation the Seigneur of Plouernel, his
+provost and his equerry, descended to the basement of the donjon-keep,
+at the corner where the staircase landed. A narrow window, guarded with
+enormous iron bars, alone lighted this vast hall, bare, somber and
+vaulted. In the inside yard several men-at-arms held themselves ready to
+mount their horses. Near the center of the hall, which served as a court
+of pleas, stood, according to custom, a large stone table, behind which
+ranged themselves the officers of the house of the Count--the master of
+the horse, the master of the chamber, the master of the dogs, of the
+falcons, of the table, and several other dignitaries. These people,
+instead of being paid by the seigneurs, bought from them these
+hereditary offices in their families, an inheritance that at times
+became odd by the contrast it presented between the function and the
+incumbent. It happened that a post of runner, sold in fief to an agile
+and vigorous man, often descended as the inheritance of a son, as unfit
+for the post as a broken-winded ox. The seigneurs, with an eye to
+revenue, multiplied these offices all they could, and the purchasers
+yielded, not so much to the pride of belonging to the seigniorial
+households as to the desire of sheltering themselves from the master's
+lawlessness, and of sharing the fruits of his brigandage. In those dark
+days, the choice was between oppressing or being oppressed; submitting
+to the horrors of serfdom, or becoming the instruments of the feudal
+tyrants; joining them in doing violence, robbing and torturing one's
+fellows, or resigning oneself to undergo all these sufferings himself.
+Such were the sad results of the Frankish conquest. The seigneurs
+imposed servitude, the friars preached resignation, and the people of
+Gaul became cowardly, selfish and cruel. They rent themselves with their
+own hands by turning accomplices to their gaoler.
+
+Besides the head domestics of Neroweg, present at these law
+courts,--which took the place of the Germanic "malhs" of the reign of
+Clovis--there was also the provost, the bailiff and the scribe of the
+seigniory. The latter, seated on a stool, his parchment rolls on his
+knees, his desk beside him, his pen between his teeth, awaited the
+opening of the session. The first domestics of the Count, respectful and
+timid, remained standing in a semi-circle behind their master. Since
+four of five centuries back, the class of the leudes, who, in the early
+days of the Frankish conquest, lived in common with and as equals of
+their chiefs, had ceased to exist. In the measure that the conquest
+became more firmly fixed, the titulary and beneficiary seigneurs of the
+soil of Gaul, shocked at the idea of equality contracted by their old
+companions in arms, evicted them little by little from the domains where
+chiefs and leudes had lived in common. The descendants of these obscure
+Frankish warriors, sacrificed to the pride and cupidity of the
+beneficiaries, soon fell into misery, and from misery into a servitude
+equal to that of the Gauls. Since then, Franks and Gauls--the former
+disinherited by ingratitude, the latter by conquest, and now joined in
+misery and servitude--felt a common hatred towards the church and the
+seigneurs. There were then but two classes--the _common people_, serfs,
+peasants and bourgeois or townsmen; and _nobles_, knights and seigneurs.
+The latter, isolating themselves ever more, lived like absolute
+sovereigns in their strongholds, having no equals, but only menials, the
+accomplices of their acts of brigandage; or serfs, stupefied by terror
+or besotted by the friars.
+
+Gonthram and Guy, the two sons of Neroweg, the younger at the left, the
+elder at the right of their father, attended the court. The latter had
+just reached the age of knighthood, a glorious event, so dearly paid for
+by the serfs of the seigniory. Gonthram resembled his father greatly. A
+look at the whelp told what he would be when age would have made of him
+a wolf. Guy, the younger, seventeen years of age, recalled the sardonic
+and vindictive features of his mother, Hermangarde. These two youths,
+brought up in the midst of this life of strife, of rapine and of
+debauchery, left to the violence of their passions, disposing as masters
+over an abject population, had none of the charms that are the attribute
+of adolescence. Away in a corner of the hall stood several bourgeois of
+the little town of Plouernel, who had come to complain of the exactions
+of the Count's men; or to excuse themselves for failure to pay the
+imposts in money and goods that it had pleased their seigneur to lay
+upon them; or to plead that the dues credited to the seigneur had long
+been met or exceeded; or yet to announce that they had removed from
+their roofs the weather-vanes, placed there in ignorance of the
+seigniorial rights, and taken down the pigeon houses they had started to
+raise in violation of the prescriptions of the feudal law.
+
+The court was also attended by noble vassals of Neroweg, owners of
+smaller fortified places or of manors, held under the Count of
+Plouernel, the suzerain of these fiefs, the same as Neroweg, a vassal of
+William IX., Duke of Aquitaine, held under that suzerain, who, as vassal
+of Philip I., in turn held of that French King, the supreme sovereign.
+This hierarchy of all feudal seigniories existed in name only, never in
+fact. The great vassals, veritable sovereigns, entrenched in their
+duchies, laughed at the impotent authority of the King. In turn, the
+sovereignty of the dukes was almost despised, contested or attacked by
+their vassals, who were absolute masters in their seigniories, as the
+dukes in their duchies. The immediate vassalage, however, such as rested
+on the vassals of the seigniory of Plouernel, was ever enforced in all
+its fullness and tyrannic severity. There, at any time, the implacable
+vengeance of the suzerain could reach directly the goods and chattels of
+the recalcitrant vassal. Among the people who had come from the city,
+from the fortified cities or from their manors, was a handsome young
+girl, accompanied by her mother. Sad and uneasy, the two exchanged
+alarmed looks when the seigneur of Plouernel, entering the law court
+with a somber mien, sat down on a throne, one son at his right, the
+other at his left, and ordered Garin the Serf-eater to call the roll of
+cases entered for the session.
+
+The bailiff bore no further mark of the wound he had received from
+Pierrine the Goat than a plaster on his forehead. He took up a scroll
+and commenced calling up the list of cases:
+
+"Gerhard, son of Hugh, who died last month, succeeds his father in the
+fief of Heute-Mont, held under the Count of Plouernel. He comes to
+acquit the right of relief, and to pledge fealty and homage to his
+suzerain."
+
+Thereupon, a man still young, covered with a leather casque and carrying
+at his side a long sword, stepped forth from the group of persons who
+had come to the session of the court. He came forward holding in his
+hand a large purse filled with money, and placed it on the stone table,
+thus acquitting the right of relief due the seigneur by all vassals who
+take possession of their inheritance. Then, upon a sign of the bailiff,
+the new castellan of Heute-Mont, taking off his casque and unbuckling
+the belt of his sword, placed himself humbly on both knees before the
+seigneur of Plouernel. The bailiff, however, noticing that the country
+squire, having come on horseback, retained his spurs, addressed him in
+an angry tone: "Vassal, dare you take the pledge of fealty and homage to
+your seigneur with the spurs at your heels?"
+
+The young castellan repaired the incongruity by removing his spurs and
+dropping back upon his knees at the feet of Neroweg, with hands joined
+and head lowered, he humbly waited for his seigneur to pronounce the
+consecrated formula: "You acknowledge yourself my liege as the holder of
+a fief in my seigniory?"
+
+"Yes, my seigneur."
+
+"You swear upon your soul never to carry arms against me, and to serve
+and defend me against my enemies?"
+
+"I swear it, my seigneur."
+
+"Keep thy oath. At the first felonious infraction thy fief reverts to
+me!"
+
+Gerhard rose, replaced his spurs and buckled on the belt of his sword,
+while casting a sad look upon the purse of money with which he had paid
+his right of relief.
+
+After the lord of Heute-Mont, a richly dressed young girl stepped
+forward, uneasy, trembling and her eyes full of tears. Her mother, not
+less moved than herself, accompanied her. When both were a few steps
+from the stone table, the seigneur of Plouernel said to the damsel:
+"Have you decided to obey the orders of your suzerain?"
+
+"Monseigneur," answered the young girl, in a feeble and suppliant voice,
+"it is impossible for me to resign myself to----"
+
+She could not finish. Sobs smothered her words, and, breaking out in
+tears, she dropped her head upon the shoulder of her mother, who said to
+the Count: "My good seigneur, my daughter loves Eucher, one of your own
+vassals. Eucher loves my daughter Yolande no less tenderly. The union
+of these two children would make the happiness of my life----"
+
+"No! no!" interrupted the seigneur of Plouernel, in a towering rage. "By
+the death of her father Yolande holds a fief under my seigniory. Mine
+alone is the right to dispose of her in marriage. She must choose a
+husband from among the three men whom, according to our usage, I have
+designated. They are three Franks, that is, nobles--Richard, Enquerrand
+and Conrad. The eldest of them not being yet sixty years old, the age
+limit is observed. Does Yolande accept one of my three lieges for her
+husband?"
+
+"Oh, seigneur," replied the mother imploringly, while the young girl
+sobbed aloud, "Richard is mean looking and blind of one eye; Conrad is a
+murderer; he killed his first wife in a fit of passion; Enquerrand is
+lame, wicked and feared by all who come near him, moreover, he is too
+old for my daughter, he will be sixty years within two months. None of
+them is fit for Yolande."
+
+"Your daughter, accordingly, refuses to wed one of the three men
+presented by me?"
+
+"Seigneur, she wishes no other husband than Eucher; and I may assure you
+the lad is worthy of the love of my daughter."
+
+"The devil! We have had words enough. If your daughter insists upon
+refusing to select from among my men, and marries Eucher, the fief
+reverts to me. It is my right. I shall enforce it."
+
+"In the name of heaven, monseigneur, if you appropriate our lands what
+shall we live on? Are we to beg our bread? Have pity upon us!"
+
+Yolande raised her beautiful face, pale and wet with tears, took a step
+towards Neroweg, and said, with dignity: "Keep the heritage of my
+father. I prefer to live in poverty with him whom I love than to wed any
+of these men of yours who inspire me with horror."
+
+"My daughter!" exclaimed the distracted mother, "disobedience to the
+seigneur of Plouernel means misery for us!"
+
+"Marriage with one of the three men proposed, means death to me,"
+answered the poor child.
+
+"Seigneur, good seigneur!" resumed the stricken mother, "deign to allow
+Yolande to remain a spinster. You would not force her to the choice
+between our ruin and a marriage that horrifies her?"
+
+"No fief can remain in the possession of a woman," was the sententious
+utterance of the bailiff. "Usage is opposed to it."
+
+"We have had enough of words!" cried out Neroweg, stamping the ground
+with rage. "This young woman refuses to wed one of my men. The fief is
+now mine. Bailiff, you will this evening send a force to take possession
+of the house and all its contents. You will eject the two women."
+
+"Mother, let's depart," said Yolande, proudly. "We once were free and
+happy; now we are no better than serfs. But I prefer their sad lot to
+that reserved for me by Count Neroweg in delivering me to one of his
+bandits."
+
+Undoubtedly the seigneur of Plouernel would have revenged himself for
+the bitter reproaches of Yolande had he not been prevented by the sudden
+arrival of one of his men, who, running in all out of breath, brought
+news of the arrest of the Bishop of Nantes, who had appeared at the toll
+gate disguised as a mendicant friar, and was recognized by one of the
+guards.
+
+"The Bishop of Nantes in my power!" exclaimed Neroweg. "Azenor predicted
+it. Her magic charm begins to operate!" He rose precipitately from his
+throne, and, followed by his sons and several of his equerries, ran to
+meet the bishop, his enemy, who was being led a prisoner, together with
+the other travelers captured by the armed guards posted at the toll
+gate. Bezenecq the Rich and his daughter Isoline accompanied Simon, the
+Bishop of Nantes, and the monk Jeronimo, clad like a prelate. After his
+vain efforts to induce the travelers not to cross the seigniory of
+Plouernel, the bishop had, nevertheless, joined them, not venturing to
+enter alone with Jeronimo upon the territory of the seigneur of
+Castel-Redon, and hoping he would pass unperceived amidst a numerous
+troop. Unhappily for him, among the guards at the gate was a soldier
+named Robin the Nantesian, who had lived in the city of Nantes, and
+where he had opportunity to see the leading personages among the
+inhabitants. He quickly pointed out Bezenecq the Rich as a townsman from
+whom it would be easy to extract a big ransom. Noticing, thereupon, a
+monk, who seemed anxious to keep his cowl over his head, he pulled the
+frock off the monk and recognized the Bishop of Nantes, a personal enemy
+of the Count. The men of Neroweg then seized the two friars, pinioned
+them, as well as Bezenecq and his daughter, and accepted the toll from
+the other passengers, whom they allowed to pursue their journey. The
+bourgeois of Nantes, bound upon his mule, with his daughter bathed in
+tears at the crupper, was carried to the castle, with the bishop and
+Jeronimo, their hands tied behind their backs, following on foot. When
+the captives arrived at the first court-yard of the castle, Bezenecq
+alighted from the saddle, and, freed from his bandages, he held up his
+daughter, ready to faint. The bishop, pale as death, leaned upon the arm
+of Jeronimo, whose resolute carriage betrayed no fears. Neroweg,
+accompanied by his sons, arrested his hurrying steps when he came close
+to the prisoners, and, addressing them, said, sardonically: "I greet
+you, Simon! I greet you, holy man, my father in Christ! I hardly looked
+for this joyful meeting!"
+
+"I am at your mercy," answered the prelate; "the will of God be done. Do
+with me as you will."
+
+"I shall avail myself of your leave," replied the seigneur of Plouernel.
+"Oh, this is a happy day to me!"
+
+"I ask only one favor," rejoined the bishop, "the favor of keeping near
+me this poor monk until the moment of my death, that he may help me to
+die like a Christian."
+
+"I do not mean to send you quite so soon to Paradise. I have other
+designs upon you," and beckoning to Garin the Serf-eater to draw near,
+the seigneur of Plouernel whispered a few words in his ear. The bailiff
+nodded affirmatively, crossed the drawbridge and entered the donjon.
+
+During their father's brief dialogue with the bishop, Guy and Gonthram
+had not ceased to pursue Isoline with their lascivious looks, and the
+frightened young girl had hidden her face on the breast of her father.
+Robin the Nantesian, raising his voice, said to Neroweg, while placing
+his hand on the shoulder of the townsman: "This is one of the richest
+merchants of the city of Nantes. He is called Bezenecq the Rich. Forget
+not that he is worth his weight in gold."
+
+The Count fastened his falcon eyes upon the captive, and, taking two
+steps toward him, said: "Your name is Bezenecq the Rich?"
+
+"I am so called, noble seigneur," humbly answered the bourgeois. "If
+your men have arrested me in order to make me pay ransom, I only request
+not to be separated from my daughter. Hand me a parchment. I shall write
+to the depositary of my money to deliver a hundred gold sous to whomever
+of your men shall deliver my letter to him. You will have the sum upon
+the return of your messenger, and you will then return our liberty to
+myself and my daughter." Seeing that the Count shrugged his shoulders
+with a sardonic smile, the merchant added: "Illustrious seigneur,
+instead of one hundred gold sous I will give you two hundred. But, I
+pray you, for mercy's sake, have me taken with my daughter to some
+apartment where the poor child may recover from her fright and the
+fatigues of the journey." Isoline, more and more alarmed at the ardent
+looks of the two whelps, trembled convulsively. Neroweg, silent as
+before, looked from time to time towards the donjon as if awaiting the
+return of the bailiff. Bezenecq resumed with an effort: "Seigneur, if
+two hundred pieces of gold do not yet suffice you, I shall go as far as
+three hundred. It means my ruin. But I resign myself to that, provided
+you set my daughter and myself free."
+
+At that moment Garin the Serf-eater came out of the donjon, recrossed
+the draw bridge and spoke in an undertone to Neroweg, who, turning to
+the prisoners, said: "Come along, my guests! You will learn what I am to
+do with you. You are to have a chat with a certain dame of great powers
+of persuasion."
+
+"Oh, you butcher! You mean to put me to the torture!" cried the bishop,
+horror stricken. "Jesus, my God, have pity upon me! Mercy! Mercy!"
+
+"No weakness, Simon," whispered Jeronimo to him; "we must submit to the
+will of God. His ways are inscrutable."
+
+"Let the bishop be taken to his lodging; the monk shall keep him
+company." The bishop emitted lamentable cries and essayed to resist the
+men who were dragging him into the donjon. "It is now your turn to step
+in, Bezenecq the Rich. Come, brother, resistance is useless."
+
+"Have I not offered you three hundred gold sous for my ransom, Count of
+Plouernel?" asked the merchant. "If you do not find that sum enough I
+shall add another hundred gold pieces. I shall have given you my whole
+fortune!"
+
+"Oh, worthy brother, in honor to the commerce of Nantes, I cannot admit
+that one of its wealthiest merchants is worth only four hundred gold
+sous!" Then, turning to his men: "Conduct my guest and his daughter to
+their quarters."
+
+At the moment when the men of Neroweg were about to take hold of
+Bezenecq the Rich, Gonthram, brutally seizing the hand of Isoline, whom
+the merchant held fainting in his embrace, said: "I take this girl! She
+is my share of the ransom!"
+
+"I also want her," cried out Guy, his eyes all aflame and advancing
+toward his brother with a menacing look. But Gonthram, little caring for
+the words and threats of his brother, made ready to seize the maid and
+carry her off. Guy then drew his sword. Gonthram in turn drew his, while
+the daughter of the townsman, distracted with terror, shrank within
+herself, inert, in a swoon.
+
+"Guy! Gonthram! Put up your swords! This maid shall be none of yours,"
+ordered Neroweg. "She shall not leave her father. In the presence of his
+daughter the bourgeois will prove more accommodating. Put back your
+swords! You, Garin," he went on, turning to the bailiff, "take this
+beauty in your arms, if she cannot walk, and carry her in with the old
+man."
+
+Isoline, catching, despite her terror, the last words of Neroweg, rose
+to her feet with an effort and said to Garin in a suppliant voice: "For
+mercy's sake, my good seigneur, take me along with my father. I shall
+have strength to walk."
+
+"Come," answered the bailiff, leading her to the draw bridge, while Guy
+and Gonthram, slowly returning their swords to their scabbards,
+exchanged such vindictive looks that the Count considered it necessary
+to remain near them in order to prevent a fresh outbreak.
+
+Isoline, following Garin with unsteady step, crossed the draw bridge and
+entered the hall of the stone table, where still several vassals of the
+seigneur awaited the close of the session that had been interrupted by
+the arrival of the prisoners. At one of the corners of this hall was the
+stone staircase that led down in a spiral from the platform of the
+donjon to its lowest cells. Near the steps was a trap door. Two men of
+sinister figure, clad in goat skins and carrying lanterns in their
+hands, stood near the gaping opening. Bezenecq was loudly calling for
+his daughter, and resisting with all his force the men who were dragging
+him in. Seeing, however, his daughter advancing towards him, he ceased
+to offer resistance, but broke down, weeping.
+
+"Hurry up, my rich townsman!" said Garin the Serf-eater to him; "my
+seigneur wishes that you and your daughter remain together." Then,
+turning to the gaolers who carried the lanterns: "Go down first and
+light our way." The gaolers obeyed, and soon the merchant and Isoline
+disappeared with them in the depths of the subterranean donjon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ABBOT AND MONK.
+
+
+The donjon cells of the manor of Plouernel consisted of three vaulted
+stories, the only daylight into which penetrated through three narrow
+slits opening upon the gigantic ditch, out of which rose the donjon
+itself. Within, apart from a massive door studded with iron, these cells
+consisted of stone only--they were roofed with stone, floored with
+stone, and the walls were of stone, ten feet thick. The cell, whither
+the Bishop of Nantes and the monk Jeronimo were taken, was at the very
+bottom of this subterraneous structure. A narrow loophole barely
+filtered through a pale ray of light into that semi-Stygian darkness.
+The walls sweated a greenish moisture. In the center of the dungeon
+stood a stone bed, intended for torture or death. Chains and heavy iron
+rings fastened to the headpiece, to the sides and the feet of the long
+stone slab, that rose three feet above the floor, announced the purpose
+of that funereal couch, on which were now seated the monk and the Bishop
+of Nantes. The latter, a prey at first to agonizing despair, had by
+degrees recovered his composure. His face, now almost serene with a
+melancholic good nature, contrasted with the somber severity of his
+companion. "I am now resigned to death," the prelate was saying to
+Jeronimo, "yet I confess, I feel my heart fail me at the thought of
+leaving my wife and children without protection in days as dark as these
+are."
+
+"There you have one of the consequences of the marriage of priests," the
+monk answered. "How justly did Gregory VII. reason when he forced the
+councils to interdict marriage to the clergy!"
+
+After a moment's silence the Bishop of Nantes resumed with a melancholy
+smile: "Stoics, like the philosophers of antiquity, let's consider at
+this very moment of imminent torture and death the dogmas that bear upon
+our present situation."
+
+"Let's commence with the great question of the spiritual and temporal
+dominion of the church."
+
+"It is a grand subject. I listen."
+
+"In our days, for every twenty abbots or bishops who are sovereign in
+their abbeys or bishoprics, are there not a hundred dukes, counts,
+marquises or seigneurs, sovereign masters in their dukedoms, counties or
+seigniories?"
+
+"Sad to say, 'tis so!"
+
+"Did not a large portion of the estates, that proceeded from the gifts
+of Charles Martel, return to the hands of the clergy at the time of the
+terror the people were seized with at the thought of the end of the
+world,--a terror ably fomented by the church down to the year 1000, and
+prolonged to 1033 by dint of able maneuvers?"
+
+"That's true, too. The terrified seigneurs abandoned to the church a
+large part of their goods, thinking the day of judgment was at hand.
+Since then, however, the same seigneurs, or their descendants, retook
+their rich donations from the clergy. The hatred that the Count Neroweg
+pursues me with has no other cause than the recovery of the lands that
+his grandfather bequeathed to my predecessor, at the time when those
+brutes expected to see the end of the world. The Count wages war against
+me to re-enter upon domains that once belonged to his family. The lance
+is rising against the holy water sprinkler."
+
+"It has been so in all the other provinces. One of the causes of the
+wars of the seigneurs against the bishops and abbots has, for the last
+fifty years, been the recovery of the goods given to the Church on the
+occasion of the end of the world. In these impious strifes the seigneurs
+have almost always come out on top. The church was vanquished."
+
+"It is a sad fact."
+
+"In order to recover its omnipotence, the Church must again become
+richer than the seigneurs. She must, above all, rid herself forever of
+those brigands who dare reach out a sacrilegious hand towards the goods
+of the Church, and assault the priests of our Lord, the ministers of
+God."
+
+"Alack, Jeronimo, it is a far way from the wish to the fact! The sword
+gets the best of the bishop's crook!"
+
+"The distance is simply the journey from here to Jerusalem. That's all!"
+
+The bishop regarded the monk with amazement, repeating without
+understanding the words: "The journey from here to Jerusalem!"
+
+"I am a legate of Pope Urban II." proceeded Jeronimo. "As such, I am
+initiated in the policies of Rome. The French Pope Gerbert, and, after
+him, Gregory VII., conceived a great idea--to submit the peoples of
+Europe to the papal will. In order, however, to habituate them to a
+passive obedience, an ostensible purpose had to be held out. Gerbert
+conceived the thought of the deliverance of the tomb of Christ, which
+had fallen into the hands of the Saracens, the masters of Syria and
+Jerusalem. This pregnant thought, conceived in the head of Gerbert and
+hatched out by Gregory VII., was the subject of long cogitations on the
+part of their successors. The Popes recommended to the faithful the
+pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to which they attached special indulgences and
+privileges. The people of Germany, of Spain, of Gaul, of England,
+gradually began to hear Jerusalem, the Holy City, talked about. The
+pilgrimages multiplied. Long though the voyage was, it did not seem
+impossible; moreover, it insured indulgences for all crimes, and, above
+all, it was a pleasure trip for the mendicants, the vagabonds, the
+runaway serfs from the domains of their masters. The pilgrims found good
+lodgings in the abbeys; they picked up some little money in the cities,
+and obtained free passage on the Genoese or Venetian vessels as far as
+Constantinople, where they then departed for Jerusalem, traversing Syria
+and lodging over night from convent to convent. Arrived at the Holy
+City, they paid their devotions."
+
+"And all that without any interference on the part of the Saracens. We
+must admit it among ourselves, Jeronimo, those miscreants showed
+themselves quite tolerant! The churches rose in peace beside the
+mosques; the Christians lived in tranquility, and the pilgrims were
+never incommoded."
+
+"And it remained so," continued Jeronimo, "until the Saracens,
+exasperated by the anathemas hurled at the sectarians of Mahomet by the
+Catholic priests of Jerusalem, brought their hammer down upon the holy
+Temple of Solomon and demolished it--a demolition, however, that we
+avenged upon Jews by massacring them in the several countries of Europe.
+But after all, we cared little about the destruction of the Temple, or
+the safety of the Sepulchre. Our end was attained. The people had
+learned to know the road to Jerusalem. The sandals of the pilgrims had
+smoothed the road to the Holy Land to the Catholic peoples. The number
+of pilgrims increased from year to year. Often seigneurs, certain to
+obtain by means of that pious voyage the absolution of their crimes,
+joined the pilgrim vagabonds and beggars. That perpetual flux and reflux
+of peoples of all stations drew ever more the eyes of Europe to the
+Orient. The marvels narrated by the pilgrims upon the return from their
+long voyage, the relics that they brought back, the respect with which
+the Church surrounded them,--everything affected more and more the
+spirit of credulity and the vulgar imagination of the masses. Gregory
+VII. foresaw these results. He considered it opportune to preach the
+Holy War. The Church raised her voice: 'Shame and sorrow upon the
+Catholic world! The Sepulchre of the Saviour of man is in the power of
+the Saracens! Kings and seigneurs, march at the head of your peoples to
+the deliverance of the Sepulchre of Christ and the extermination of the
+infidels.' To that premature appeal Europe remained indifferent. The
+hour of the Crusades had not yet sounded. Since then, however, the idea
+has made progress, and to-day we are certain to find the minds disposed
+to second the Pope in his projects. Accordingly, Urban II. has not
+hesitated to leave Rome and come to preach the Crusade in Gaul, the
+Catholic country _par excellence!_"
+
+"What say you? The Pope himself is coming to preach the Crusade! Can
+that be true, oh, my God!"
+
+"His Holiness is bound for Auvergne, and he sends his emissaries into
+the other provinces."
+
+"And who are the men invested with the confidence of the Pope, and
+charged with leading such an undertaking to a successful end?"
+
+"One of them, Peter the Hermit, vulgarly called 'Cuckoo Peter,' is a
+monk who has twice accomplished the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He is an
+ardent man, gifted with a savage eloquence that exercises upon the
+multitudes a powerful effect. Another emissary is Walter the Pennyless,
+a knight of adventure, bold Gascon, charged to seduce with the
+cheerfulness of his words and the exaggeration of his descriptions all
+those who might remain indifferent to the savage eloquence of Peter the
+Hermit."
+
+"But what arguments will these emissaries advance in order to rouse the
+masses to these insensate migrations?"
+
+"I shall answer that question presently. But let me remind you of the
+principal motives of the church to drive the people to the Crusades; to
+habituate Catholic Europe to rise at the voice of the Pope for the
+extermination of heretics; to switch off to Palestine a large number of
+the seigneurs who are contending with the Church for the goods of the
+earth and the dominion of the people,--to get rid of one's enemies."
+
+"The idea is good, profound, politic. I can well see the object that the
+Pope has in view."
+
+"Let me, furthermore, call your attention to a fact that renders
+necessary a large migration of the common people to the Holy Land. In
+Gaul, despite the private wars of the seigneurs and the sufferings of
+this century, the population of the serfs has multiplied to an
+extraordinary degree during the last fifty years."
+
+"That is so. The serf population, decimated by the famines that reigned
+from 1000 to 1034, immediately began to recover with the years of plenty
+that followed upon those of dearth."
+
+"Aided, above all, by the action of the Church when, desirous of
+repeopling her domains, stripped of its agricultural serfs, she caused
+the 'Armistice of God' to be proclaimed, interdicting the seigneurs and
+the bishops from levying war during three days of each week under
+penalty of excommunication."
+
+"That plebeian increase brought on the formidable revolts of the serfs
+of Normandy and Brittany, when doggerels were sung containing strophes
+of unheard-of audacity, as you may judge from this one:
+
+    Why allow we ourselves to be oppressed?
+    Are we not human like the seigneurs?
+    Have we not, as they, body and limbs?
+    Is not our heart as large as theirs?
+    Are we not one hundred serfs to a single knight?
+    Let's then be up striking with our pitchforks and our scythes!
+    For lack of arms, take the stones the roads are strewn with!
+                'Death to the friars!'
+
+"And that's the truth, Jeronimo! Those songs of revolt gave the signal
+to terrible insurrections in Normandy and Brittany. But two or three
+millions of the rebels had their eyes put out, their feet and hands
+chopped off, and the revolt was stamped out. Those wicked people must be
+exterminated."
+
+"In order to conjure away the return of similar uprisings, it is
+necessary to lead abroad the plebeian increase. The plebs grows
+threatening by reason of its numbers and the force that numbers carry
+with them. In order to weaken it, it will be enough to make it depart on
+the Crusade across Europe."
+
+"Explain to me how the Crusades are expected to bring about the results
+that you consider needful, and that the exhortations of the papal
+emissaries are to invoke."
+
+"Is it not evident that, for every thousand serfs who will leave Gaul to
+fight in Palestine, barely a hundred will arrive as far as Jerusalem?
+Those wretches, departing penniless, in rags, without provisions,
+carrying wife and children in their train, ravaging the regions they
+traverse--Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Bulgaria, the countries of the
+Danube--because, in the course of so long a voyage, such multitudes
+cannot live without pillage along the route, three-fourths of them will
+have been exterminated by the inhabitants of the countries that they
+must cross, or will die of hunger and fatigue before being able to reach
+Jerusalem. The small number of them that will arrive before the Holy
+City will be still further decimated by the Saracens. It is safe to say
+that hardly any of those who leave will return. Thus we shall be rid of
+this vile and dangerous populace that dares rise against its masters,
+especially against the Church."
+
+"It remains to be seen, Jeronimo, whether this plebs mass will be
+senseless enough to venture upon so distant and perilous a journey."
+
+The monk answered: "Is not the lot of the villeins and the serfs on the
+lay or ecclesiastical seigniories the most wretched? And, of all the
+yokes, is not that of the glebe the heaviest, which forbids them to
+cross the boundaries of their own seigniory. When the Church will say to
+those myriads of people, chained down to the glebe: 'Go! You are free!
+March off to fight the Saracens in Palestine, the country of miracles,
+where you will gather an immense booty! Take no heed of provisions for
+the journey, God will provide! Above all, you will accomplish your
+eternal salvation!' the serfs will depart in mass, drawn by the desire
+to be free, the thirst for booty, the spirit of adventure, and by the
+pious ardor to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the defilement of the
+infidels!"
+
+"Jeronimo," rejoined the Bishop of Nantes, "the craving after freedom,
+the spirit of adventure, the hope of booty, may, perhaps, drive those
+wretches to Palestine. But desire to avenge the tomb of the Saviour from
+the pretended defilement of the infidels, is, meseems, too feeble a
+motive. We shall fail there."
+
+"When this holy cause, thrice holy and eloquently preached by the
+Church, is furthermore backed by the thirst for freedom, the hope of
+booty, the certainty of gaining Paradise, and curiosity regarding the
+future, that, though unknown, could not be worse than the present, the
+attraction of the populace for Palestine will become irresistible."
+
+"I grant it. But will the seigneurs consent to have their lands thus
+depopulated by allowing the serfs to depart for the Crusades?"
+
+"As much as ourselves do the seigneurs dread the revolt of the serfs. In
+that we two have a common interest. Moreover, that plebs overflow, which
+it is the part of wisdom to empty out abroad, constitutes, at the
+highest, only one-third of the serfs. Only that third will depart."
+
+"And who guarantees that many more will not yield to the attraction,
+that you consider irresistible, and will not go along?"
+
+"This plebs mass has become craven through the habit of slavery that
+weighs it down since the Frankish conquest. Only a part of the village
+and country populations is sufficiently disposed to revolt. It is those
+very ones who are most impatient of the yoke, the most intelligent, the
+most venturesome, the most daring, and, consequently, the most
+dangerous, who will be the first to start for Palestine. Thus shall we
+be rid of those inciters of rebellion."
+
+"That reasoning is correct."
+
+"Thus only one-third of the rustic plebs will emigrate. Those who remain
+behind will suffice to cultivate the land. Being fewer to the task,
+their toil will increase. The ox that is heavily burdened, the ass that
+is heavily laden, does not kick. The danger of a new revolt will have
+been conjured off. The Church will resume her preponderance over both
+the plebs and the seigneurs."
+
+"I admire, Jeronimo, the powerful combinations of the politics of the
+papacy. But one of the most important results of this policy would be to
+deliver us from a large number of those accursed seigneurs, always at
+war against us. Oh, they will not, like the serfs, be driven by the
+desire to escape a fearful lot, or of enjoying freedom. They, I fear,
+will remain at home."
+
+"A large number of them are as anxious as their serfs to change their
+condition. After all, what is the life of these seigneurs? Is it not
+that of chiefs of brigands? Always at war; always on the watch, fearing
+to be attacked or surprised by their neighbors; unable but rarely to
+leave their seigniories except armed to the teeth; often not daring even
+to go on the hunt in their own domains; forced to entrench themselves in
+their lairs; these ferocious men are tired of such monotonous life. They
+will follow the stream."
+
+"I have, indeed, often been struck by the expression of mortal tiredness
+reflected upon the faces of the seigneurs."
+
+"This will be the language of the friars to these men steeped in crime,
+brutified almost as much as their own serfs, and all of them nursing at
+the bottom of their hearts a more or less profound fear of the devil:
+'You are smothering in your castles of stone; you here wrangle over the
+meager spoils of some traveler, or over the barren lands of the
+Occident--lands peopled with wretches resembling animals rather than
+human beings. Leave the ungrateful soil and somber sky of the Occident!
+Go to Palestine, go to the Orient, the land of azure and of sunshine,
+fertile, splendid, radiant, studded with magnificent cities, palaces of
+marble, gilded cupolas, delicious gardens! There you will find the
+treasures for centuries accumulated by the Saracens, treasures so
+prodigious that they suffice to pave with gold, rubies, pearls and
+diamonds the whole road from Gaul to Jerusalem! God delivers into your
+hands that teeming soil, its palaces, its beautiful women, its
+treasures. Depart on the Holy War!' A large number of seigneurs will
+bite with all the snap of their heavy jaws at that bait glittering with
+all the fires of the sun of the Orient."
+
+"You are right, Jeronimo," observed the Bishop of Nantes. "But do you
+not fear that the seigniorial station, thus stripped, shrunk and ruined,
+will leave the place open for the royalty, to-day without power, and
+that that royalty will not endeavor to share with us the dominion of the
+people, and will not even strive to dominate the Church?"
+
+"We need not fear the rivalry of the Kings. Even their private interests
+are to us a safe guarantee of their submission to the will of the Pope,
+the representative of God on earth, the dispenser of eternal rewards or
+punishments."
+
+"Oh, Jeronimo, your words have opened a new horizon before me. I see now
+the future of the Catholic Church in all her formidable majesty. I now
+cleave to life, and would wish to assist at that magnificent spectacle."
+
+"This topic has a close bearing upon our present position of prisoners
+of Neroweg VI, and you must inspire yourself with it, Simon, to the end
+that you may regulate your conduct accordingly."
+
+"Tell me what I am to do, Jeronimo. I can take no more precious a guide
+than you in all matters concerning our holy religion."
+
+"Neroweg relies upon your torture to extort from you the possession of
+the domains of your diocese, which he has long coveted. Accede to all
+that he may demand. Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless will not
+be long in arriving in this region to preach the Crusade. Neroweg will
+depart for Jerusalem, and will not be able to profit from the
+concessions you will have granted."
+
+"But say he insists upon putting me to the torture to glut his thirst
+for revenge upon me! I shudder at the prospect."
+
+The conversation between the Bishop of Nantes and the monk was here
+interrupted by a rumbling and weird noise, that seemed to proceed from
+the interior of the thick wall. The two prelates trembled with affright,
+and looked at each other. Then, drawing near the wall in the direction
+from which the noise came, they applied their ears with bated breath.
+But the noise slowly receded, and a few minutes later died away
+completely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CHAMBER OF TORTURE.
+
+
+The dungeon of Bezenecq the Rich and his daughter, vaulted and floored
+with stone slabs like the other subterranean cells, but located on the
+second story of that redoubtable structure, received a somewhat better
+light from its narrow loop-hole. In the center of the cell stood a
+gridiron, six feet long, three wide, raised a good deal above the floor,
+and constructed of iron bars placed slightly apart from each other.
+Chains and rings, fastened to the gridiron, served to keep the victim in
+position. Near this instrument of punishment rose two other engines of
+torture, devised with ingenious ferocity. The one consisted of a
+projecting iron bar, in the nature of a gibbet about seven or eight feet
+above the floor, and terminating in an iron carcan that opened and
+closed at will. A heavy stone, weighing about two tons, and furnished
+with a ring and a strap to hang it by, lay at the foot of the gibbet.
+The other engine had the appearance of a gigantic prong, sharp and
+turned back similar to those used by butchers to hang their quarters of
+beef on. The slabs of the flooring, covered everywhere else with
+greenish moisture, wore a blood-red tint under the prong. Opposite to
+this instrument of punishment, there was grossly sculptured on the wall,
+a sort of grinning mask, hideous, half beast, half human; its eyes and
+the cavity of its gaping mouth, resembled deep black holes. Finally,
+close to the door of the cell stood a wooden box full of straw, and
+there lay the daughter of the townsman of Nantes, colorless like a
+corpse, and frozen with terror. At times her body shook with convulsive
+shivers, other times she remained motionless, her eyes shut, without,
+therefore, however, her tears ceasing to stream down her cheeks.
+Bezenecq the Rich, seated on the edge of the straw bed, his elbows on
+his knees and his forehead hidden in his hands, was saying to himself:
+"The seigneur of Plouernel.... A descendant of Neroweg!... Strange,
+fatal encounter!... Woe is us!"
+
+"Oh, father," murmured the maid in a fainting voice, "this encounter is
+our sentence of death."
+
+"The sentence of our ruin, but not of our death. Calm yourself, poor
+child, the seigneur of Plouernel knows not that our obscure family,
+descended from the Gallic chieftain Joel, who made a head against Cæsar,
+has been at strife with his own all through the past ages, since the
+Frankish conquest. But when that bailiff pronounced the name of Neroweg
+VI, which I had not heard mention during this ill-starred journey, and
+when, questioned by me, that man answered his master belonged to the
+ancient Frankish family of Neroweg, established in Auvergne since the
+conquest of Gaul by Clovis, I no longer had any doubts, and, despite
+myself, I shuddered at the recollection of our family records, which our
+father once read to us at Laon, and that have remained in that country,
+in the hands of Gildas, my elder brother."
+
+"Oh, why did our grandfather leave Brittany. Our family lived there so
+happy."
+
+"Dear child, our grandfather, who lived near the sacred stones of
+Karnac, the cradle of our family, could no longer endure the oppression
+of the Breton seigneurs, who had grown to be as cruel as their Frankish
+fellows. He sold his little havings, and embarked with his wife at
+Vannes on a merchant vessel bound for Abbeville. He settled down in that
+city, where he set up a modest trade. Later, my father moved into the
+province of Picardy, and settled at Laon, where my elder brother Gildas
+still carries on the currier's trade. Coming by sea from Abbeville to
+Nantes to traffic in the articles of our trade, manufactured in Laon, I
+became acquainted with your mother, the daughter of the merchant to
+whom I was directed. Her parents did not wish to part from her. They
+made me promise not to leave Nantes. I became the partner of my wife's
+father, and grew rich in the business. Your mother then died. You were
+still a child. Her death was the greatest sorrow of my life. But you
+were left to me. You grew in gracefulness and beauty. Everything smiled
+upon me again. I was happy. And behold us now, while yielding to the
+wishes of your grandmother--" and Bezenecq interrupted himself with a
+cry of despair: "Oh, it is frightful!"
+
+"But how could we have merited the terrible punishment that seems
+reserved to us?"
+
+"Oh," replied the bourgeois of Nantes with a sigh, "my happiness
+rendered me forgetful of the misfortune of our brothers! I was selfish!"
+
+"Dear father, you surely exaggerate the faults or errors of your life."
+
+"Millions of serfs and villeins people the lands of the seigneurs and
+the clergy. Among them, some drag along a painful existence, that ends
+in death from exhaustion and misery; others are hanged from the
+patibulary forks. Those unhappy people are Gauls like ourselves. If some
+townsmen live in tranquility in the cities, when they have for seigneur
+so gentle a master as Simon of Nantes, millions of serfs and villeins,
+on the other hand, are devoted to all the miseries of life, and victims
+to the seigniories and the Church."
+
+"But, father, it did not depend upon you to alleviate the ills of these
+wretched folks."
+
+"My father spoke like a brave and generous man when he said to the
+bourgeoisie of the city of Laon: 'We are subject to the exactions of the
+bishop, our seigneur. But, after all, we townsmen enjoy certain
+franchises. It, therefore, devolves upon us, being more intelligent and
+less miserable than the serfs of the fields, to aid these to their
+deliverance by ourselves rising against the seigneurs, and thus setting
+the example of revolt against oppression. In the instances where, of
+their own accord, they rise as happened in Normandy, as happened in
+Picardy, as happened in Brittany, it is then our duty to place ourselves
+at their head, in order to insure the success of the insurrection. Is it
+not a shame; an unworthy timidity, to allow those unhappy men to be
+crushed and punished for a cause that is ours as much as theirs? Does
+not the tyranny of the nobles and the friars weigh upon us also. Are not
+we the prey of the feudal brigands the moment we leave the enclosure of
+the cities, where we suffer an amplitude of affronts?' But my father's
+words were not able to convince the townsmen to decide upon
+insurrection. They feared to risk their property and make their lot
+worse. Myself, having grown rich, sided with the self-seekers, and I
+echoed the views of the other merchants: 'No doubt, the condition of the
+serfs is horrible, but I can do nothing to improve it, and I dare not
+stake my life and fortune upon the result of an insurrection.' Our
+cowardly and selfish indifference increased the audacity of the
+seigneurs, until to-day we cannot set foot outside the cities without
+being exposed to the brigandage of the chatelains. Oh, my child, I am
+punished for having lacked energy and for disregarding the precepts of
+my father!"
+
+"We are lost; there is no hope left!" exclaimed the maid, no longer able
+to restrain her sobs. "Death, a shocking death awaits us!" And Isoline,
+whose teeth chattered with terror, directed her father's attention, with
+a gesture, to the instruments of torture that furnished the cell. Hiding
+her face in her hands, she moaned convulsively.
+
+"Isoline," rejoined Bezenecq imploringly and overcome with grief, "my
+beloved child, listen to the word of reason. Terror exaggerates. The
+aspect of this subterranean dungeon frightens. Oh, I understand that.
+But let's not lose all hope. When I shall have subscribed to all that
+the seigneur of Plouernel can exact from me, when I shall have consented
+to strip myself for his benefit of all that I possess, what do you
+imagine he could still do? Of what use to him would it be to have me
+tortured? He entertains against me no personal hatred. He is after my
+wealth. I shall give it all, absolutely all."
+
+"Good father, you are seeking to calm my spirit. I thank you a thousand
+times."
+
+"Is not our fate sufficiently sad? Why make the reality still darker? I
+had hoped to give you a rich dower, to bequeath to you later my
+property, that would have insured the happiness of your children. And
+now I am about to be stripped of all. Our descendants will be reduced to
+poverty!"
+
+"Oh, if only the seigneur of Plouernel grants us our lives, I would care
+little for that wealth that, for my sake, you bemoan."
+
+"Nor shall I be less courageous than you," said Bezenecq, tenderly
+clasping the hands of his daughter: "I shall imagine I placed all my
+money on board a ship that went down. Once out of this infernal castle,
+dear child, we shall return to Nantes. I shall see my friend Thibault
+the Silversmith. He knows my aptitude for commerce. He will employ me,
+and will pay me a salary that will suffice for our needs. But it will be
+necessary, my pretty Isoline," Bezenecq proceeded, forcing a smile to
+calm his daughter, "it will then be necessary for you to sew our clothes
+with your own little white hands, and prepare our frugal meals. Instead
+of inhabiting our beautiful house on the place of Marche-Neuf, we shall
+take humble lodgings in the quarter of the ramparts. But, what of it,
+provided the heart is joyful! Moreover, I shall always have in my pocket
+a few deniers wherewith occasionally, on my return home, to buy you a
+new ribbon for your neck, my dear, sweet child, or a bouquet of roses to
+cheer your little bedroom."
+
+Isoline felt hope rising within her at the words of her father, and shut
+her eyes not to be reminded of the horrible reality by the sight of the
+hideous stone mask and of the instruments of punishment. The maid hid
+her face on the breast of her father and murmured with emotion: "Oh, if
+only your words would prove true! If we only could quit this castle! So
+far from regretting our lost riches, I would thank God for affording me
+the opportunity of working for my venerated father!"
+
+"Damosel Isoline, I shall know how to provide," gayly replied Bezenecq.
+"Moreover, who knows, but I may soon find an assistant. Who knows but
+that some worthy lad will demand you in marriage, falling in love with
+this charming face, when it shall have regained its rosy hue?," added
+the merchant, tenderly embracing his daughter.
+
+"Father!" screamed Isoline, pointing with a gesture of dread toward the
+wall where the hideous stone mask was sculptured, and whose eyes seemed
+lighted from within. "Look, look at those flashes of light that escape
+from it! Some one has been spying upon us!"
+
+The merchant quickly turned his head in the direction of the wall
+indicated by Isoline and to which he had given his back up to that
+instant. But the light had disappeared. Bezenecq took it for an
+illusion, proceeding from the wrought-up spirit of Isoline, and
+answered: "You must have deceived yourself. How do you expect the eyes
+of that rude figure to flash light? It would require a candle in the
+middle of the wall. Is that possible my child? Regain your senses!"
+
+Suddenly the door of the cell opposite the mask was opened. Bezenecq the
+Rich and his daughter saw the bailiff, Garin the Serf-eater, enter with
+the scribe of the seigneur of Plouernel, and followed by several men of
+sinister mien. One of these carried a forge-bellows and a bag of coal;
+another bore several faggots. Isoline, for a moment reassured by her
+father, but now recalled to reality by the approach of the gaolers,
+uttered a scream of fright. In order to calm the agonies of his
+daughter, Bezenecq rose and said to the bailiff in a firm voice, while
+pointing to the scribe: "That, dear sir, is certainly the notary of the
+seigneur of Plouernel?" Garin the Serf-eater nodded in the affirmative.
+"This notary," continued the bourgeois of Nantes, "comes to obtain my
+signature to the document by which I consent to pay ransom?" The bailiff
+again nodded in the affirmative. Addressing himself then to his daughter
+and affecting absolute calmness, almost cheerfulness: "Fear nothing,
+dear child, I and these worthy men will soon agree, after which, I am
+certain, we shall have nothing to fear from them and they will set us
+free. Note, then, master scribe, I am ready, by means of an authentic
+deed in favor of the seigneur of Plouernel, to give and cede to him all
+my possessions, consisting of five thousand and three hundred silver
+pieces, deposited with my friend Thibault, the silversmith and minter of
+the Bishop of Nantes; secondly, eight hundred and sixty gold pieces and
+nine bars of silver, deposited in my house in a secret closet that I
+shall indicate to the person whom the seigneur count may commission to
+go to Nantes; thirdly, a large quantity of silver vessels, precious
+fabrics and furniture, which it will be easy to bring here by wagon,
+upon the written order that I shall issue to my confidential servant.
+There, finally, remains my house. Seeing it would not be quite
+practicable, worthy masters, to transport that also, I shall write and
+place in your hand a letter to my friend Thibault. Only two days before
+my departure from Nantes he promised to buy my house for two hundred
+pieces of gold. He will keep his promise, I am sure, especially when he
+learns of the tight place that I now find myself in. Accordingly, that's
+two hundred more gold pieces that, at my order, Thibault will have to
+deliver to the envoy of the seigneur of Plouernel. These assignments
+made, there remain to me and my daughter the clothes we have on. Now,
+worthy scribe, draw up the assignment, I shall sign it, and I shall join
+to it the letters to my servant and to my friend the silversmith. He
+knows too well the fashion of these times to fail to acquiesce in my
+wishes in the matter of the deposit that he has and of the purchase of
+the house. He will deliver the sum to the messenger whom the seigneur
+count is to dispatch to Nantes. As to the money in the secret closet of
+my house, it will be easy to find it with the help of this key and the
+directions that I shall dictate to the scribe----"
+
+"The notary will first have to draw up the assignment, then, you shall
+write the letters to your friend," broke in Garin. "The directions for
+the secret closet will follow. Now hurry up."
+
+"You are right, worthy bailiff," replied the bourgeois of Nantes with
+eagerness, fully at ease by the tone of Garin; and, leaning towards his
+daughter, who was seated on the edge of the bed, he said to her in an
+undertone: "Was I not right, my dear bundle of fears, in assuring you
+that, by a complete surrender of all my goods, these worthy masters
+would abstain from harming us?" Again embracing Isoline, whose fears
+began to make room for hope, and wiping with the back of his hand the
+tears that, despite himself, he was shedding, he turned to Garin:
+"Excuse me, bailiff, you would understand my emotion if you knew the
+foolish fears of this child. But what else can we expect! At her age,
+having until now lived happily at my side, she is easily alarmed----"
+
+"First item: Five thousand and three hundred silver pieces deposited
+with the silversmith Thibault," recited the scribe, interrupting
+Bezenecq with his harsh voice; and, taking his seat on the edge of the
+gridiron, he wrote, on his knees for a desk, by the light of one of the
+lanterns. "Next and secondly," he pursued, "how many pieces of gold are
+there in the secret treasure of the Nantes house?"
+
+"Eight hundred and sixty pieces of gold," Bezenecq hastened to answer,
+as if in a hurry to disengage himself of his riches; "and also nine bars
+of silver of different thicknesses." And, thus proceeding to enumerate
+his goods to the scribe, who entered them apace, the merchant pressed
+the hands of his daughter in an intoxication of pleasure to add to her
+confidence and courage.
+
+"And now, Bezenecq the Rich," said Garin, "we shall want the two
+letters to your confidential servant and your friend Thibault the
+Silversmith."
+
+"Kind scribe," answered the merchant, "lend me your tablet, give me two
+parchment sheets and a pen, I shall write yonder on my daughter's
+knees," and, suiting the act to the words, he placed himself at
+Isoline's knees, where he lay the notary's tablet, and wrote the
+letters, occasionally addressing the poor child with a smile: "Do not
+shake my table that way; you will have these worthy gentlemen form a
+poor opinion of my handwriting." The two letters finished, the merchant
+passed them over to Garin, who, after reading them, said:
+
+"Now, we want the directions for the secret treasure, without which the
+assignment may not be effective."
+
+"Here are two keys," said the merchant, drawing them from his pocket.
+"The one opens the door of a little vault which connects with the room
+that serves as my office----"
+
+"In the room that serves as office," repeated the scribe, writing while
+he repeated the words of the merchant. The latter proceeded: "The other
+key opens an iron-bound box back of the vault. In that box will be found
+the bars of silver and a casket containing the eight hundred and sixty
+gold pieces. I own not another denier. And here, worthy masters, you
+have me and my daughter as poor as the poorest serf. I have not wronged
+the seigneur of Plouernel a single obole. But, for all that, we shall
+not lose courage!"
+
+While the scribe finished transcribing the directions of Bezenecq, the
+latter, occupied only with his daughter, did not notice, any more than
+she, what was going on a few steps off in that cell, so feebly lighted
+by the lanterns, seeing that night had already fallen. One of the
+gaolers commenced heaping the coals and fagots under the gridiron.
+
+"The seigneur of Plouernel may send his messenger to Nantes with an
+escort," Bezenecq observed to Garin the Serf-eater. "If the messenger is
+quick he can be back to-morrow night. We shall surely, my daughter and
+I, be set at liberty when the seigneur count will be in possession of my
+property. Only, while waiting for the hour of our departure from the
+castle, be generous enough, bailiff, to have us taken to some other
+place, whatever it be, only less depressing than this. My daughter is
+broken down with fatigue; moreover, she is very timid. She would spend a
+sad night in this cell, surrounded by instruments of torture."
+
+"Now that you mention these engines of punishment," said Garin the
+Serf-eater, with a strange smile, and taking the hand of the bourgeois,
+"come, Bezenecq the Rich, I wish to explain their use to you, especially
+their mechanism."
+
+"I am not inquisitive to learn the details."
+
+"Draw near to us, Bezenecq the Rich."
+
+"That surname of 'Rich' that you insist in applying to me, is no longer
+mine," said the merchant with a sad smile; "rather call me Bezenecq the
+Poor."
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Garin, as if in doubt and shrugging his shoulders. He
+then added: "Come on, Bezenecq the Rich!"
+
+"Father!" cried out Isoline, uneasy, seeing her father stepping away
+from her. "Where are you going? Father, father, stay with me!"
+
+"There is nothing to fear, dear child. Stay where you are. I am to give
+the bailiff certain directions as to the route that the messenger of the
+seigneur count will have to take." And, fearing to displease Garin, he
+followed him, happy at the thought that Isoline could not hear the
+explanations he was to receive from the Serf-eater. The latter stopped
+first before the iron gibbet that terminated in a carcan. One of the
+gaolers having raised the lantern at the order of Garin, he said to the
+merchant: "As you see, that carcan opens at will. You may guess its
+object."
+
+"Yes. The neck of the patient being inserted in it, the poor fellow
+remains fast!"
+
+"Just so. He is made to climb the ladder you see here. Then, as his neck
+is in the carcan, all you have to do is to close the collar with a latch
+and remove the ladder. The gibbet being raised nine or ten feet above
+the floor, you may imagine the rest."
+
+"The patient remains hanged and strangled?"
+
+"Not at all! He remains suspended, but not hanged. The carcan is too
+wide to strangle. Then, while our man is thus kicking in the air an
+equal distance between the ceiling and the floor, this large stone is
+fastened to his feet by means of these straps to moderate his kicking
+and induce him to keep quiet."
+
+"That strain must be terrible."
+
+"Terrible, Bezenecq the Rich, terrible! Just think of it! The jaws are
+dislocated, the neck is stretched, the jointures of the knees and hip
+crack fit to be heard ten paces off. And yet,--would you believe
+it?--there are people of such a stubborn make-up that they do not yield
+to this first trial?"
+
+"What I do not understand," answered the merchant, suppressing his
+horror, "is that, instead of exposing themselves to this torture, they
+do not forthwith and loyally surrender all they own, as I have done.
+One, at least, escapes physical suffering and regains his freedom. Not
+so, worthy bailiff?"
+
+"Bezenecq the Rich, you are the pearl of townsmen. It is evident that
+you are of extraordinary sagacity."
+
+"You flatter me. I merely put myself through a very simple process of
+reasoning," rejoined the merchant, endeavoring to capture the good will
+of Garin. "I reasoned thus with my daughter: Suppose my whole fortune
+were placed on board a vessel; it goes down; I lose all my wealth; I
+find myself in the same position that I am in to-day: but so far from
+allowing myself to be discouraged, I start to work anew with fresh vigor
+to sustain my child. Is not that the better choice, worthy bailiff?
+Would you not do likewise?"
+
+"You never will be reduced to that, Bezenecq the Rich. You have
+inexhaustible resources."
+
+"You love to banter; you love to give me that surname of 'Rich,' to me,
+now no less poor than Job."
+
+"No, no; I do not banter. But let's return to the torture. I was saying
+that if the first trial failed to convince a stubborn fellow to give up
+his goods, he is then put through the second torture, which I shall now
+explain," and Garin, keeping the hand of the merchant, conducted him to
+the iron prong. "You see this prong? It is of well-beaten metal, strong
+enough to hold the weight of an ox."
+
+"I readily believe it. That hook is, indeed, of large dimensions----"
+
+"Our stubborn guest having resisted the trial of the carcan, he is
+hooked naked on this prong, either by the flesh of the back, or by the
+skin of his bowels, or by any other and more sensitive part of the
+body."
+
+"Speak not so loud," implored the merchant, hardly able to restrain his
+indignation and horror, "my daughter might overhear you."
+
+"You are right," answered the bailiff, with a sardonic smile; "your
+daughter's blushes must be spared. Well, now Bezenecq the Rich, think of
+it. I have seen stubborn fellows remain suspended from that hook by the
+skin for a whole hour, bleeding like a cow in the shambles, and still
+refuse to relinquish their goods! But they never resist the third trial,
+with which I am now about to entertain you, Bezenecq the Rich. Give me
+your ear, the description will interest you."
+
+"Strange!" suddenly exclaimed the merchant, interrupting Garin the
+Serf-eater. "I smell smoke. Whence does the smell proceed?"
+
+"Father, there is a fire!" cried out Isoline, horrified. "They are
+making a fire under the iron bars!"
+
+The bourgeois of Nantes turned around sharply and saw the heaped-up
+combustibles under the gridiron beginning to take fire. Several tongues
+of flame lighted with their ruddy glow the black walls of the cell,
+while forcing themselves through thick columns of smoke. A frightful
+suspicion flashed through the mind of the merchant, but he dared not
+even allow his thoughts to dwell upon them; and, wishing to comfort his
+daughter, said to her: "Be not afraid, you dear bundle of fears, that
+fire is built to drive off the chill in this cell; we may have to spend
+the night here. I was thanking the worthy bailiff for his
+thoughtfulness." But immediately upon this answer, uttered only in order
+to reassure his daughter, the merchant, shivering, despite himself with
+fear, turned to Garin: "Speaking truly, why is that fire made under the
+gridiron?"
+
+"Merely to give you an idea of the omnipotence of this last test,
+Bezenecq the Rich. I now commence the description."
+
+"It is superfluous. I take your word for it."
+
+"A fire is built under the gridiron, as they are doing now; when the
+fire has ceased to shoot up flames, a necessary precaution, and consists
+of a bed of live coals, the recalcitrant patient is stretched naked upon
+the gridiron, and he is kept there with the aid of those rings and iron
+chains. At the end of a few instants the skin of the patient, red and
+shriveling, rips up, bleeds, then turns black. I have seen the hot coals
+patter with fat that, clotted with blood, dripped from the body of men
+even less fat than you, Bezenecq the Rich."
+
+"Hold on, bailiff! I must confess to you my heart fails me, my head
+reels at the mere thought of such infliction," said the bourgeois of
+Nantes, shivering from head to foot. "I am ready to faint. Let me out of
+this cell with my daughter. I have assigned to your master my whole
+fortune. You have taken everything----"
+
+"Come, come, Bezenecq the Rich," broke in the bailiff, "a man who
+empties himself as easily as you did at the first word, and without
+having suffered the least tortures, must have reserved other riches.
+That's what we'll learn all about in a moment."
+
+"I? I have reserved part of my fortune!" exclaimed the merchant, struck
+almost speechless with amazement. "I have given you all, down to my last
+piece."
+
+"You observed, my wily friend, that despite the assignment of all the
+property that you were credited with having, I continued to call you
+Bezenecq the Rich. I feel certain you still merit the name. Come, now!
+You must disgorge. Come, let's have the rest of your fortune."
+
+"Upon the salvation of my soul, I have nothing left! I have given you
+all I possess."
+
+"May not the three tests draw from you some admission to the contrary?"
+
+"What tests are you speaking of?"
+
+"The tests of the carcan, of the hook and of the gridiron. Yes, if you
+do not surrender to me the other property that you are hiding from us,
+you will undergo the three tests under the very eyes of your daughter,"
+and saying this, Garin the Serf-eater raised his voice in such a way
+that Isoline, hearing his threats, darted through the gaolers and threw
+herself distracted at the feet of the bailiff, crying: "Mercy! Mercy
+upon my father! Have pity upon us!"
+
+"Mercy depends upon him," said Garin, imperturbably. "Let him surrender
+to our seigneur what he still holds in reserve."
+
+"Father!" cried out the young girl, "I know not what the extent of your
+wealth is. But if, in your tenderness for me, you sought to reserve
+aught to shelter me against poverty, I conjure you give it all! Oh, dear
+father, surrender everything!"
+
+"You hear!" resumed Garin the Serf-eater, smiling fiendishly upon the
+couple, and seeing the demoralizing effect upon the merchant of the
+imprudent words that terror had drawn from Isoline, "I am not the only
+one to suspect you of hiding from us a part of your treasures, Bezenecq
+the Rich. Like a good father you have sought to keep a fat dower for
+your daughter. Come, now, you must give us the dower!"
+
+"Garin," one of the gaolers approached to notify the bailiff, "the coals
+are red hot. They may go out if you put the man through the trials of
+the carcan and the hook."
+
+"As a favor to this young girl I shall be generous," said Garin. "The
+gridiron test will be enough, but stir the coals. And now answer,
+Bezenecq the Rich. I ask you for the last time, yes or no, will you give
+all you possess to my seigneur, the Count of Plouernel, including your
+daughter's dower?"
+
+"It is my daughter whom I shall make the answer to," answered the
+merchant, in a solemn voice. "Gaolers will not believe me;" and
+addressing Isoline in a voice broken with tears: "I swear to you, my
+child, by the sacred memory of your mother, by my tenderness for you, by
+all the pleasures you have afforded me since your birth,--I swear to
+you, by the salvation of my soul, I have not a denier left; I have
+surrendered all to the Seigneur of Plouernel!"
+
+"Oh, father, I believe you!" exclaimed the girl at his feet, and turning
+to Garin, she extended her hands towards him in prayer: "You have heard
+my father's oath; you may join mine to it."
+
+"I hold Bezenecq the Rich incapable of leaving his daughter thus
+penniless," retorted the bailiff. Turning then to the gaolers: "He will
+now have to confess to us. Strip him, stretch him on the gridiron and
+stir the coals. Let the brand flame up."
+
+The men of the seigneur of Plouernel threw themselves upon Bezenecq the
+Rich. Despite the resistance and the heart-rending, desperate cries of
+his daughter, whom they brutally held back, they stripped the bourgeois
+of Nantes, spread him upon the gridiron, and, by means of the iron
+chains, fastened him over the burning coals. "Oh, my father!" exclaimed
+Bezenecq, "I have disregarded your advice ... I now undergo the
+punishment for my cowardice ... for my selfishness ... I die under the
+torture for having been afraid to die arms in hand at the head of the
+serfs in revolt against the Frankish seigneurs.... Triumph, Neroweg!
+Yet, perchance, the terrible day of reprisals will come to the sons of
+Joel!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE RESCUE.
+
+
+In her apartment, lighted by a lamp, Azenor the Pale was engaged in the
+preparation of the magical philter, promised by her to the seigneur of
+Plouernel. After blowing some powder on a fluid that she had poured into
+a flagon, she pulled out of a chest a little vial, whose contents she
+drank. Laying down the vial, she remarked with a sinister smile: "Now,
+Neroweg, you may come ... I am ready for you." Then, taking up the
+flagon, half full with a solution of several powders, she proceeded:
+"This flagon must now be filled with blood ... the imagination of these
+ferocious brutes must be struck ... come...." she added with a sigh,
+turning towards the turret where the little Colombaik was secreted.
+Raising the curtain that masked the alcove, Azenor saw before her the
+innocent little creature huddled in a lump in a corner, and silently
+weeping. "Come," said the sorceress to him in a sweet voice, "come to
+me." The son of Fergan the Quarryman obeyed, he rose and advanced
+timidly. Wan, thin, broken with want, his pale mien had, like his
+mother's, Joan the Hunchback's, an inexpressible charm of kindness.
+"Must you always be sad?" inquired Azenor, sitting down and drawing the
+child near to her and to a table on which lay a poniard. "Why do you
+always weep?" The little fellow wept afresh. "What's the cause of your
+sorrow?"
+
+"My mother, my father," faltered the child, without ceasing to weep, "I
+do not see them any more!"
+
+"You love your mother and father very much?" Instead of answering the
+sorceress, the poor little one threw himself sobbing upon her neck. The
+woman could not resist the impulse of responding to the childish
+prompting of a caress, and she embraced Colombaik at the very moment
+when, fearing he had been disrespectful to Azenor, the child was about
+to drop on his knees before her. Sinking upon the floor, he broke out
+into copious tears. The young woman, more and more moved, silently
+contemplated Colombaik, murmuring to herself: "No, no ... I lack
+courage.... I shall not kill that poor child, a few drops of his blood
+will be enough for the philter." Already her hand approached the poniard
+on the table, when suddenly her ear caught an unusual noise in the
+turret. It was like the scraping of a chain drawn with difficulty over
+an iron bar. The sorceress, alarmed, pushed the child back and ran
+toward the turret at the moment that Fergan the Quarryman stepped in,
+pale, bathed in perspiration and holding in his hand his iron pick.
+Azenor drew back, dumb with stupor and fear, while Colombaik, with a cry
+of joy, rushed to the quarryman, holding up his arms to him and calling:
+"My father! my father!" Beside himself with happiness, Fergan dropped
+his iron bar, took up the child in his robust arms, and, raising him to
+his breast, pressed him passionately, interrogating the face of
+Colombaik with inexpressible anxiety, while the child, taking between
+his little hands the gruff face of the quarryman, covered it with
+kisses, muttering: "Good father! Oh, good father! I see you again at
+last!"
+
+The serf, without noticing the presence of the sorceress, devoured
+Colombaik with his eyes. Presently he observed, with a profound sigh of
+relief: "He is pale, he has been weeping, but he does not seem to have
+suffered; they can't have hurt him!" Embracing Colombaik with frenzy, he
+repeated several times: "My poor child! How happy your mother will be!"
+But his paternal alarms being calmed, he remembered that he was not
+alone, and not doubting that Azenor was the sorceress, whose dreaded
+name had reached as far as the serfs of the seigniory, he put his child
+down, took up again his pick, approached the young woman slowly with a
+savage mien and said to her: "So, it is you, who have children
+kidnapped to serve your diabolical sorceries?" and with glistening eyes
+he raised his iron bar with both hands. "You will now die, infernal
+witch!"
+
+"Father, do not kill her!" cried out the child impetuously, clasping the
+quarryman's legs with both his hands. "Oh, do not kill this good lady
+who was embracing me just as you came in!"
+
+Fergan looked at Azenor, who, somber, pensive, her arms crossed upon her
+palpitating breast, seemed to brave death. Turning to the child: "Was
+this woman embracing you?"
+
+"Yes, father; and since I have been here she has been kind to me. She
+has sought to console me. She even often rocked me in her arms."
+
+"Why, then," said the quarryman to the sorceress, "did you have my child
+kidnapped? What have you to say!"
+
+Azenor the Pale, without answering the question of the serf, and
+pursuing the thought that turned in her head, said: "Where does the
+passage run out through which you have penetrated to this turret?"
+
+"What's that to you!"
+
+The young woman stepped to a cabinet of massive oak, took from it a
+casket, opened it, and displaying before the quarryman the gold pieces
+that it was filled with, said: "Take this casket and let me accompany
+you. You have been able to enter this donjon by a secret passage, you
+will be able to get out again. We shall escape together from this
+accursed den. I pay a rich ransom."
+
+"You ... you mean to accompany me?"
+
+"I wish to flee from this castle, where I am a prisoner, and run to
+rejoin at Angers William IX., Duke of Aquitaine----" Stopping short and
+leaning her ear towards the door, Azenor made a sign of silence to
+Fergan, and proceeded in a whisper: "I hear voices and steps on the
+staircase. Someone is coming up here.... It is Neroweg!"
+
+"The count!" exclaimed the quarryman, with savage joy, stepping towards
+the door: "Oh, Worse than a Wolf, you will no longer bite! I shall kill
+the wretch!"
+
+"Keep still or we are lost," interrupted Azenor in a low voice. "The
+Count is not alone; think of your child!" and pointing with rapid
+gesture to the cabinet of massive oak, she hastily whispered to the
+serf: "Push that piece of furniture across the door. Be quick! We shall
+have time to flee! Your enemy, Neroweg, has only a few more steps to
+climb! I hear his spurs clank upon the stone floor!"
+
+Fergan, thinking only of the safety of his child, followed the advice of
+Azenor, and, thanks to the herculean strength he was endowed with,
+succeeded in pushing the massive piece of furniture across the door,
+which, thus barricaded, could not swing open into the room. The
+sorceress hastily wrapped herself in a mantle; took from the cabinet
+whence she had extracted the casket, a little leathern bag containing
+precious stones, and said to the quarryman, holding the casket out to
+him: "Take this gold and let's flee."
+
+"Carry your gold, yourself! I shall carry my child and my pick to defend
+him!" answered the serf, taking up his iron bar with one hand, and
+placing on his left arm little Colombaik, who held fast by his father's
+neck. At that very moment the fugitives heard from without the sound of
+the key that turned in the lock, followed by the voice of the seigneur
+of Plouernel: "Who is holding that door back inside? Is that one of your
+enchantments, accursed sorceress?"
+
+While the Count was beating against the door, and, redoubling his
+imprecations, vainly sought to force it, the quarryman, his son and
+Azenor, gathered in the turret, prepared to flee by the secret passage.
+One of the slabs of the flooring, being swung aside by means of a
+counterweight and chains wound around an iron axis, exposed the first
+step of a ladder so narrow that it could barely allow passage to one
+person at a time, and of such a slope at that spot that its first ten
+rungs could be cleared only by sliding down almost on the back from
+step to step. Azenor was the first to undertake the narrow passage; the
+little Colombaik imitated her; the two were followed by Fergan, who then
+readjusted the counterweight. The stone slab, back again in its place,
+again masked the secret passage. This steep portion of the ladder was
+wrought in an abutment of the turret, where its base projected beyond
+the wall of the donjon. Its foot connected with the narrow stone spiral,
+which, wrought in the ten-foot thick wall, descended to the lowest
+depths of the donjon. At each landing, a skilfully masked outlet opened
+upon this secret passage, lighted by not a ray from without. But Fergan,
+equipped with his tinder box, punk and wick, of the kind that he helped
+himself with in the quarries, lighted the passage, and, with his iron
+pick in one hand, his light in the other, preceded his son and Azenor
+down the stone spiral. The descent was but slowly effected.
+
+Presently the fugitives, leaving above them the level of the landing
+where the hall of the stone table was located, and which was situated on
+the ground floor, arrived at the place that corresponded with the
+subterranean cells. Here the passage served not merely as a means of
+retreat in case of a siege, it also afforded the chatelain an
+opportunity to spy upon the prisoners and overhear their confidential
+communications. By its construction, the cell of Bezenecq the Rich gave
+special facilities for such espionage. Furthermore, a slab three feet
+square by two inches thick, fastened in a strong oaken frame on hinges,
+constituted a sort of stone door, undistinguishable from the inside of
+the somber apartment, but easy to push open from without. Thus the
+seigneur reserved to himself an access to those subterraneous chambers,
+unknown even to the dwellers of the castle. Above the opening and within
+the cell was sculptured that hideous mask, whose sight had frightened
+the daughter of the merchant. The two eyes and the mouth of this grim
+figure, bored through the full thickness of the wall and exteriorly
+chiseled in the form of a niche, permitted the spy, posted at that
+place of concealment, to see the prisoners and overhear what they said.
+Thus it happened a few hours before that Fergan, climbing up by the
+light of his wick, had overheard the conversation between the Bishop of
+Nantes and Jeronimo, the legate of the Pope, and then that of the
+bourgeois of Nantes and his daughter. The fugitives were now on a level
+with the cell of Bezenecq, when suddenly brilliant rays of light shot
+through the openings in the stone mask, proceeding from a light within.
+
+Fergan was in advance of his child and Azenor. He halted at the sound of
+rawkish peals of laughter--frightful, like those of a maniac. The serf
+peeped through the holes pierced in the eyes of the mask, and this was
+what he saw by the light of a lantern placed upon the ground. Two naked
+corpses, the one suspended by the neck from the iron gibbet fastened in
+the wall, the other by the groins from the iron prong. The former,
+rigid, horribly distended and dislocated by the enormous weight of the
+stone attached to his feet; the latter, hooked by the flesh upon the
+sharp prong that penetrated his entrails, was bent backwards with his
+arms dangling against his legs. These victims, captured shortly before,
+from a new troop of travelers on the territory of the seigneur of
+Plouernel and taken to this cell, better fitted out than the others with
+instruments of torture, did not survive the experience. The corpse of
+Bezenecq the Rich was chained to the gridiron above the dying embers of
+the coal fire. The agonies of that unhappy man had been so excruciating
+that his members, held fast by the iron bands, had been convulsively
+distended. Undoubtedly at the moment of expiring he had made a supreme
+effort to turn his head towards his daughter, so as to die with her in
+sight. The face of the merchant, blackened, frightful to behold,
+retained the expression of his agony. A few steps from the corpse of her
+father, cowering upon the straw bed, her knees held in her arms, Isoline
+swayed to and fro, emitting at intervals rythmic peals of maniacal
+laughter. She had gone crazy. Fergan, moved with pity, was considering
+how to deliver the daughter of Bezenecq, when the door of the cell
+opened and Gonthram, the eldest son of Neroweg, stepped in, a torch in
+his hands and his cheeks of purple. His eyes, his unsteady walk, all
+announced a high stage of inebriety. Approaching Isoline, he struck
+against the gridiron, where lay the corpse of the bourgeois of Nantes.
+Unmoved by that spectacle, Gonthram stepped towards the young girl,
+seized her rudely by the arm, and said in a maudlin voice: "Come, follow
+me!" The demented girl seemed not to hear, she did not even raise her
+eyes, and continued swaying to and fro and to laugh. "You are quite
+gay," observed the whelp; "I also am gay. Come upstairs. We shall laugh
+together!"
+
+"Oh, traitor!" broke in a new personage, precipitating himself out of
+breath into the cell. "I made no doubt what you had in your mind when I
+saw you leave the table the moment my father went up to the sorceress!"
+And throwing himself upon his brother, Guy, the second son of Neroweg,
+cried out: "If you want the girl, you will have to pay for her with your
+blood!"
+
+"Vile bastard! You, the son of my mother's chaplain! You dare to
+threaten me!" In his rage, increased by intoxication, Gonthram raised
+his burning torch, struck his brother with it in the face and drew his
+sword. Guy, uttering a furious imprecation, also drew his sword. The
+struggle was short. Guy fell lifeless at the feet of his brother, who
+exclaimed: "The bastard is dead. I am the better man. The girl is mine!"
+and rushing back to Isoline: "Now, you are mine!"
+
+"No!" resounded a menacing voice, and before Gonthram, who had taken up
+the daughter of Bezenecq in his arms, had time to turn around, he
+received over his head a crushing blow with an iron bar, throwing him
+down upon his brother's body. From the place of concealment, where
+Fergan had stood, he saw the commencement of the fratricidal strife and
+had entered the cell by the secret opening when the fight was at its
+height between the two sons of Neroweg. Time was passing. Some of the
+men of the seigneur of Plouernel, observing the prolonged absence of the
+two whelps, might at any moment come down. Fergan took the poor maniac
+by the hand and led her to the secret opening. "Now, stoop, dear child,
+and get through the aperture." Isoline remained motionless. Renouncing
+all hope of being understood by her, Fergan pressed his two hands with
+force upon the shoulders of the child. "Woman," the serf cried out to
+Azenor the Pale, who had remained outside of the cell, contemplating the
+two bleeding bodies of the sons of Neroweg, "take the hand of this poor
+girl and try to draw her out."
+
+"Why take this insane woman along?" said Azenor to Fergan. "She will
+retard our march and increase the difficulties of our flight."
+
+"I wish to save this unfortunate being."
+
+Sustained by Fergan, who preceded Colombaik, carrying the lighted wick,
+Isoline descended with difficulty the steps of the staircase.
+Penetrating ever deeper into the bowels of the earth, the fugitives
+arrived at the bottom of the stone spiral that connected with a tunnel,
+bored through the living rock at such a depth that, passing under the
+sheet of water of the gigantic pit, from the midst of which the donjon
+rose, it issued out into the open half a league away from the castle at
+a place concealed amid tumbling bowlders and brushwood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CUCKOO PETER.
+
+
+Day was slowly breaking upon the fateful night during which the
+fugitives effected their escape from the manor of Plouernel. Joan the
+Hunchback, seated at the threshold of her hut, which lay at the
+extremity of the village, incessantly turned her eyes, red with weeping,
+towards the road by which Fergan, absent since the previous morning in
+quest of Colombaik, was expected. Suddenly the female serf heard from
+afar a great tumult, caused by the approach of a large crowd of people.
+At intervals confused and prolonged clamors were heard rising above the
+din, frantically crying out: "God wills it! God wills it!" Finally Joan
+saw a crowd of people turning a road that led to the village. At the
+head marched a monk mounted on a white mule, whose bones protruded from
+its skin, together with a man-at-arms astride of a small black horse,
+not less lean than the mule of his companion.
+
+The monk, called by some Peter the Hermit, but by most Cuckoo Peter,
+wore a tattered brown frock, on the left sleeve of which near the
+shoulder was sewn a cross of red material, the rallying sign of the
+Crusaders on the holy march of the Crusade. A rope served him for a
+belt. His unhosed feet, shod in worn-out sandals, rested on wooden
+stirrups. His cowl, pushed back, exposed a bald head, boney and grimy
+like the rest of his face, bronzed by the hot sun of Palestine. His
+hollow eyes, glistening with a somber fire, flamed from the depths of
+their orbits. His haggard looks expressed savage fanaticism. In one hand
+he held a cross of rude wood, hardly planed, with which ever and anon he
+smote the crupper of his mule to quicken its pace.
+
+The companion of Cuckoo Peter was a Gascon knight surnamed Walter the
+Pennyless. Of a physiognomy as grotesque and jovial as that of the monk
+was savage and funereal, the mere sight of the knight provoked a smile.
+His eyes, sparkling with mischief, his inordinately long nose, that
+almost kissed the chin, his rakish mouth, slit from ear to ear, his
+features hinged on a perpetual grin, amused from the start, and when he
+spoke, his buffoonery and his mirthful sallies, delivered with southern
+spirit, carried hilarity to its highest pitch. Wearing on his head a
+rusty, cracked and knocked-in casque, ornamented with a bunch of goose
+feathers, his chest covered with a breast-plate no less rusty, no less
+cracked and no less knocked in than his casque, Walter the Pennyless
+also wore the red cross on the left sleeve of his patched cloak. Shod in
+cowhides, fastened with cords around his long heron legs, he bore
+himself with as triumphant an air on his lean black hirsute horse, that
+he named the "Sun of Glory," as if he bestrode a mettlesome charger. His
+long sword, sheathed in wood, named by him the "Sweetheart of the
+Faith," hung from his leathern shoulder belt. On his left arm he bore a
+shield of tin, covered with vulgar pictures. One of these, filling the
+upper part, represented a man clad in rags, knapsack on back and pilgrim
+staff in hand, departing on the Crusade, as indicated by the cross of
+red stuff painted on his shoulder. The lower picture represented the
+same man, no longer wan and haggard, no longer dressed in tatters, but
+splendidly fitted out, bursting with fat, and spread upon a bed, covered
+with purple cloth, beside a beautiful Saracen woman, with nothing on but
+collar and bracelets. A Saracen, wearing a turban and humbly kneeling,
+poured out the contents of a coffer full of gold at the foot of the bed
+where the Crusader was frolicking with his female bedfellow in an
+obscene posture. The very crudity of the idea expressed by these vulgar
+pictures was calculated to make a lively impression upon the childish
+imagination of the multitude.
+
+At the heels of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless followed a mob of
+men, women and children, serfs and villeins, mendicants and vagabonds,
+prostitutes and professional thieves, the latter distinguishable by
+their cropped ears, as well as the murderers, some of whom, in a spirit
+of sanguinary ostentation, bedecked their breasts with pieces of black
+cloth bearing in white one, or two, sometimes three skulls--a sinister
+emblem, denoting that the holy Crusade gave absolution for murder,
+however frequently committed by the criminal. All bore the red cross on
+the left sleeve. Women carried on their backs their children too young
+to walk, or too tired to proceed on the route. Other women, in an
+advanced stage of pregnancy, leaned on the arms of their husbands,
+loaded with a bag containing all their havings. The least poor of the
+Crusaders traveled on donkeys, on mules or in wagons. They carried all
+their belongings with them, even to their pigs and chickens. The latter,
+fastened by the legs to the rails of the wagons, kept up a deafening
+cackle. Other poor people dragged their milk goats after them, or a
+loaded sheep, or even one or more cows.
+
+Contrasting with this tattered multitude, here and there some couples
+were seen, the cavalier in the saddle, his paramour on the crupper,
+happy to escape through that holy pilgrimage the jealous or disturbing
+surveillance of a father or a husband. These runaways also took the
+route of the Orient. Among them was Eucher with the handsome Yolande,
+dispossessed of her father's heritage by the seigneur of Plouernel. They
+had sold a few jewels, given one-half the proceeds to Yolande's mother,
+and with the rest the lovers bought a mule on which to follow the
+Crusaders to Jerusalem.
+
+This mob, consisting of three or four thousand persons, moving from
+Angers and surrounding localities, recruited its forces all along the
+route with new pilgrims. The faces of the serfs and villeins breathed
+joy. For the first time in their lives they left an accursed land,
+soaked in the sweat of their brow and in their blood, and to which, from
+generation to generation, they and their fathers had been chained down
+by the will of the seigneurs. At last they tasted a day of freedom, an
+inestimable happiness to the slave. Their joyous cries, their disorderly
+songs, gross, licentious, resounded far and wide, and ever and anon they
+repeated with frenzy the words, hurled out by Cuckoo Peter in a hoarse
+voice: "Death to the Saracens! Let's march to the deliverance of the
+Holy Sepulchre! God wills it!" At other times they echoed the Gascon
+cavalier, Walter the Pennyless: "To Jerusalem, the city of marvels! Ours
+is Jerusalem, the city of pleasures, of good wine, of beautiful women,
+of gold and of sunshine! Ours is the Promised Land!"
+
+Singing, dancing, uproarious with gladness, the troop crossed the
+village and passed by the hut of Fergan. The serfs, instead of betaking
+themselves to the fields for their hard day's labor, ran ahead of the
+train, shut in at that moment between two lines of ruined houses that
+bordered the road. Joan, standing at the threshold of her door, looked
+at this mob as it passed, with a mixture of astonishment and fear. A big
+scamp of a gallows bird, nicknamed by his companions Corentin the
+Gibbet-cheater, was giving his arm to a young wench that went by the
+name of Perrette the Ribald. She noticed poor Joan the Hunchback at her
+door and cried out to her, alluding to her deformity: "Halloa, you
+there, who carry your baggage on your back, come with us to Jerusalem;
+you will be admired there as one of the prodigies among the other
+marvels!"
+
+"By the navel of the Pope! By the buttocks of Satan! You are right, my
+ribald!" cried the Gibbet-cheater. "There can be no hunchbacks in
+Jerusalem, a land of beautiful Saracen women, according to our friend
+Walter the Pennyless. We shall exhibit this hunchback for money. Come
+on!" said the bandit, seizing Joan by the arm, "follow us, you camel!"
+
+"Yes, yes," added Perrette the Ribald, laughing loudly and seizing the
+other arm of the quarryman's wife, "come to Jerusalem; come to the land
+of marvels!"
+
+"Leave me alone!" said the poor woman, struggling to disengage herself.
+"For pity's sake, leave me! I am expecting my husband and my child!"
+
+Forced to follow her persecutors, and carried, despite herself, by the
+stream of the Crusaders, Joan, fearing to be stifled or crushed under
+foot by the crowd, sought no longer to struggle against the current.
+Suddenly, instead of proceeding onward, the mob swayed back, and these
+words ran from mouth to mouth: "Silence! Cuckoo Peter and Walter the
+Pennyless are going to speak! Silence!" A deep silence ensued. Halting
+in the middle of a large open space, where, gaping with curiosity, the
+serfs of the village stood gathered together, the monk and his companion
+prepared themselves to harangue these poor rustic plebs. Cuckoo Peter
+reined in his white mule and rising in his stirrups, he screamed in a
+hoarse yet penetrating voice, addressing the serfs of the seigniory of
+Plouernel: "Do you, Christian folks, know what is going on in Palestine?
+The divine tomb of the Saviour is in the hands of the Saracens! The Holy
+Sepulchre of our Lord is in the power of the infidels! Woe is us! Woe!
+Malediction! Malediction!" And the monk struck his chest, tore his
+frock, rolled his hollow eyes in their sockets, ground his teeth, foamed
+at the mouth, went through a thousand contortions on his mule, and
+resumed with increased fury: "The infidel is lord in Jerusalem, the Holy
+City! The miscreant insults the tomb of Christ with his presence! And
+you, Christians, my brothers, you remain indifferent before so horrible
+a sacrilege! Before such an abomination----"
+
+"No, no!" cried back with one voice the mob of the Crusaders. "Death to
+the infidels! Let's deliver the tomb! Let's march to Jerusalem, the city
+of marvels and of beauty! God wills it! God wills it!"
+
+The serfs of the village, ignorant, besotted, timid, opened wide their
+eyes and ears, and looked at one another, never before having heard the
+name of Jerusalem or of the Saracens mentioned, and unable to explain
+the fury and contortions of the monk. Accordingly, Martin the Prudent,
+the same who, two days before, had ventured to depict to the bailiff the
+sufferings of his fellows, timidly said to Cuckoo Peter: "Holy patron,
+seeing that our Lord Jesus Christ sits on his throne in heaven, together
+with God the Father in eternal glory, what can it be to him whether his
+tomb be in the hands of the people whom you call Saracens? Kindly
+enlighten us."
+
+"That's what we would like to know," joined another serf, a young fellow
+who looked less stupid than the others. "We want to know that first."
+
+"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless. "By my valiant sword, the
+Sweetheart of the Faith! Here have we a rude questioner. What's your
+name, my brave lad?"
+
+"My name is Colas the Bacon-cutter."
+
+"As surely as ham is the friend of wine, you must be a relative of my
+friend Simon the Porkrind-scraper," replied the Gascon knight, amidst
+peals of laughter from the serfs, who were delighted by this sally. "So,
+then, you would like to know, my worthy Colas the Bacon-cutter, what it
+can matter to Jesus Christ, enthroned in heaven with the Eternal Father
+and the sweet dove, the Holy Ghost, if his sepulchre is held by the
+Saracens?"
+
+"Yes, seigneur," rejoined the serf; "because, if that displeases him,
+how is it that, seeing he is God and omnipotent, he does not exterminate
+them? Why does he not turn those Saracens into pulp at a single wafture
+of his hand?"
+
+"Woe is us! Abomination! Desolation of the world!" ejaculated Cuckoo
+Peter, breaking in upon the Gascon adventurer, who was about to answer.
+"Oh, ye people without faith, ingrates, impious and rebellious children!
+Jesus Christ gave his blood to redeem you. Is that so or not?"
+
+"Serfs were our fathers, serfs are we, serfs will our children be,"
+retorted Colas the Bacon-cutter. "We have not been redeemed, holy
+father, as you claim."
+
+The answer of young Colas unquestionably embarrassed the monk; he shot
+at him threatening glances, writhed on his mule and resumed in a
+thundering voice: "Malediction! Desolation! Oh, ye of little faith!
+Jesus has given you his blood to redeem you, and you, in return, refuse
+to shed the blood of those accursed Saracens, who every day outrage his
+sepulchre! This is what the divine Saviour has said.... Do you hear?...
+Here is what he said.... Listen...."
+
+Walter the Pennyless here broke in with his own harangue: "Those
+accursed Saracens are gorged with gold, with precious stones, with
+silver vessels; they inhabit a marvelous country where there is a
+profusion without the trouble of cultivation: Golden wheat fields,
+delicious fruits, exquisite wines, sweethearts of all complexions! One
+must go there to believe it! Think of it! Winter is unknown, spring
+eternal. The poorest of those infidel dogs have homes of white marble
+and enchanting gardens, embellished with limpid fountains. The beggars,
+clad in silk, play tennis with rubies and diamonds." A murmur of
+astonishment, then of admiration ran through the serfs. Their eyes
+fixed, their mouths agape, their hands clasped, they listened with
+increasing avidity to the Gascon adventurer. "Such is the miraculous
+country inhabited by those infidel dogs, and the Christians, the beloved
+children of the holy Catholic Church, inhabit dens, eat black bread,
+drink brackish water, shiver under a sky frozen in winter and rainy in
+summer. No, let all the devils take it! Let my beloved brothers come to
+the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, exterminate the infidels, and then
+they will have for their reward the prodigious lands of Palestine!
+Theirs be Jerusalem, the city of silver ramparts, with golden gates,
+studded with carbuncles! Theirs be the wines, the beautiful maids, the
+riches of the accursed Saracens! If you wish all that, good people, it
+is yours!" Then, turning to Peter the Hermit, "Not so, holy man?"
+
+"It is the truth," answered Cuckoo Peter; "it is the truth. _The goods
+of the sinner are reserved for the just_."
+
+In the measure that the adroit lieutenant of Cuckoo Peter had held up to
+the dazzled eyes of the poor villagers the ravishing picture of the
+delights and riches of Palestine, a good number of those famished serfs,
+clad in tatters and who all their lives had not crossed the boundaries
+of the seigniory of Plouernel, began to tremble with ardent covetousness
+and feverish hope. Others, more timid or less credulous, hesitated in
+believing those marvels. Of these old Martin the Prudent was the organ.
+Turning to his fellows: "My friends, that knight, on the back of that
+little black horse that looks like an ass, has said to you: 'One must go
+to that country to believe these marvels by seeing them with his own
+eyes.' Now, then, it is my opinion that it is better to believe them
+than to go and see them. It is not enough to depart for those regions.
+One must be certain of provisions on the route, and to return from such
+a distance."
+
+"Old Martin is right," put in several serfs. "Let's take his advice and
+stay home."
+
+"Besides," added another serf, "those Saracens will not allow themselves
+to be plundered without resisting. There will be blows received ... men
+killed ... thousands of them."
+
+These views, exchanged aloud, no wise troubled the Gascon adventurer. He
+drew his famous sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith, and indicating with
+its point the pictures that ornamented his shield, he cried out in his
+cheerful and catching accent: "Good friends, see you this poor man with
+his cane in his hand? He departed for the Holy Land, his pouch as empty
+as his belly, his knap-sack as hollow as his cheeks. He is so ragged
+that one would think a pack of dogs had been at him! Look at him, the
+poor fellow, he is really to be pitied. What misery! What pinching
+poverty, my friends!"
+
+"Yes, yes," the serfs exclaimed together, "he is really to be pitied."
+
+"And now, my friends, what see you here?," resumed the Gascon
+adventurer, touching with the point of his sword the second picture on
+his shield. "Here is our very man, one time poor! You do not recognize
+him. I do not wonder, he is no longer the same, and yet it is himself,
+round of cheeks, clad like a seigneur and bursting his skin. Beside him
+lies a beautiful female Saracen slave, while at his feet a male Saracen
+comes to surrender his treasure! Well, now, my friends, this man, once
+so poor, so ragged at home, is you, is I, is all of us, and that same
+friend so plump, so sleek, so well clad, that, again, will be you, will
+be I, will be all of us, once we are in Palestine. Come, then, on the
+Crusade! Come and deliver the tomb of the Saviour! The devil take the
+rags, the rickety huts, the straw litters and the black bread! Let ours
+be marble palaces, silk robes, purple carpets, goblets of delicious
+wines, full purses, and beauteous Saracen women to rock us to sleep with
+their songs! Come to the Crusade!"
+
+"Come, come!," cried out Cuckoo Peter. "If you are guilty of robbery, of
+arson, of murder, of prostitution, if you have committed adultery,
+fratricide or parricide--all your sins will be remitted. Come to the
+Crusade! Do you need an example, my brothers? William IX, Duke of
+Aquitaine, an impious fellow, a ravisher, a debauché who counts his
+crimes and adulteries by the thousands, William IX, that bedeviled
+criminal, departs to-morrow from the city of Angers for Palestine, white
+as a paschal lamb."
+
+"And I, white as a swan!" interjected Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. "God
+wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"
+
+"And I as white as a dove!" said Perette the Ribald, with a peal of
+laughter. "God wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"
+
+"Yes, yes; let's depart on the Crusade!" cried out the more daring of
+the villagers, intoxicated with hope. "Let's depart for Jerusalem."
+Others, less resolute, less venturesome, and of these was the larger
+number, took the advice of Martin the Prudent, fearing to stake their
+fate, whatever their present misery, upon the cast of a dangerous
+voyage and of unknown countries. They deemed insane the exaltation of
+their fellows in servitude. Finally, others, still hesitated to take so
+grave a step, and Colas the Bacon-cutter addressed Walter the Pennyless:
+"To depart is easy enough. But what will our seigneur say to that? He
+has forbidden us to leave his domains on pain of having our feet cut
+off. And he will surely have the order carried out!"
+
+"Your seigneur!" answered the Gascon adventurer breaking out in a
+horse-laugh. "Scorn your seigneur as you would a wolf caught in a trap!
+Ask these good people who follow us whether they have bothered about
+their seigneurs!"
+
+"No, no, the devil take the seigneurs!" cried out the Crusaders. "We are
+going to Jerusalem. God wills it! God wills it!"
+
+"What!" put in Cuckoo Peter, "the Eternal wants a thing, and a seigneur,
+a miserable earthworm will dare oppose His will! Oh, desolation! Eternal
+malediction upon the seigneur, upon the father, upon the husband, upon
+the mother, who would dare resist the holy impulse of their children,
+their wives, their serfs, who run to the deliverance of the tomb of the
+Lord!"
+
+These words of Peter the Hermit were received with acclamation by the
+Crusaders. The beautiful Yolande and her lover, Eucher, as well as other
+loving couples, cried out in emulation and louder than the others: "God
+wills it! There is no will above his!"
+
+"Master Walter the Pennyless," resumed Colas the Bacon-cutter,
+scratching the back of his ear, "is it far from here to Jerusalem?"
+
+"The distance is from sin to safety!" bellowed Cuckoo Peter. "The road
+is short for the believers, endless for the impious! Are you a Christian
+or a miscreant? Are you an idolater or a good Catholic?"
+
+Colas the Bacon-cutter, finding himself, no more than some other serfs
+who still hesitated, sufficiently instructed by the monk's answer on the
+distance of the journey, asked again: "Father, it is said to be a long
+ways from here to Nantes. Is it as far to Jerusalem?"
+
+"Oh, man of little faith!" answered Peter the Hermit, "dare you measure
+the road that leads to Paradise and to the Holy Virgin?"
+
+"By the four swift feet of my good horse, the Sun of Glory! They are
+thinking of the length of the road!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless.
+"See here, my friends, does the bird that escapes from its cage inquire
+the length of the road when it can fly to freedom? Does not the ass in
+the mill, turning his grindstone, and tramping from dawn to dusk in the
+same circle, travel as much as the stag that roves through the woods at
+pleasure? Oh, my good friends, is it not better, instead of, like the
+ass of the mill, incessantly to tramp this seigniorial soil unto which
+you are chained, to march in search of adventures, free, happy like the
+stag in the forest, and every day see new countries?"
+
+"Yes, yes," replied Colas, "the stag in the forest is better off than
+the ass in the mill. Let's depart for Palestine!"
+
+"Yes, let's depart for Palestine!" the cry now went up from several
+other villagers. "On to that land of marvels!"
+
+"My friends, be careful what you do," insisted Martin the Prudent. "The
+ass in the mill at least receives in the evening his meager pittance.
+The stags of the forest do not pasture in herds, hence they find a
+sufficiency in the woods. But if you depart with this large troop, which
+swells as it marches, you will be thousands of thousands when you reach
+Jerusalem. Who, then, my friends, will feed you? Who is to lodge you on
+the road? Who is to furnish you with clothes and footwear?"
+
+"And who is it that lodges and feeds the birds of the good God, man of
+little faith?" Cuckoo Peter exclaimed. "Do the birds carry their
+provisions with them? Do they not raid the harvests along their route,
+resting at night under the eaves of the houses? Answer, ye hardened
+sinners!"
+
+"By the faith of the Gibbet-cheater, you may trust that man!" here put
+in Corentin. "As truly as Perrette is a daisy, our route from Angers to
+this place has been but one continuous raid to us big birds on two legs.
+What feasts we have had? Poultry and pigeons! Hams and sausages! Pork
+and mutton! Tons of wine! Tons of hydromel! By my belly and my back, we
+have raided for everything on our passage, leaving behind us but bones
+to gnaw at and empty barrels to turn over!"
+
+"And if those people were to complain," added Perrette the Ribald with
+her usual outburst of laughter, "we would answer them: 'Shut up,
+ninnies! Cuckoo Peter has read in the holy books that '_the goods of the
+sinner are reserved for the just!_' Are not we the _just_, we who are on
+the march to deliver the holy tomb? And are not you _sinners_, you who
+stay here stagnating in your cowardice? And if these ninnies said but a
+word, the Gibbet-cheater, backed by our whole band, would soon have
+convinced them with a thorough caning."
+
+These sallies of Perrette and Corentin completed the conversion of those
+serfs who still hesitated. Seeing in the voyage but a long and merry
+junket, a goodly number of them, Colas the Bacon-cutter at their head,
+cried out in chorus: "Let's depart for Jerusalem, the country of
+beautiful girls, good wines and ingots of gold!"
+
+"Onward, march, my friends! Trouble your heads neither about the road,
+nor about lodging, nor yet about food. The good God will provide!" cried
+Walter the Pennyless. "On the march! On the march! If you have
+provisions, take them along. Have you a donkey? mount him. Have you
+wagons? hitch on, and put wife and children in them. If you have nothing
+but your legs, gird up your loins, and on to Jerusalem! We are hundreds
+upon hundreds; we soon shall be thousands upon thousands; and presently
+we shall number hundreds of thousands. Upon our arrival in Palestine we
+shall find treasures and delights for all--beautiful women, good wine,
+rich robes, and lumps of gold in plenty!"
+
+"And we shall all have gained eternal salvation! We shall have a seat in
+Paradise!" added Cuckoo Peter in a strident voice, brandishing his
+wooden cross over his head. "Let's depart for Jerusalem! God wills it!"
+
+"Forward, let's depart for Palestine!" cried out a hundred of the
+villagers, carried away by Colas, despite the prudent advice of Martin.
+These ill-starred men, a prey to a sort of delirium, ran to their huts
+and gathered up the little that they possessed. Some loaded their asses
+in haste; others, less poor, hitched a horse or a yoke of oxen to a
+wagon and placed their families on board; while Peter the Hermit and
+Walter the Pennyless, to the end of inflaming still more the ardor of
+these new recruits of the faith in the midst of their preparations for
+the journey, struck up the chant of the Crusades that was soon taken up
+in chorus by all the Crusaders:
+
+"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!
+
+"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that
+marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!
+
+"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!"
+
+Joan the Hunchback, having succeeded in freeing herself from the hands
+of Corentin and his wench, had pushed herself not without great pains,
+out of the compact mob, and was about to start back to her humble home
+by cutting across the skirt of the village, intending to wait for the
+return of her husband and child, a return that she hardly ventured to
+hope for. Suddenly she turned deadly pale and tried to scream, but
+terror deprived her of her voice. From the somewhat raised ground where
+she stood, Joan saw, down the plain, Fergan carrying his son in his
+arms, and running with all his might towards the village, with Garin the
+Serf-eater at his heels. The latter, giving his horse the spurs,
+followed the serf, sword in hand. Several men-at-arms on foot, following
+at a distance the tracks of the bailiff, sought to make up to him in
+order to render him armed assistance. Despite his efforts to escape,
+Fergan led Garin by barely fifty paces. The lead was shortened from
+moment to moment. Already within but two paces, and believing the
+quarryman to be within reach of his sword, the bailiff had sought to
+strike him down by leaning over the neck of his horse. Thanks to several
+doublings, like those that hares make when pursued by the hound, Fergan
+escaped death. Making, finally, a desperate leap, he ran several steps
+straight ahead with indescribable swiftness, and then suddenly
+disappeared from the sight of Joan as if he had sunk into the bowels of
+the earth. A second later the poor woman saw Garin reining in his horse
+with great effort near the spot where the quarryman had just disappeared
+from view; he raised his sword heavenward, and then, instead of
+proceeding straight ahead, turned to the left and followed at a full
+gallop a hedge of green that traversed the valley diagonally. Joan then
+understood that her husband, having jumped with the child to the bottom
+of a deep trench, which the bailiff's horse could not clear, at the very
+moment when he would have been struck down by the bailiff, the latter
+had been compelled to ride along the edge of the trench to a point where
+he might cross it, in order to proceed to the village, where he counted
+upon capturing the quarryman. Joan feared lest her husband and child
+were hurt in the leap. But soon she saw her little Colombaik climb out
+of the trench with the aid of his little hand and supported by his
+father, whose arms only were visible. Presently Fergan also climbed out,
+picked up the child again, and carrying that dear load, continued to
+flee at a full run towards the village, which he aimed at reaching
+before the bailiff. Despite her weakness, Joan rushed forward to meet
+her child and her husband, and joined them. Fergan, without stopping and
+keeping the child in his arms, hurriedly said to his wife, almost out of
+breath and exhausted: "Let's reach the village. Let's get in ahead of
+Garin, and we shall be safe!"
+
+"My dear Colombaik, you are here at last!" Joan said, while running
+beside the serf and devouring the child with her eyes, forgetting at
+the sight of him both the present perils and the past, while Colombaik,
+smiling and reaching out his little arms, said: "Mother! mother! How
+happy am I to see you again! Dear, good mother!"
+
+"Oh," said the serf while redoubling his efforts to gain the village
+before Garin, who was driving his horse at full speed, "had I not been
+delayed burying a dead woman at the egress of the tunnel, I would have
+been here before daybreak. We would have met to flee together."
+
+"My child! They have not hurt you?" Joan was thinking only of her child,
+one of whose hands she had seized and was kissing while weeping with
+joy, and running beside her husband. At that moment the chant of the
+Crusaders' departure resounded from afar with renewed fervor:
+"Jerusalem! City of marvels!"
+
+"What songs are these?" inquired the quarryman. "What big crowd is that,
+gathered yonder? Whence come all these people?"
+
+"Those are people who are going, they say, to Jerusalem. A large number
+of the inhabitants of the village are following them. They are like
+crazy!"
+
+"Then we are really saved!" exclaimed the quarryman, seized with a
+sudden thought. "Let's depart with them!"
+
+"What, Fergan!" demanded Joan out of breath and exhausted with her
+precipitate gait. "We to go far away with our child!"
+
+But the serf, who found himself at the most a hundred paces from the
+village, made no answer, and followed by Joan, he finally reached the
+crowd, into the midst of which he dived, holding Colombaik and exhausted
+with fatigue, while, muttering to his wife: "Oh, saved! We are saved!"
+
+Garin, who had continued driving his horse along the trench until he
+reached a spot where he could cross, observed with astonishment the
+crowd of people that blocked his way and access to the village. Drawing
+near, he saw coming towards him several of the serfs who preferred their
+crushing servitude to the chances of a distant and unknown voyage. Among
+these was old Martin the Prudent. Seeking to flatter the bailiff, he
+said to him trembling: "Good master Garin, we are not of those rebels
+who dare to flee from the lands of their seigneur to go to Palestine
+with that troop of Crusaders, that are traveling through the country. We
+do not intend to abandon the domain of our seigneur. We wish to work for
+him to our last day."
+
+"S-death!" cried out the bailiff, forgetting the quarryman at the
+announcement of the desertion of a large number of the serfs. "The
+wretches who have thought of fleeing will be punished." The crowd,
+opening up before the horse of Garin, he reached the monk and Walter the
+Pennyless, who were pointed to him as the chiefs of the Crusaders. "By
+what right do you thus enter with a large troop upon the territory of my
+seigneur, Neroweg VI, sovereign Count of Plouernel?" Then, raising his
+voice still more and turning to the villagers: "Those of you, serfs and
+villeins, who had the audacity of following these vagabonds, shall have
+their hands and feet cut on the spot, like rebels----"
+
+"Impious man! Blasphemer!" exclaimed Cuckoo Peter breaking in upon the
+bailiff in a thundering voice. "Dare you threaten the Christians who are
+on the march to deliver the tomb of the Lord? Woe be unto you!----"
+
+"You frocked criminal," the bailiff in turn interrupted, boiling with
+rage, and drawing his sword, "you dare issue orders in the seigniory of
+my master!" Saying which, Garin, driving his horse towards the monk,
+raised his sword over him. But Peter the Hermit parried the move with
+his heavy wooden cross, and struck the bailiff such a hard blow with it
+over his casque, that the latter, dazed for a moment, let fall his
+sword.
+
+"Death to the bandit, who would cut off the feet and hands of the
+avengers of Christ!" several voices cried out. "Death to him! Death!"
+
+"Yes, death!" yelled the serfs of the village, who had made up their
+minds to depart for the Holy Land, and who abhorred the bailiff. "Death
+to Garin the Serf-eater! He shall eat none more!" With that, Colas the
+Bacon-cutter threw him from his horse, and in a moment the bailiff,
+trodden under foot, was slaughtered and torn to pieces. The serfs broke
+his bones, cut off his head, and Colas the Bacon-cutter, taking up the
+livid head of the Serf-eater with the prong of his pitch-fork, raised
+the bleeding trophy above the mob. Carrying it on high, he rejoined the
+troop of the Crusaders, whereupon the crowd marched away singing at the
+top of their voices:
+
+"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!
+
+"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that
+marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!
+
+"God wills it! God wills it! God wills it."
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE CRUSADE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE SYRIAN DESERT.
+
+
+The sun of Palestine inundates with its blinding and scorching light, a
+desert covered with reddish sand. As far as the eye reaches, not a house
+is seen, not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass, not a pebble. Not
+a sparrow could find shelter in this vast expanse. Everywhere a shifting
+sand, fine as ashes, radiates back in more torrid temperature the heat
+imparted to it by that flaming sun, vaulted by a fiery sky that dips in
+the western horizon into a zone of burning vapor. Here and yonder, half
+buried in the waves of sand that are periodically raised by the gales of
+these regions, appear the whitened bones of men and children, horses,
+asses, oxen and camels. The flesh of these bodies has been devoured by
+vultures, jackals and lions. The Saracen proverb is verified: "The
+Christians find here shelter only in the belly of the vultures, the
+jackals and the lions!" These decomposing human and other débris trace
+across the desert the route to Marhala, a city situated ten days' march
+from Jerusalem,--the holy city toward which converge the several armies
+of the Crusaders from Gaul, Germany, Italy and England, marching to the
+conquest of an empty tomb.
+
+If in this solitude there are skeletons and corpses half devoured, there
+are also dying and living beings. Numerous are the dying, few, on the
+contrary, the living; and the latter would count themselves happy if the
+dead and the dying around them were the worst of their plight. Here are
+the Crusaders, who, in their credulity, left the year before the
+"ungrateful soil of the Occident" for the "miraculous land of the
+Orient," where they arrived after a voyage of eleven or twelve hundred
+leagues. The bulk of the army that left Gaul, then under the command of
+Bohemund, Prince of Taranto, slowly melted away yonder, in the midst of
+the thick cloud of dust raised by the marching Crusaders. In their wake
+followed a long train of stragglers, scattered helter-skelter,--women,
+children, the wounded, the infirm, the sick, a mass of wretchedness
+dying of thirst, heat and fatigue. Here and there they drop down by the
+way in this boundless desert, never to rise again.
+
+The least to be pitied among these stragglers are those who, having lost
+their horses, resolutely mounted an ass, an ox, a goat, occasionally one
+of those huge Syrian mastiffs, three feet in height. They thus drag
+along at the gait of the animal they ride, their swords on their side,
+their lances at their backs. In order to protect themselves from the
+consuming heat, that, descending at right angles on their skulls, often
+caused insanity or death, they carry strange head-pieces. Some shelter
+their heads under a piece of cloth spread out by means of sticks, that
+they hold in their hands in the manner of a dais; cleverer ones have
+plaited the dried leaves of the date plant into broad chaplets that
+shade their brows; the larger number wore a species of mask made of
+shreds of cloth, and perforated with a hole at the place of the eyes to
+protect their eye-lids from a dust so scorching and corrosive that it
+produced painful inflammations, and often led to death.
+
+At a great distance from these Crusaders followed the foot-passengers in
+grotesque costumes, and sinking to their knees in the shifting sand,
+whose mere burning contact rendered intolerable the excoriation of their
+feet, worn to the quick by the road. Their limbs bandaged in dirty rags,
+the wounded tramped along painfully, leaning on their staffs. Women,
+gasping for breath, carried their children on their backs, or dragged
+them heaped upon rude sledges that they pulled after them with the aid
+of their husbands. Among these wretches, almost wholly in tatters, some
+were seen in bizarre accoutrement. There were men, who barely covered
+with a crazy frock-coat, yet sported on their heads a rich turban of
+Oriental material; others, out at toes, wore a splendid cloak of
+embroidered silk, dashed with spots of blood, like all the other spoils
+of pillage and massacre.
+
+Suffocated with stifling heat, blinded with the dust that the march
+raised, streaming with perspiration, parched with a devouring thirst,
+their skins burnt by the sun, ill of humor, gloomy and discouraged,
+these wretched beings were tramping along, muttering imprecations
+against the Crusade, when they perceived a numerous and brilliant
+cavalcade approaching through thick clouds of dust from a great distance
+in the rear. At the head of the cavalcade and mounted upon a spirited
+Arabian horse, black as ebony, advanced a young man in splendid
+accoutrements. It is William IX, the handsome Duke of Aquitaine, the
+impious poet, the contemner of the Church, the seducer of Malborgiane,
+whose portrait he carried in Gaul upon his shield. But Malborgiane is
+now forgotten and cast off, like so many other victims of this great
+debauchee. William IX is advancing at the head of his men-at-arms. His
+face at once bold and bantering, is partially covered by a wrapper of
+white silk that falls upon his shoulders. The outlines of his elegant
+and supple figure are set off by a light tunic of purple color; his
+broad hose, worn loose in Oriental style, exposes his boots of green
+leather, wrought in silver and tipped with gold. William carries neither
+arms or armor. With his left hand he guides his horse; on his right,
+covered with a gauntlet of embroidered leather, sits his favorite
+falcon, hooded in scarlet and its legs ornamented with little gold
+bells. Such is the courage of this bird that often does its master fly
+it against the vultures of the desert, as he more than once starts
+against the hyenas and jackals, the large hunting dogs with red collars
+that, breathing heavily, follow his horse. At the crupper of his
+prancing horse is a negro boy, eight or nine years of age, and quaintly
+arrayed. He carries a large parasol, whose shade shelters the head of
+William. At the right of the duke, and towering above him with its
+large body, ambles a camel richly caparisoned. Another negro boy guides
+the animal seated in front of the double litter, which, closed in with
+silken curtains, is fastened with girths to the back and body of the
+animal, and is so contrived that in each of its compartments a person
+can be comfortably seated, protected from the sun and the dust. William
+often ensconced himself in one of them.
+
+Beside William, rode the chevalier, Walter the Pennyless. Before his
+departure on the Crusade, the Gascon adventurer, pale, bony and
+tattered, bore a strong resemblance to the poor devil sketched on the
+upper part of his shield. Now, however, thanks to the sumptuousness of
+his dress, the knight recalls the second picture on his shield. From the
+pommel of his saddle hung a Venetian casque, which he had doffed for a
+turban, a more comfortable head-gear on the route. A long Dalmatic of
+light material, thrown over his rich armor, kept the latter from being
+heated in the burning rays of the sun. Of his poor equipment of yore,
+the Gascon preserved only his good sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith,
+and his little horse, the Sun of Glory. Surviving by the merest accident
+the perils and fatigues of the long passage, the Sun of Glory testified
+by the lustre of his coat to the good quality of the Saracen fodder,
+that he seemed to run short of as little as his master lacked
+provisions.
+
+Behind these personages followed the equerries of the Duke of Aquitaine,
+carrying his standard, his sword, his lance and his shield, on which
+William was in the habit of carrying the pictures of his mistresses, the
+ephemerous objects of his libertine whims. Accordingly, the picture of
+Azenor the Pale, replacing that of Malborgiane, now occupied the center
+of the buckler; but, with a brazen refinement of corruption, other
+medallions, representing some of his numerous other concubines,
+surrounded the image of Azenor in token of homage.
+
+The equerries led by the reins the duke's chargers, vigorous horses,
+covered and caparisoned in iron, carrying pendent from their saddles
+the several pieces of their master's armor. He could thus don his war
+harness when came the hour of battle, instead of supporting its
+oppressive weight during the long route. After the equerries came, led
+by black slaves taken from the Saracens, the mules and camels that were
+laden with the baggage and provisions of the duke. If hunger, thirst and
+fatigue decimated the masses, the noble Crusaders, thanks to their
+wealth, almost always escaped privations. One of William's camels was
+loaded with several bags of citron and large pouches filled with wine
+and with water,--inestimable commodities in a journey over the deserts.
+
+About three hundred men-at-arms constituted the cavalcade of the Duke of
+Aquitaine. These cavaliers, the only survivors of a thousand warriors
+who departed on the Crusade, now habituated to battle, inured to fatigue
+and bronzed by the sun of Syria, had long braved the dangers of the
+murderous climate. Their heavy iron armor weighed on their robust bodies
+no more than a coat of gauze. Disdain for danger, together with
+ferocity, was depicted on their savage countenances. Many among them
+bore from the pommels of their saddles, as bloody trophies, some Saracen
+head freshly severed, and suspended from the single lock of hair that
+Mohammedans keep at the top of their skulls. The cavaliers of the duke
+were armed with strong ash or aspen-tree lances ornamented with
+streaming bannerets, and double-edged long swords, besides a battle axe
+or a spiked mace hanging from their saddles. Oval bucklers, hauberks or
+steel coats-of-arms, braces, greaves, iron jambards,--of such was their
+armor. The troop was rapidly riding through the bands of stragglers,
+when a white slender hand parted the curtains of the litter beside which
+rode the duke, and a voice was heard calling:
+
+"William, I am thirsty, let me have some water!"
+
+"Azenor wishes to refresh herself!," said the noble Crusader reining in
+his horse and turning to Walter the Pennyless. "Fetch some water for my
+mistress. I know woman's impatience. Besides, the lips must not be
+allowed to languish that ask for a fresh drink or a warm kiss!"
+
+"Seigneur duke, I shall fetch the drink, do you take care of the kiss,"
+retorted the adventurer, turning his horse's head toward the baggage,
+while, stooping down on his horse, the duke pushed his head under the
+curtain.
+
+"Oh, William, only the other day my lips were white and frozen. The fire
+of your kisses has returned to them their reddish hue."
+
+"Which proves that I can perform as great prodigies as you, my beautiful
+witch."
+
+"You quit giving me that name, William. It recalls the days I spent in
+the turret of Neroweg Worse than a Wolf, whom I execrate,--days of shame
+and trial to me, and whose memory haunts me."
+
+"But you are well revenged for those days of shame. Count Neroweg is now
+poorer than the lowest of his serfs as a result of his losses at the
+gaming tables of Joppa where he met such consummate gamblers that they
+won from him five thousand gold besans, his silver plate, his baggage,
+his horses, his arms and even his sword. By Satan! I imagine I see that
+Neroweg, that Worse than a Wolf, that Count of Plouernel, so rudely
+plucked at the start of his Crusade, fighting with an old cap on for
+helmet, a stick for a lance, and for charger an ass, a goat or good
+Palestine mastiff!"
+
+"Let's drop that sad topic, and talk about yourself, who have been the
+dream of my youth. Now that I am yours, I should feel happy, and yet my
+heart is cruelly tormented. Your inconstancy makes me despair. I am
+dying with jealousy. Can it be that that infamous Perrette the Ribald
+has her share of your caresses?"
+
+"What a frisky and bold girl that Perrette is! After the siege of
+Antioch, cup in hand, her hair to the breeze----"
+
+"Be still, William, I am jealous of her!"
+
+"Poor Ribald! She must have died on the route. She never turned up again
+after that moment."
+
+"I could have strangled her with my hands, and Yolande, also!"
+
+"A ravishing girl! What a beautiful shape! A skin of satin! One
+imagines, seeing her, the Diana of old resurrected!"
+
+"You are pitiless!" replied Azenor with a tremulous voice. "I hate those
+two women."
+
+"Let others conquer Jerusalem! As to me, I'm satisfied with conquering
+German, Saxon, Bohemian, Hungarian, Wallachian, Moldavian, Bulgarian,
+Greek, Byzantine, Saracen, Syrian, Moorish and negro beauties. Yes, by
+Venus! If I am anxious to enter Jerusalem, it is for the purpose of
+capturing the handsomest of the Arabian virgins."
+
+"You bold and debauched fellow, it is not an only woman I have to fear
+for a rival! I am crazy for this man! Woe is me!"
+
+"In order to appease your anger, I shall confide to you that there is a
+whole race your jealousy has nothing to apprehend from. Heavens and
+earth! the mere sight of a woman of that one breed would make me as
+chaste as a saint, and would turn your lover into another St. Anthony!"
+
+"Of what race are you speaking?"
+
+"Of the Jews!" answered the Duke of Aquitaine with a look of disgust.
+"Oh, when I had all the Jews and Jewesses exterminated from my
+seigniories, not one woman of that accursed species escaped the torture,
+and death!"
+
+"Whence do you gather such a rage against those wretched people? What
+harm have they done you? You have shown yourself cruel towards them,"
+said Azenor the Pale with a slight tremor in her voice.
+
+"Blood of Christ! See me take a Jewess for mistress! a Jewess!" replied
+the duke, trembling anew. An instant later, wishing no doubt to
+disengage himself from the thoughts that haunted him, William cried out
+joyfully: "To the devil with the Jews, and long live Love! A sweet
+kiss, my charmer! A conversation on those infernal people leaves me an
+after-taste of sulphur and brimstone, as if I had tasted the kitchen of
+Satan! Let mine be the ambrosia of your kisses, of your passionate
+caresses, my loving one!"
+
+A few distant cries and a tumult that broke out among the duke's
+men-at-arms interrupted his conversation with Azenor. He turned his
+head, and saw Walter the Pennyless riding towards him, holding a small
+vermillion cup in the hand that was free from his horse's bridle. "What
+noise is that?" asked the duke, taking the cup and passing it to Azenor.
+
+"Seigneur duke, at the moment when your black slaves let down a pouch of
+water to fill this cup, into which I had first pressed the juice of two
+citrons and the sugar of one of the reeds found in this country and the
+marrow of which is as sweet as honey, the stragglers gathered around.
+'Water! Water! I die of thirst!' cried some; 'My wife and children are
+dying for want!' cried others. By my sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith,
+never did frogs at a mid-summer drought croak more frightfully than
+those scamps. But some of your men-at-arms soon put an end to the
+frightful croaking, by laying about with their lances. The impudence of
+that rag-tag and bob-tail crowd is inconceivable! 'Where are those clear
+fountains that you promised us at our departure from Gaul?' they yelled
+in my ears; 'where are the refreshing shades?'"
+
+"And what answer did you make, my merry Gascon, to those ignorant
+questioners?" asked the duke laughing, while Azenor, leaning out of the
+litter, was imbibing and enjoying the contents of the little vermillion
+cup.
+
+"I assumed the rude voice of my friend, Cuckoo Peter, and said to those
+brutes: 'Faith is a rich fountain that refreshes the soul. You have
+faith, ye soldiers of Christ. Dare you ask where are the shady gardens?
+Is not faith, besides a fountain, also an immense tree that spreads over
+the faithful its protecting branches? Rest yourselves, spread
+yourselves in that shade. Never will an earthly oak tree have afforded
+you a more delectable shelter under its leafy branches. Finally, if
+these various refreshments should not yet suffice you, then broil in the
+heat like fish under the sand!'"
+
+"Well answered, my worthy Gascon!" And turning to his troop, the duke
+ordered in a loud voice: "On the march, and make haste, lest the army
+capture without us the city of Marhala, where a rich booty awaits us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SERF AND SEIGNEUR.
+
+
+The cloud of dust raised by the troop of the Duke of Aquitaine was lost
+at a distance in a burning mist, whose reddish vapors were invading the
+horizon. Those among the stragglers who had resisted the fatigue, a
+consuming thirst, or painful wounds, followed haltingly, at great
+distances from one another, the road to Marhala, marked with so much
+human débris, above which flocks of vultures, for a moment frightened
+away, again leisurely flapped their wings. The last group of the
+stragglers had disappeared in the whirlwind of dust raised by the train,
+when three living creatures, a man, a woman and a child--Fergan, Joan
+the Hunchback and Colombaik--were left alone in the midst of the desert.
+Colombaik, dying with thirst, was stretched upon the sand beside his
+mother, whose sore feet, wrapped in blood-clotted rags, could no longer
+support her. On his knees beside them, his back turned to the sun,
+Fergan sought to shade his wife and child with his body. Not far from
+them, the corpses of a man and woman were in sight. An hour before the
+woman had succumbed to the agonies of childbirth, bringing forth a still
+child. The little being lay at the feet of its mother, almost shapeless,
+and already blackened and shriveled by the fiery sun. The man had been
+killed by the blow of a lance of one of the duke's men-at-arms for
+having tried to capture one of the water pouches.
+
+Joan the Hunchback, seated beside Colombaik, whose head she held upon
+her knees, wept as she muttered: "Do you no longer hear me, dear heart?
+Do you not answer me?" The tears of the poor woman left their furrows on
+the dust-covered face of the child as they dropped, and ran down his
+cheeks to the corners of his parched lips. His eyes half shut, and
+feeling his face bathed in his mother's tears, Colombaik carried his
+fingers mechanically towards his cheeks and his mouth, as if seeking to
+quench his thirst with the maternal tears. "Oh!" muttered Joan,
+observing the motions of her child, "Oh, if but my blood could recall
+you to life!" And, struck by the idea, she said to the quarryman:
+"Fergan, take your knife and open one of my veins; we may be able to
+save the child!"
+
+"I was myself thinking of letting him drink blood," answered Fergan;
+"but I am robuster than you--" and the serf stopped short, interrupted
+by the sound of a great flapping of wings above his head. He felt the
+air agitated around him, raised his eyes and saw an enormous brown
+vulture, its neck and head stripped of feathers, letting itself heavily
+down upon the corpse of the still-born child, seize the little body
+between its talons, and, carrying off its prey, rise into space emitting
+a prolonged cry. Joan and her husband, for a moment forgetful of their
+own agonies, followed with frightened eyes the circulating flight of the
+vulture, when the serf descried, approaching from afar, a pilgrim
+mounted on an ass.
+
+"Fergan," said Joan to the quarryman, whose eyes were fastened on the
+pilgrim, as he drew nearer and nearer, "Fergan, weakened as you are, if
+you lose blood for our child, you will perhaps die. I could not survive
+you. Who, then, would protect Colombaik? You can still walk and carry
+him on your shoulders. As to me, I am beyond proceeding. My bleeding
+feet refuse to carry me. Let me sacrifice myself for our child. You will
+then dig me a grave in the sand, that I be not eaten up by the vultures
+or the wild beasts."
+
+Instead of answering his wife, Fergan said to her sharply: "Joan, spread
+yourself on the ground; do not budge; pretend to be dead, as I shall. We
+are saved!" Saying which the serf threw himself down flat on his stomach
+beside his wife. Already the heavy breathing of the pilgrim's donkey was
+heard approaching. Though prodded, the beast moved slowly and with
+great effort, its legs sinking up to the knees in the sand. Its master,
+a man of tall and robust stature, was clad in a tattered brown robe,
+that fell to his feet, shod in sandals. In order to protect himself
+against the heat of the sun, he had drawn over his head like a cowl the
+tippet of his robe, which was sprinkled over with shells and bore the
+red cross of the Crusader on the left shoulder. From the donkey's
+pack-saddle hung a knap-sack, together with a large pouch of water.
+
+While drawing near the corpses of the man and the woman whose new-born
+child had just been carried off by the vulture, the pilgrim, speaking to
+himself, said in a low voice: "Dead bodies everywhere! The road to
+Marhala is paved with corpses!" Saying this he arrived near the place
+where Joan and Fergan lay motionless on the sand. "And still more dead
+bodies!" muttered the pilgrim, turning his head aside, and he kicked his
+mule with both heels to hasten its pace. Hardly had he gone a few steps,
+when, rising and springing forward with one bound, Fergan jumped on the
+crupper of the donkey, seized the traveler by the shoulders, threw him
+back and on the ground, and, placing both his knees on the pilgrim's
+chest, held him down while hurriedly calling: "Joan, there is a full
+pouch at the donkey's saddle, take it quick, and give our child to
+drink!" The courageous mother was not able to walk, but dragging herself
+on her knees and hands as far as the donkey, which had stood still after
+its master was thrown down, she succeeded in unfastening the pouch, and,
+weeping with joy she returned to her child, again dragging herself on
+her knees with the help of one hand while holding the pouch with the
+other, muttering: "Provided it is not too late, my God, and that our
+child can be recalled to life!"
+
+While Joan hastened to give her child to drink in the hope of plucking
+him from the claws of death, Fergan was engaged in a violent struggle
+with the traveler, whose traits he could not distinguish, the tippet of
+the latter's robe having wound itself completely around his head. As
+robust as the quarryman, this man made violent efforts to extricate
+himself from the embrace of the serf. "I mean you no harm," Fergan was
+saying to him, continuing to struggle with his adversary. "My child is
+dying of thirst! you have in your pouch a precious beverage; I shall
+take it in the knowledge that you would have answered with a refusal,
+had I requested you for a few drops of the water that it contains."
+
+"Oh, that I have not a single weapon to kill this dog who steals away my
+water!" groaned the pilgrim while redoubling his efforts to disengage
+himself. "In a minute I would have killed you; I would have cut you to
+pieces, vagabond!"
+
+"I know this voice!" cried out Fergan, and brusquely pulling aside the
+folds of the tippet that covered the face of the traveler, the serf
+remained dumb with astonishment. Under him lay Neroweg, Worse than a
+Wolf!
+
+The seigneur of Plouernel profiting by that moment of confusion, freed
+himself from Fergan's hold, rose, and thinking only of his pouch of
+water, cast his eyes about him. He saw a few steps away Joan, radiant
+with joy, yet tearful, on her knees near Colombaik, and holding the
+pouch which the child pressed with his two little hands, while he drank
+with avidity. He seemed to regain life in the measure that he slaked his
+consuming thirst.
+
+"That bastard is drinking up my water!" Neroweg yelled with fury. "In
+this desert, water is life," and he was about to rush upon Joan and her
+child when the quarryman, recovering from his stupor, seized the Count
+of Plouernel between his robust arms: "We are not here in your
+seigniory; you covered with iron and I naked! Here we are man to man,
+body to body! In the midst of this desert we are equals, Neroweg! I
+shall have your life, or you shall have mine. Fight for it!"
+
+A terrific struggle ensued, in the midst of the cries of Joan and
+Colombaik, who trembled for husband and for father. The seigneur of
+Plouernel was a man of redoubtable strength; but the serf, although
+weakened with privation and fatigue, drew energy from his hatred of his
+implacable enemy. A Gallic serf, Fergan was struggling with a descendant
+of the Nerowegs! The combatants swayed forward and back, silent,
+desperate, breast to breast, face to face, livid, terrible, foaming with
+rage, palpitating with a homicidal ardor, furiously pressing each other,
+under a brassy sky, in the midst of thick clouds of dust raised by their
+own feet. On their knees, their hands joined in prayer, passing
+alternately from hope to fear, Joan and Colombaik dared not approach the
+two athletes, who ever and anon reappeared through the cloud of dust,
+frightful to behold. Suddenly the thud of a heavy fall was heard,
+simultaneously with the exhausted voice of Fergan: "Woe is me! Oh, my
+wife! Oh, my child!" Fergan lay prone upon the sand, vainly battling
+against Neroweg, who, having gained the upper hand, sought to strangle
+his adversary. He held him under his left knee while raising himself by
+his right leg that he stretched out with a violent effort. At the cries
+of despair, "My wife! My child!" emitted by the serf, Colombaik ran to
+his father, threw himself flat on the ground and clinging to the bare
+and stiff leg of Neroweg, the child bit him in the calf. The sharp and
+unexpected pain drew from the Count a scream, and he turned back sharply
+towards Colombaik. Fergan, thus freed from the grasp of his seigneur,
+lost no time to spring upon his feet, and now keeping the advantage,
+succeeded in throwing Neroweg down. Calling his son to his aid, the serf
+managed to pinion the arms of the Count with a long cord that held his
+own robe at the waist, and to bind his legs with the fastenings of his
+own sandals. Feeling his strength exhausted by this desperate combat,
+Fergan, ready to faint, covered with perspiration, threw himself on the
+sand beside Joan and his son. These hastened to approach to his lips the
+pouch in which there still was some water left, while the seigneur of
+Plouernel, breathing fast and broken, shot at the quarryman looks of
+impotent rage.
+
+"We are saved!" said Fergan when he had slaked his thirst and felt his
+strength returning. "By husbanding the water still left in this pouch,
+we shall have enough to reach Marhala with. I have a provision of dates
+in my knap-sack. The ass will serve you and the child to ride on, my
+poor Joan. I can still walk. As to the seigneur of Plouernel," Fergan
+proceeded with a somber look, "he will soon need neither provision nor
+conveyance!" And rising to his feet, while his wife and child followed
+his movements with uneasy eyes, the serf approached Neroweg. The
+seigneur, still stretched upon the sand, writhed in his bands, tugging
+to burst them; then, exhausted by his idle efforts, he lay motionless.
+"Do you recognize me?" asked the serf, crossing his arms on his breast,
+and looking down upon the fettered seigneur of Plouernel; "Do you
+recognize me? In Gaul you were my seigneur, I your serf. I am the
+grandson of Den-Brao the Mason, whom your grandfather, Neroweg IV,
+killed of hunger in the subterranean donjon of Plouernel. I am a
+relative of Bezenecq the Rich, who died under the torture, in the
+presence of his own daughter, herself going crazy with fear, and dying
+at the very moment when I was rescuing her from her cell. I had to dig
+her grave among the rocks that lie about the issue of the secret passage
+from your castle."
+
+"By the tomb of the Saviour! Is it you, vagabond, who penetrated to the
+turret of Azenor the Pale? You helped her in her flight?"
+
+"I went to look in your den for my child, whom you see yonder."
+
+"Woe is me! I am alone in this desert, without arms, bound hand and
+foot, at the mercy of this vile serf. How comes this dog to have
+survived this long journey? A curse upon him!"
+
+"I have survived in order to avenge upon you the wrongs you have
+perpetrated upon my kin. This is not the first time that a descendant of
+Joel the Gaul locks horns with a descendant of Neroweg the Frank. Before
+us, in the course of centuries that rolled by, the ancestors of us two
+have met arms in hand. Fate so wills it. It is a war to death between
+our two races. The struggle, mayhap, will continue yet ages to come.
+Neroweg, I am the evil genius of your race, as you and yours are the
+persecutors of mine."
+
+"That I should have to meet this miserable runaway serf, and find myself
+in his power in the midst of a Syrian desert!" muttered the seigneur of
+Plouernel, a prey to superstitious terror. "Jesus, my God, have mercy
+upon me! I am a great sinner! Mighty Saint Martin, come to my help!"
+
+"Neroweg," proceeded Fergan, after a moment's reflection, "the heat
+grows suffocating, despite the sun's being veiled behind that reddish
+mist that is slowly rising heavenward. My wife and I shall not proceed
+on our journey until the moon rises. You and I shall have time to talk
+matters over, before taking leave of each other forever."
+
+The seigneur of Plouernel contemplated the serf with a mixture of
+astonishment, defiance and terror. Fergan exchanged a look with Joan,
+and sat down on the sand at a little distance from Neroweg. Indeed, the
+atmosphere was becoming so stifling that the travelers, panting for
+breath, and streaming in perspiration, yet, without making any motion,
+would have been unable to resume their journey.
+
+"In Gaul, at your seigniory, you were at once indicter, judge and
+executioner over your serfs. To-day, my seigniory is this desert! and
+you my serf! In my turn I shall be the indicter, the judge and the
+executioner. The indictment I shall draw up will be the recital of my
+journey. You may then, perhaps, understand the horror that you,
+seigneurs, inspire your serfs with, when you will have learned the
+dangers that we brave to escape your tyranny and enjoy a day of freedom.
+When we left your seigniory, we were three thousand Crusaders, men,
+women, or children. Our numbers increased daily. Thus, after we had
+traversed Gaul from west to east, from Anjou to Lorraine, we were more
+than sixty thousand when we crossed over into Germany. Other troops of
+Crusaders, no less numerous than ours, and also proceeding from Gaul, to
+the north from Flanders, to the south from Burgundy or Provence, struck
+like ourselves the route for the Orient. After traversing Hungary and
+Bohemia, skirting the Adriatic to Wallachia, and following the banks of
+the Danube, we arrived at Constantinople. Thence we entered Asia Minor,
+and from Asia Minor we made into Palestine, where we now are. What a
+journey! For poor serfs, barefooted and in rags, the road is long. To
+tramp fifteen hundred leagues in order to escape the oppression of the
+seigneurs! But unhappy serfs that we are! We flee the seigneurs, and the
+seigneurs pursue us into Palestine. The seigneur Baudoin seizes Edessa,
+and there you have a 'Count of Edessa'; Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, takes
+Tripoli, and there you have a 'Prince of Tripoli.' When we shall have
+arrived in Galilee, in Nazareth, in Jerusalem, we may live to see a
+'King of Jerusalem,' a 'Baron of Galilee,' a 'Marquis of Nazareth!'--a
+full seigniorial hierarchy."
+
+"This miserable serf has gone crazy," muttered the seigneur of Plouernel
+to himself. "He may, perhaps, forget to kill me."
+
+"Our troop left Gaul, as I said, sixty thousand strong, under the lead
+of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. On the road the inoffensive
+inhabitants were pillaged, ravaged and massacred to the cry of 'God
+wills it!' Deceived on the length of the journey and in their ignorance,
+hardly had the Crusaders left Gaul, when, at the sight of each new town
+they asked: 'Is that Jerusalem?' 'Not yet,' answered Cuckoo Peter, 'we
+must march on!' And we marched. At the start it was a joy, a delirium, a
+triumphal procession! Serfs and villeins were the masters. People fled
+and trembled at our approach. The 'soldiers of Christ' sacked or burned
+the towns, set fire to the harvests, killed the cattle that they could
+not drag along, slaughtered old men and children, raped the women and
+then cut them to pieces, heaped up booty, and from city to city repeated
+the question: 'Is not that Jerusalem, either?' 'Not yet!' answered
+Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. 'Not yet! March on, march on!'
+And we marched. The strangers, at first taken by surprise, allowed
+themselves to be pillaged and massacred by the 'soldiers of the faith.'
+But, soon apprised by report of the ravages committed by the Crusaders
+and of their ferocity, these were fought with determination, and so
+effectively were they cut down, that our troop, consisting of more than
+sixty thousand people at the start, numbered at its arrival in
+Constantinople only five or six thousand survivors. During the journey
+through Asia Minor and Palestine, that number was reduced by one-half
+through battles, the pest, hunger, thirst and fatigue. Among the
+survivors, some, seized and kept for serfs of the new seigniories of
+Edessa, Antioch or Tripoli, have been forced to cultivate these lands
+for the seigneurs under the killing sun of the Holy Land. Others, and I
+am of the number, preferring freedom to renewed servitude, risked their
+lives in order to continue their march to Jerusalem. Some expect to find
+considerable booty in the Holy City; others imagine they will gain
+Paradise by rescuing the tomb of Christ. Of them all, I alone wish to
+reach Jerusalem, in order to see the places where, now a thousand and
+odd years ago, my ancestress, Genevieve, witnessed the death of the
+young man of Nazareth. This is how was accomplished the pilgrimage of
+those thousands of serfs and villeins, whose bones mark a long trail
+from the frontiers of Gaul to this place. Fatality drove them. They were
+forced to move on, or perish on the road. Thus, myself, fleeing from
+your seigniory to escape your gaolers, would but have been exposed to
+renewed servitude had I stopped in Gaul. Beyond the frontiers, to
+separate myself from the Crusaders, and take my chances with my wife and
+child among nations in arms against the 'soldiers of the cross,' would
+have been insanity. There was no choice but to march, and march again.
+Moreover, miserable as it was, yet our vagrant life was no worse than
+the life of serfdom. That's how it happened, Neroweg, that we meet here
+in the desert where you are mine, just as in your seigniory I was
+yours,--at my will and mercy, in life and death. Do you understand?"
+
+The seigneur of Plouernel muttered in a hollow voice, expressive of
+concentrated rage: "Oh, to perish by the hand of a vile serf!"
+
+"Yes, you shall die. But I mean to make your dying hour a long-drawn
+torture. The vain-glory, the cupidity, the ambition of founding
+seigniories in the Orient, the hope of buying back your forfeitures and
+of escaping from the claws of the devil have driven you seigneurs to the
+Crusade! Oh, how stupid you were! How many of you, haughty seigneurs,
+after having sold or mortgaged your lands to the Church, are not this
+hour ruined by gaming and debauchery, and reduced to beg your way! How
+many have not been massacred or abandoned by your serfs a few miles from
+your seigniories! How many of you have not died of the pest or under the
+scimiter of the Saracen! Let this thought embitter your dying hour,
+Neroweg, you are about to die like a beggar midst the sands of Syria,
+while the Bishop of Nantes, your mortal enemy, having slipped through
+your fingers, now enjoys the largest part of your domains! At this hour
+you groan with a rage that is impotent, and my vengeance begins."
+
+"A curse upon that Italian priest whom I captured with the Bishop of
+Nantes! That Jeronimo turned my head speaking to me of the Crusade. He
+made me fear for my salvation, pointing out that the hand of God weighed
+heavy upon me by the death of one of my sons, killed by his own
+brother!"
+
+"Both your sons are dead, Neroweg! I myself felled the fratricide with a
+blow of my iron bar at the moment he was about to do violence to the
+daughter of Bezenecq the Rich! Both the wolves and the whelps of the
+seigniories are beasts of prey and of carnage. They must be
+exterminated!"
+
+"My son Gonthram did not die, and Jeronimo promised me, in the name of
+God, that if I departed for the Crusade and let the Bishop of Nantes
+free, I would insure the recovery of my son. Oh, heart-broken at the
+sight of one son dead and the other dying, I was bereft of reasoning! I
+obeyed the priest and departed for Palestine,--to my greater undoing.
+Bitterly I repent the day!"
+
+Fergan, struck at the tenderness that the seigneur of Plouernel had not
+been able to suppress at the mention of his son Gonthram, said to him:
+"You love your son?"
+
+Neroweg shot with his eyes daggers of hatred at the serf as he lay
+stretched out on the sand at the latter's feet. Two tears rolled down
+his savage face. But wishing to conceal his emotions from Fergan, he
+turned his head brusquely aside. Joan and Colombaik, having drawn near
+the quarryman, listened in silence to his dialogue with Neroweg. While
+the seigneur sought to hide his tears, the woman saw them and said in a
+whisper to her husband: "Despite his wickedness, that seigneur weeps at
+the thought of his son. His sorrow affects me."
+
+"Oh, father," put in Colombaik, joining his hands, "if he weeps, be you
+merciful! Do not harm him!"
+
+The serf remained silent a moment, then, addressing his seigneur said:
+"You are moved at the thought of your child, and yet you meant to have
+mine strangled. Do you imagine a serf has not, like you, a father's
+heart?"
+
+Neroweg answered with an outburst of sarcastic laughter.
+
+"What are you laughing about?"
+
+"I laughed as I would if I heard an ass, or other beast of burden, talk
+about his 'father's heart,'" rejoined the seigneur of Plouernel. "You
+vagabond, were I not in your power now, I would kill you for the vile
+dog that you are!"
+
+"In his eyes a serf has no more soul than a beast of burden!" repeated
+the quarryman. "Yes, this man speaks in the sincerity of his savage
+pride. He weeps for his own child. After all he is human. And yet, what
+is a serf to him? An animal without heart, reason or feeling! But why
+should I wonder? Neroweg cannot choose but share with his likes that
+opinion of our animal abjectness. Our craven attitude confirms it. Our
+conquerors are thousands, while we, the conquered, number millions, and
+yet we patiently bear the yoke. Indeed, never did more docile cattle
+march under the whip of a master, or stretch the neck to the butcher's
+knife!" After a moment's silence, Fergan resumed: "Listen, Neroweg! You
+are in my power, disarmed and fettered. I am about to fulfil a great
+act of justice by braining you with my cudgel like a wolf caught in a
+trap. It is the death that you deserve. Had I a sword, I would not use
+it on you. But what you have just said has made me think and somewhat
+spoils my pleasure. I admit it; by reason of our brutishness and
+cowardice, we deserve to be looked upon and treated like cattle by you,
+our seigneurs. 'Tis true, we are as craven as you are ferocious, but if
+our cravenness explains your criminal conduct, it does not excuse it.
+So, you shall die, Neroweg! Yes, in the name of the horrid ills that
+your race has made mine suffer, you shall die! I only wish to keep a
+memento of you, a descendant of the Nerowegs," and Fergan leaned forward
+over the seigneur of Plouernel. The latter, believing his last hour had
+come, could not restrain a cry of anguish. But the serf only pulled from
+Neroweg's robe one of the shells that it was sprinkled with, as symbols
+of a pious pilgrimage. For an instant Fergan contemplated the shell with
+a pensive mien. Joan and her son, following with astonished and uneasy
+looks the movements of the quarryman, saw him raise his ragged kilt,
+that only half-covered his thighs, and detach a long belt of coarse
+cloth that was wound around his waist. Inside the belt the quarryman
+carried several pious mementos, that had been handed down from
+generation to generation in his family, and which, before finally
+marching away with the troop of the Crusaders, he had taken with him. To
+them he added the shell he had just pulled from the robe of Neroweg VI.
+Refastening his belt, the serf cried out: "And now, justice and
+vengeance, Neroweg! I have accused you, judged and condemned you. You
+shall now die!" Looking around for his heavy and knotted staff, he
+grasped the massive implement with both his powerful hands, while his
+wife and child implored aloud: "Mercy!" The serf, however, throwing
+himself upon the seigneur of Plouernel planted one foot on the latter's
+breast: "No, no mercy! Did the Nerowegs know mercy for my grandfather,
+for Bezenecq the Rich, or for his daughter?" Saying which, the quarryman
+raised the cudgel over the head of Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf, who,
+gnashing his teeth, faced death without blanching. It would have been
+over then and there with the seigneur of Plouernel had not Joan embraced
+the knees of her husband, imploring him aloud: "For the love of your
+son, have mercy! Without the water that you took from this seigneur,
+Colombaik would have expired in the desert!"
+
+Fergan yielded to the prayers of his wife. Despite the justice of the
+reprisal, it went against his nature to kill an unarmed enemy. He threw
+his staff far away; remained for an instant gloomy and silent and then
+said to his seigneur: "It is said that despite your crimes, you and your
+likes at times remain true to your vows. Swear to me, by the salvation
+of your soul and by your faith as a knight, to respect from this moment
+the life of my wife, of my child and of myself. I do not fear you so
+long as we are alone in this desert, but if I meet you at Marhala or
+Jerusalem with the other seigneurs of the Crusade, I and mine will be at
+your mercy. You could order us burned or hanged. Swear that you will
+respect our lives, I shall then have mercy upon you, and set you free."
+
+"An oath to you, vile serf! To soil my word by passing it to you!" cried
+out Neroweg, and he added with another outburst of sardonic laughter:
+"As well might I give my word as a Catholic and a knight to the ass or
+any other beast of burden!"
+
+"This is too much!" yelled Fergan exasperated, while he ran to pick up
+his club. "By the bones of my father, you shall die!"
+
+At the very moment, however, when the serf had anew seized the cudgel,
+Joan, clinging to his arm said with terror: "Do you hear yonder growing
+noise?... It approaches.... It rumbles like thunder!"
+
+"Father," cried out Colombaik, no less horrified than his mother, "look
+yonder! The sky is red as blood!"
+
+The serf raised his eyes, and, struck with the strange and startling
+spectacle, forgot all about Neroweg. The orb of the sun, already near
+the horizon, seemed enormous and of purple hue. Its rays disappeared at
+intervals in the midst of a burning mist which it lighted with a dull
+fire, and whose reflection suddenly crimsoned the desert and the air.
+The frightful spectacle seemed to be seen through some transparent glass
+tinted with a coppery red. A furious gale, still distant, swept over the
+desert and carried with its dull and prolonged moanings a breath as
+scorching as the exhalations of a furnace. Flocks of vultures fled at
+full tilt before the approaching hurricane, scurrying over the ground or
+dropping down motionless, palpitating, or uttering plaintive squeaks.
+Suddenly the sun, ever more completely eclipsed, disappeared behind an
+immense cloud of reddish sand that veiled the desert and the sky, and
+that advanced with the swiftness of lightning, chasing before it the
+jackals and the lions, that roared with fear, and rushed by,
+terror-stricken, a few steps from Fergan and his family.
+
+"We are lost! This is a sand-spout!" cried out the quarryman.
+
+Hardly had the serf uttered these words of despair when he found himself
+enveloped by a sand cloud as fine as ashes, and dense as a fog. The
+mobile soil, hollowed, thrown up and up-turned by the irresistible force
+of the sand-spout, opened at the feet of Fergan, who, with wife and
+child, disappeared under a sand wave. The gale furrowed, beat about and
+tossed up the sands of the desert as a tempest furrows, beats about, and
+tosses up the waters of the ocean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE EMIR'S PALACE.
+
+
+The city of Marhala, like all others in the Orient, was crossed by
+narrow and sinuous streets, bordered with whitewashed houses, bearing
+narrow windows. Here and there the dome of a mosque or the top of a palm
+tree, planted in the middle of an interior court-yard, broke the
+uniformity of the straight lines formed by the terraces, that surmounted
+all the houses. Since about fifteen days, and after a murderous siege,
+the city of Marhala had fallen into the power of the army of the
+Crusaders, commanded by Bohemond, Prince of Taranto. The ramparts of the
+city, half torn down by the engines of war, presented at several places
+only a heap of ruins, from which a pestilential odor escaped, due to the
+decomposition of the Saracen bodies that were buried under the débris of
+the walls. The gate of Agra was one of the points most violently
+attacked by a column of Crusaders under the order of William IX, Duke of
+Aquitaine, and also most stubbornly defended by the garrison. Not far
+from the spot rose the palace of the Emir of Marhala, killed at the
+siege. According to the manner of the Crusaders, William had his
+standard raised over the door of the palace, of which he took
+possession.
+
+Night was falling. Maria, a large wrinkled old woman, with a beaked
+nose, protruding chin, and clad in a long Saracen pelisse, sat crouched
+upon a kind of divan, furnished with cushions, in one of the lower halls
+of the Emir's palace. She had just issued the order to some invisible
+person: "Let the creature come in, I wish to examine her!"
+
+The creature that came in was Perrette the Ribald, the mistress of
+Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. The young woman's complexion, now tanned by
+the sun, rendered still more striking the whiteness of her teeth, the
+coral tint of her lips and the fire of her eyes. The expression of her
+pretty face preserved its blithe effrontery. Her tattered costume was of
+both sexes. A turban of an old yellow-and-red material partially covered
+her thick and curly hair; a waistcoat or caftan of pale green and open
+embroidery, the spoils of a Saracen and twice too large for her, served
+her for a robe. Held at the waist by a strip of cloth, the robe exposed
+the naked legs of the Ribald, together with her dusty feet, shod in
+shoddy sandals. She carried at the end of a cane a small bundle of
+clothes. Upon entering the hall, Perrette said to the old woman
+deliberately: "I happened on the market place when an auction sale of
+booty was being conducted. An old woman, after eying me a long time,
+said to me: 'You seem to be the right kind of a girl. Would you like to
+exchange your rags for pretty clothes, and lead a merry life at the
+palace? Come with me.' I answered the old woman: 'March, I follow!
+Feastings and palaces are quite to my taste.'"
+
+"You look to me to be a wide-awake customer."
+
+"I'm eighteen years old. My name is Perrette the Ribald. That's what I
+am."
+
+"Your name is written on your brazen brow. But are you good company? Not
+quarrelsome and not jealous?"
+
+"The more I look upon you, honest matron, the surer I am of having seen
+you before. Did you not keep at Antioch the famous tavern of the Cross
+of Salvation?"
+
+"You do not deceive yourself, my child."
+
+"Ah, you must have made many a bag of gold besans in your holy brothel."
+
+"What were you doing in Antioch, my pretty child?"
+
+"I was in love ... with the King!"
+
+"You are bantering, my friend, there was no king in the Crusade."
+
+"You forget the King of the Vagabonds."
+
+"What! The chief of those bandits, of those skinners, of those eaters of
+human flesh?"
+
+"Before he became the king of the bandits, I loved him under the modest
+name of Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. Oh, what has become of him?"
+
+"You must have left him?"
+
+"One day I made a slip. I committed an infidelity towards him. I do not
+plume myself upon my constancy. I left the King of the Vagabonds for a
+duke."
+
+"A duke of beggars?"
+
+"No, no! A real duke. The handsomest of all the Crusaders, William IX."
+
+"You were the mistress of the Duke of Aquitaine?"
+
+"That was in Antioch, after the siege. William IX was crossing the
+market-place on horseback. He smiled, and reached his hand out to me. I
+placed my foot on the tip of his boot, with one jump I landed in front
+of his saddle, and he took me to his palace," and seeming to recall some
+droll incident, Perrette laughed out aloud.
+
+"Are you laughing at some of your tricks?" asked the old shrew.
+
+"On that same day when the Duke of Aquitaine took me on his horse, a
+very beautiful woman went by in a litter. At the sight of her he turned
+his horse and followed the litter. I, fearing he would drop me for the
+other woman, said to him: 'What a treasure of beauty is that Rebecca the
+Jewess, that has just gone by in a litter.' Ha! ha! ha! old lady,"
+Perrette added, breaking out anew into roars of laughter. "Thanks to
+that lucky slander, my debauché turned about and galloped off to his own
+palace, fleeing from the litter no less frightened than if he had seen
+the devil. And so it happened that, at least for that one day, I kept my
+duke, and we spent the night together."
+
+"I see. And what became of your king?"
+
+"On the same evening of that adventure, he left Antioch with his
+vagabonds on an expedition. I have not seen him since."
+
+"Well, my little one, in default of your king, you will find your duke
+back. You are here in the house of William."
+
+"Of the Duke of Aquitaine?"
+
+"After the siege of the city, William took possession of the Emir's
+palace. He gives to-night a feast to several seigneurs, the flower of
+the Crusade. Almost all old customers of my tavern in Antioch: Robert
+Courte-Heuse, Duke of Normandy; Heracle, seigneur of Polignac; Bohemond,
+Prince of Taranto; Gerhard, Count of Roussillon; Burchard, seigneur of
+Montmorency; William, sire of Sabran; Radulf, seigneur of Haut-Poul, and
+many more merry blades, without counting the gentlemen of the cloth, and
+the tonsured lovers of pretty girls, of Cyprus wine and of dice."
+
+"Is it for this one feast, you old mackerel, that you are engaging me?"
+
+"You will remain in the palace until the departure of the army for
+Jerusalem, my gentle pupil and pearl of gay girls."
+
+The entrance of a third woman interrupted the conversation between Maria
+and Perrette, who, uttering a short cry, ran to a miserably dressed
+young girl, just let in. "You here, Yolande?"
+
+Yolande preserved her beauty, but her face had lost the charm of candor,
+that rendered her so touching when she and her mother implored Neroweg
+VI not to deprive them of their patrimony. The face of Yolande,
+alternately bold and gloomy, according as she brazened out or blushed at
+her degradation, at least gave token that she was conscious of her
+infamy. At sight of Perrette, who ran towards her with friendly
+eagerness, Yolande stepped back ashamed of meeting with the queen of the
+wenches. Perrette, reading on the countenance of the noble girl a
+mixture of embarrassment and disdain, said to her reproachfully: "You
+were not quite so proud when, ten leagues from Antioch, I kept you from
+dying of thirst and hunger! Oh, you put on airs! You have become
+haughty!"
+
+"Why did I leave Gaul?" muttered Yolande with sorrowful contrition.
+"Though reduced to misery, at least I would not have known ignominy. I
+would not have become a courtezan! A curse upon you, Neroweg! By
+depriving me of the inheritance of my father, you caused my misfortune
+and shame!"
+
+The girl, unable to repress her tears, hid her face in her hands, while
+Maria, who had attentively examined her, said to Perrette in an
+undertone: "Oh, the pretty legs of that girl! Do you know Yolande?"
+
+"We left Gaul together, I on the arm of the Gibbet-cheater, Yolande at
+the crupper of her lover, Eucher. In Bohemia, Eucher was killed by the
+Bohemians who resisted us. Yolande, now a widow and alone, could not
+continue so long a journey without protection. From one protector to
+another, Yolande fell under the eyes of the handsome Duke of Aquitaine
+at Bairut in Syria. Later I found her riding on the road to Tripoli
+dying of hunger, thirst and fatigue----"
+
+"And you came to my aid, Perrette," fell in Yolande, who, having dried
+her tears, overheard the words of the queen of the wenches. "You gave me
+bread and water to appease my hunger and thirst, and you saved my life."
+
+"Come, my children, let's not have tears," remarked the matron. "Tears
+make old faces. You shall be taken to the baths of the Emir, where are
+assembled some of the most beautiful Saracen female slaves of that
+infidel dog."
+
+At that moment an old woman, the same who had introduced Perrette and
+Yolande to the hall, came in roaring with laughter, and said to the
+other shrew: "Oh, Maria, what a find! A diamond in your brothel!"
+
+"What makes you laugh that way?"
+
+"A minute ago, coming back from casting my hook on the
+market-place,"--and she broke out laughing anew. Presently she
+proceeded: "And I found there--I found there--a diamond!"
+
+"Finish your story!"
+
+But the second old hag, instead of answering, disappeared for an instant
+behind the curtain that masked the door, and immediately re-appeared
+conducting Joan the Hunchback, who led by the hand the little
+Colombaik, no less exhausted than herself from privations and fatigue.
+To all cruel hearts the poor woman, indeed, was a laughable sight. Her
+long, tangled hair, half tumbling over her face, fell upon her bare
+shoulders, dusty like her breast, arms and legs. Her clothing consisted
+of shreds, fastened around her waist with a band of plaited reeds, so
+that her sad deformity was exposed in all its nudity. Joan had stripped
+herself of the rags that constituted the bodice of her robe in order to
+wrap the feet of Colombaik, flayed to the quick by his long tramp across
+the burning sands. The quarryman's wife, sad and broken down, quietly
+followed the shrew, and daring not to raise her eyes, while the latter
+did not cease laughing.
+
+"What sort of thing is that you bring me there?" cried out the coupler.
+"What do you want to do with that monster?"
+
+"A first-class joke," replied the other, finally overcoming her
+hilarity. "We shall rig out this villein in some grotesque costume,
+leaving her hump well exposed, and we shall present this star of beauty
+to the noble seigneurs. They will split their sides with laughter.
+Imagine this darling in the midst of a bevy of pretty girls. Would you
+not call that a diamond?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! An excellent idea!" the matron rejoined, now laughing no
+less noisily than her assistant. "We shall place upon her head a turban
+of peacock feathers; we shall ornament her hump with all sorts of
+gew-gaws. Ha, ha! How those dear seigneurs will be amused. It will pay
+us well!"
+
+"That's not all, Maria. My find is doubly good. Look at this marmot. It
+is a little cupid. Everyone to his taste!"
+
+"He is certainly sweet, despite his leanness, and the dust that his
+features are stained with. His little face is attractive."
+
+Seized with compassion at the sight of Joan and her child, Yolande had
+not shared in the cruel mirth of the two shrews. But Perrette, less
+tender, had broken out into a loud roar, when, suddenly struck by a
+sudden recollection, and attentively eyeing Joan, against whom
+Colombaik, no less confused and uneasy than his mother, was cuddling
+closely, the queen of the wenches cried out: "By all the Saints of
+Paradise! Did you not inhabit in Gaul one of the villages of a
+neighboring seigniory of Anjou?"
+
+"Yes," answered the poor woman in a weak voice, "we started from there
+on the Crusade."
+
+"Do you remember a young girl and a tall scamp who wanted to carry you
+along to Palestine?"
+
+"I remember," answered Joan, regarding Perrette with astonishment; "but
+I managed to escape those wicked people."
+
+"Rather say those 'good people,' because the young woman was myself, and
+the tall scamp my lover, Corentin. We wanted to take you to the Holy
+Land, assuring you that you would be exhibited for money! Now, then, by
+the faith of the queen of the wenches! confess, Yolande, that I am a
+mighty prophetess!" added Perrette, turning to her companion. But the
+latter reproachfully answered her: "How have you the courage to mock a
+mother in the presence of her child!"
+
+These words seemed to make an impression upon Perrette. She checked her
+laughter, relapsed into a brooding silence, and seemed touched by the
+fate of Joan, while Yolande addressed the woman kindly: "Poor, dear
+woman, how did you allow yourself to be brought here with your child?
+You cannot know what place this is. You are in a house of prostitution."
+
+"I arrived in this city with a troop of pilgrims and Crusaders, who, by
+a miracle, escaped, like myself and son, a sand-spout that buried, a
+fortnight ago, so many travelers under the sands of the desert. I had
+sat down with my son under the shadow of a wall, exhausted with fatigue
+and hunger, when yonder woman," and Joan pointed to the shrew, "after
+long looking at me, said to me charitably: 'You seem to be very much
+tired out, you and your child. Will you follow me? I shall take you to a
+holy woman of great piety.' It was an unlooked-for piece of good luck to
+me," added Joan. "I put faith in the words of this woman, and I followed
+her hither."
+
+"Alack! You have fallen into a hateful trap. They propose to make sport
+of you," Yolande replied in a low voice. "Did you not hear those two
+shrews?"
+
+"I care little. I shall submit to all humiliation, all scorn, provided
+food and clothing be given to my child," rejoined Joan in accents that
+betokened both courage and resignation. "I will suffer anything upon
+condition that my poor child may rest for a while, recover himself and
+regain his health. Oh, he is now doubly dear to me----"
+
+"Did you lose his father?"
+
+"He remained, undoubtedly, buried in the sand," answered Joan, and like
+Colombaik, she could not restrain her tears at the memory of Fergan.
+"When the sand-spout broke over us, I felt myself blinded and
+suffocated. My first movement was to take my child in my arms. The
+ground opened under my feet and I lost consciousness. I remember nothing
+after that."
+
+"But how did you reach this city, poor woman?" asked the queen of the
+wenches, interested by so much sweetness and resignation. "The road is
+long across the desert, and you seem too feeble to sustain the fatigues
+of such a journey."
+
+"When I regained consciousness," answered Joan, "I was lying in a wagon,
+near an old man who sold provisions to the Crusaders. He took pity upon
+me and my child, having found us in a dying condition, half buried under
+the sand. Surely my husband perished. The old man told me he saw other
+victims near us when he picked us up. Unfortunately the mule to which
+the wagon of the charitable man was hitched died of fatigue ten leagues
+from Marhala. Compelled to remain on the road and to abandon the troop
+of pilgrims, our protector was killed trying to protect his provisions
+against the stragglers. They pillaged everything, but they did not harm
+us. We followed them, fearing to lose our way. I carried my child on my
+back when he found himself unable to walk. It was thus that we arrived
+in this city. It is a sad story!"
+
+"But your husband may yet, like you, have escaped death. Do not
+despair," observed Yolande.
+
+"If he escaped that danger, it was probably to fall into a greater, for
+the seigneur of Plouernel----"
+
+"The seigneur of Plouernel!" exclaimed Yolande interrupting Joan, "do
+you know that scoundrel?"
+
+"We were serfs in his seigniory. It is from the country of Plouernel
+that we departed for the Holy Land. Accident made us meet with the
+seigneur count shortly before the sand-spout burst upon us. My husband
+and he fought----"
+
+"And did he not kill Neroweg?"
+
+"No, he yielded to my prayers."
+
+"What, pity for Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf!" exclaimed Yolande in an
+explosion of rage and hatred. "Oh, I am but a woman! But I would have
+stabbed him to the heart without remorse! The monster!"
+
+"What did he do to you?"
+
+"He deprived me of the inheritance of my father, and, falling from shame
+to shame, I have become the companion of the queen of the wenches."
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle Yolande," remarked Perrette, returning to her cynic
+quips, "will you ever remain proud?"
+
+"I?" answered the young woman with a sad and bitter smile. "No, no!
+Pride is not allowed me. You are the queen. I am one of your humble
+subjects."
+
+"Come, come, my daughters!" said the matron. "The day declines. Go to
+the baths of the Emir. As to you, my beauty," proceeded the devilish
+shrew, addressing Joan, "as to you, we shall rig you up, we shall
+perfume you, and above all we shall have your hump radiate with
+matchless lustre."
+
+"You may do with me what you please, when you will have given my child
+wherewithal to appease his hunger and thirst. He must recover his
+strength, he must sleep. I shall not leave him one instant."
+
+"Be easy, my star of beauty, you shall remain at his side, nor shall
+your child want for anything. We shall pay due attention to him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ORGIES OF THE CRUSADERS.
+
+
+The interior court-yard of the palace of the Emir, of Marhala, presented
+that evening a fairy aspect. The court was a perfect square. Along the
+four sides ran a wide gallery of Moorish ogives carved with trifoil and
+supported by low pillars of rose-colored marble. Between each column and
+into the court, large vases of Oriental alabaster filled with flowers
+served as pedestals to gilded candelabras holding torches of perfumed
+wax. Mosaics of various colors ornamented the floor of the galleries.
+The ceilings and walls disappeared under white arabesques chiseled on a
+purple background. Soft silken divans reclined against the walls,
+pierced with several ogive doors that were half closed with curtains
+fringed with pearls. These doors led to the interior apartments. At each
+corner of the galleries, gilded cages with silver bars held the rarest
+birds of Arabia, on whose plumage were mirrored the glint of the ruby,
+the emerald and the azure sapphire. In the center of the court a jet of
+crystalline water shot up from a large porphyry vase, falling back in a
+brilliant spray, and producing the murmur of a perpetual cascade as the
+water overflowed into a broad basin, from whose marble rim rose another
+circle of large and gilded candelabras, similar to those along the
+galleries. This refreshing fountain, sparkling with light, served as
+central ornament to a low table that wound around the basin and was
+covered with a cloth of embroidered silk. On it glistened the
+magnificent gold and silver vessels, carried from Gaul by the Duke of
+Aquitaine, and the rich spoils taken from the Saracens: goblets and
+decanters studded with precious stones, large amphoras filled with wine
+of Cyprus and Greece, huge gold platters on which were displayed
+Phoenician peacocks, Asiatic pheasants, quarters of Syrian antelopes
+and mutton, Byzantine hams, heads of the wild boars of Zion, and
+pyramids of fruit and confectionery. The banquet hall had for its dome
+the starry vault. The night was calm and serene; not a breath of wind
+agitated the flames of the torches.
+
+But the tumult of an orgie resounded at this sumptuous table, around
+which, seated or reclining upon couches, feasted the guests of William
+IX. Distinguished above all and occupying the place of honor, was the
+legate of the Pope; then followed, to the right and left of the Duke of
+Aquitaine, Bohemond, Prince of Taranto; Tancred; Robert Courte-Heuse,
+Duke of Normandy; Heracle, seigneur of Polignac; Siegfried, seigneur of
+Sabran; Gerhard, Duke of Roussillon; Radulf, seigneur of Haut-Poul;
+Arnulf, sire of Beaugency; and other seigneurs of Frankish origin,
+beside the knight, Walter the Pennyless. These noblemen, already
+effeminated by Oriental habits, instead of remaining armed from dawn to
+dusk, as in Gaul, had exchanged their harness of war for long robes of
+silk. The Duke of Aquitaine, whose hair floated on a tunique of gold
+cloth, wore, after the fashion of the ancients, a chaplet of roses and
+violets, already wilted by the vapors of the feast. Azenor the Pale,
+whose lips, no longer white as of yore, but now red with life, was
+seated beside William, superbly ornamented with sparkling collars and
+bracelets of precious stones. The papal legate, clad in a robe of purple
+silk bordered with ermine, carried on his breast a cross of carbuncles
+hanging from a gold chain. Behind him, ready to wait upon his master,
+stood a young negro slave, in a short blouse of white silk with silver
+collar and bracelets ornamented with corals. The cup-bearers and
+equerries of the other seigneurs likewise attended the table. The wines
+of Cyprus and of Samos had been flowing from vermillion amphoras since
+the beginning of the feast, and flowed still, carrying away in their
+perfumed waves the senses of the guests. The Duke of Aquitaine, one arm
+encircling the waist of Azenor, and raising heavenward the gold goblet
+at which his mistress had just moistened her lips, called out: "I drink
+to you, my guests! May Bacchus and Venus be propitious to you! Honor to
+him who is deepest in love!"
+
+Heracle, the seigneur of Polignac, in turn raised his cup and answered:
+"William, Duke of Aquitaine, we, your guests, drink to your courtesy and
+your splendid banquet!"
+
+"Yes, yes!" joined the Crusaders; "let's drink to the banquet of William
+IX! Let's drink to the courtesy of the Duke of Aquitaine!"
+
+"I drink gladly," said Arnulf, the seigneur of Beaugency, in his cups,
+and, shaking his head, he added meditatively, a sentence already
+repeated by him a score of times during the repast with the tenacity of
+the maudlin: "I'd like to know what my wife, the noble lady Capeluche,
+is doing at this hour in her chamber!"
+
+"By my faith, seigneurs," said the seigneur of Haut-Poul, "as true as
+ten deniers were paid for an ass's head during the scarcity at the siege
+of Antioch, I have not in my life feasted like to-night. Glory to the
+Duke of Aquitaine!"
+
+"Let's talk of the scarcity," rejoined Bohemond, the Prince of Taranto;
+"its recollection may serve to rekindle our satisfied hunger and our
+extinguished thirst."
+
+"I ate up my shoes soaked in water and seasoned with spices," said the
+sire of Montmorency.
+
+"Do you know, noble seigneurs," put in Walter the Pennyless, "that there
+are comrades, luckier or wiser than we, who never suffered hunger in the
+Holy Land, and whose faces are fresh and ruddy?"
+
+"Who are they, valiant chevalier?"
+
+"The King of the Vagabonds and his band."
+
+"The wretches who ate up the Saracens, and regaled themselves with human
+flesh?"
+
+"Seigneurs," remarked Robert Courte-Heuse, Duke of Normandy, "we must
+not run down Saracen flesh."
+
+"These feasts on human flesh," explained the seigneur of Sabran, "are
+not at all wonderful. My grandfather once told me that, during the
+famous famine of 1033, the plebs fed on one another."
+
+"I remember one evening," added Walter the Pennyless, "when I and my
+friend Cuckoo Peter had a famous supper----"
+
+"And what has become of that Peter the Hermit?" inquired Gerhard, Duke
+of Roussillon, interrupting the Gascon adventurer. "It is now a month
+since he left us. We have not heard from him since. Is he dead or
+alive?"
+
+"He has gone to join the army of Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, who we are
+to connect with before Jerusalem," answered Walter. "But allow me, noble
+seigneurs, to tell you my tale. As I was saying, one evening, at the
+camp before Edessa, Cuckoo Peter and I, attracted by a delicious kitchen
+odor, that spread from the quarter of the King of the Vagabonds, walked
+into their quarters, and their worthy monarch made us sup on a tender
+roast, so fat, so toothsomely seasoned with saffron, salt and thyme,
+that I swear by my good sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith, Cuckoo Peter
+and I licked our chops! What a morsel!"
+
+"We should not enlarge in that manner upon abominable feasts on human
+flesh, seigneurs," said the legate; "we should entertain ourselves with
+some other subject more pleasing and pious. If you are willing, I shall
+tell you of a miracle that we are preparing for to-morrow."
+
+"What miracle, holy man?" inquired the Crusaders. "What a lucky
+windfall!"
+
+"A prodigious miracle, my children, which will be one of the most
+telling triumphs of Christianity. Peter Barthelmy, deacon of Marseilles,
+had a vision after the capture of Antioch. Saint Andrew appeared before
+him and said: 'Go into the church of my brother Peter, situated at the
+gate of the city. Dig up the earth at the foot of the main altar, and
+you will find the iron of the lance that pierced the side of the
+Redeemer of the world. That mystic iron, carried at the head of the
+army, will insure the victory of the Christians and will pierce the
+hearts of the infidels.' Peter Barthelmy having communicated to me this
+miraculous vision, I assembled six bishops and six seigneurs, the most
+pious and pure. We went to the church. The earth was dug up in our
+presence at the foot of the main altar--and--to our stupefaction----"
+
+"The iron of the holy lance was found!" interrupted William IX, in a
+roar of laughter, relapsing into his habitual incredulity.
+
+"You deceive yourself, sinner!" answered the legate. "Peter Barthelmy
+found nothing in that hole. What a misfortune that a man, who so
+passionately hates the Jews, should be incredulous to such a degree! But
+sooner or later the grace of heaven will descend upon you. Meantime I
+shall confound your incredulity. The lance's iron was not then found.
+But Peter Barthelmy, moved by a new inspiration of Saint Andrew, threw
+himself into the hole, dug in it with his nails, and finally did
+discover the iron of the holy lance. To-morrow, the deacon is to walk
+across a burning pyre, in order to demonstrate, in plain view of all,
+the virtue of that precious relic, that will render him insensible to
+the flames. The miracle is assured----"
+
+"A truce with your idle talk!" said William, interrupting the legate.
+"Halloo, there, cup-bearers, equerries, bring the dice, the checks, my
+casket of gold, and fetch in the dancers. After a banquet, there's
+nothing like a cup in one hand, the dice in the other, and beautiful
+girls in sight, dancing, naked or in gauze!"
+
+"To the game, to the game!" cried the Crusaders. "Equerries, fetch the
+dice, bring in the dancers and withdraw!"
+
+The orders of the Duke of Aquitaine were executed. The domestics of his
+household placed under the galleries and near the divans little Saracen
+tables of sculptured ivory, on which they laid the checks and dice. The
+Crusaders, in keeping with their unbridled passion for gambling, had
+provided themselves with fat purses of gold besans, now handed to them
+by their lackeys. During the tumult due to the preparations for the
+games and the removal of the seigneurs from the tables to the divans
+under the gallery, Azenor, her features distorted by the tortures of
+jealousy, convulsively grasped the arm of the Duke of Aquitaine, who at
+that moment was opening a casket filled with gold, and whispered to him
+in a hollow and excited voice: "William, you gave the order to bring in
+women hardly clad and even naked!"
+
+"That's so, my charmer, and you heard the grateful applause of my
+guests!"
+
+"Who are those women?"
+
+"Dancers, the joy of banqueters after a feast. Beauties who have nothing
+to refuse----"
+
+"Whence come they?"
+
+"From the land of marvels, India!"
+
+"Take care! Do not drive me to extremes! Hell burns in my heart! Woe is
+me! Those creatures here, and under my very eyes? You know that jealousy
+turns me crazy!"
+
+The Duke of Aquitaine answered his mistress with bantering nonchalance,
+and drew near a group of seigneurs who were looking at a troop of girls
+that had just burst into the banquet hall. Noticeable above all were
+Perrette and Yolande, the former always brazen and challenging. Already
+the Crusaders, inflamed with wine and amorousness, acclaimed the troop
+with cries of vulgar license, when Maria announced in a loud voice: "One
+moment, noble seigneurs, reserve your enthusiasm for the treasure of
+youth, of beauty and of charms that I hold under this veil and who is
+about to dazzle your charmed eyes!"
+
+Saying this, the shrew pointed to a confused form, hidden under a long
+white veil that trailed on the floor. Astonishment and curiosity calmed
+for a moment the impure ardor of the Crusaders. A deep silence ensued.
+The eyes of all sought to penetrate the semi-transparency of the veil,
+when suddenly the Duke of Aquitaine cried out: "Gentlemen, it is my
+opinion that that aster of beauty must be the reward of that cavalier
+who displayed the greatest valor at the siege of Marhala!"
+
+"Yes, yes!" responded the Crusaders. "That's right! That treasure must
+be the prize of the most valorous!"
+
+"I shall not, then, be gainsaid by any," proceeded the Duke of
+Aquitaine, "when I proclaim that Heracle, the seigneur of Polignac,
+showed himself the bravest among the brave at the siege of this city."
+Cries of approval received William's words, who went on saying:
+"Heracle, seigneur of Polignac, yours is that treasure of beauty! Yours
+alone the privilege of unveiling that radiant aster that will dazzle us
+all!"
+
+The seigneur of Polignac eagerly broke through the group of Crusaders,
+while Perrette exclaimed banteringly, affecting despair: "Oh, cruel man,
+you leave me for a miraculous beauty!" and catching the eye of William
+she cried out: "My handsome duke will console me for all my sorrows!"
+
+"By Venus!" said William in great glee, "welcome to you, my ribald! Come
+to my arms, and all sensuous pleasure along with you!"
+
+"Your Azenor will strangle me!"
+
+"The devil take Azenor! Long live Love!"
+
+During this short dialogue between the Duke of Aquitaine and Perrette,
+the seigneur of Polignac had approached the veiled woman, and raised the
+gauze that concealed from the eyes of all the prize of the most valiant.
+The surprise and discomfiture of the Crusaders were first expressed by
+mute stupor. Before them stood poor Joan the Hunchback, on her head an
+enormous red turban stuck with peacock's feathers, and a short skirt of
+the same color on her body, fastened at her waist and completely
+exposing her sad deformity. By her side, little Colombaik pressed
+himself close to his mother, and was dressed in a flowing tunic, his
+hair curled and perfumed, but his eyes and ears covered by a bandage. "I
+consent to serve as your toy, to endure all humiliations, seeing you
+have promised to provide for my child and not to separate me from him,"
+were the words of Joan to Maria before lending herself to this cruel
+buffoonery; "but I insist, in the name of my dignity as mother, in the
+name of my child's chastity, to cover his eyes and ears, that he may
+not be a witness of his mother's degradation."
+
+At sight of Joan the Hunchback, the Crusaders, first stupefied, soon
+broke out in loud peals of laughter, which were redoubled by the
+disappointment that Heracle of Polignac seemed to labor under. Still
+under the effects of his discomfiture, he gazed open-mouthed at Joan.
+
+At that moment, livid, her features distorted with jealousy, Azenor was
+running from one Crusader to another, asking where William had gone to.
+But the seigneurs, half intoxicated and unconcerned at the sufferings of
+the love-sick woman, answered her with jests. "Let's carry the hunchback
+in triumph!" exclaimed several voices in the midst of deafening peals of
+laughter.
+
+Joan paled with fear. Resigned beforehand to all sorts of jests and
+humiliations, she had not foreseen such an excess of indignity.
+Trembling and distracted, the poor woman dropped upon her knees and
+holding her child in her arms, she muttered amid sobs: "My poor child!
+Why did we not die with your father in the sands of the desert!"
+Already, despite Joan's tears, the Crusaders were seizing her, when a
+great uproar broke out in one of the chambers that opened into the
+gallery. Immediately, menacing and terrible to behold, Fergan the
+Quarryman threw himself into the middle of the hall armed with a cudgel
+and calling out loudly to Joan and Colombaik.
+
+"Fergan!" "Father!" the woman and the child cried out together. At the
+sound of their voices, Fergan rushed across the group of Crusaders
+swinging his heavy stick and distributing such hard blows before him to
+the right and to the left, that the seigneurs, stunned and frightened,
+retreated precipitately before the serf. Beating his way through them,
+Fergan joined at last his wife and child, and pressed them to his heart
+in a passionate embrace. The domestics, thrown down, trodden under foot
+and half killed by Fergan, rose out of breath and explained to the
+seigneurs: "We were standing at the gate, playing chuck-farthing, when
+this madman ran up to us from the direction of the market-place. He
+asked us whether a hunchback and her child had been taken to the palace.
+'Yes,' said we, 'and just now they are the amusement of the noble guests
+of our seigneur, the Duke of Aquitaine.' The madman then threw himself
+upon us, ran through the gate of the palace, struck us with his cane,
+and got here."
+
+"He must be hanged on the spot!" the Duke of Normandy cried out. "These
+pillars will do for a gibbet. Fetch cords!"
+
+"That bandit has dared to threaten us with his cudgel! He deserves the
+gallows!"
+
+"Death to the criminal! Death!" cried out the Crusaders, now recovered
+from their first stupor, "Death to the vagabond!"
+
+"But where is the Duke of Aquitaine? No one can be hanged here without
+his consent."
+
+"He disappeared with the queen of the wenches. But his absence should
+not delay the execution of this wretch. When he returns he will find the
+vagabond hanging high and dry. William will ratify the sentence, and
+approve it."
+
+"I shall give my belt for a rope."
+
+After embracing his wife and child, Fergan took in at a glance the
+gravity of the situation, and observed that the seigneurs were not
+armed. Profiting by their first surprise, he had his wife and child
+climb on the banquet table and ordered them to stand with their backs
+against the marble edge of the basin. Thereupon, placing himself before
+them, his heavy cudgel in hand, he made ready for a desperate defence.
+But still wishing to try a last means of escape, he addressed the
+Crusaders, who were about to assault him: "For pity's sake, let me
+depart from this palace with my wife and child!"
+
+"Listen to the bandit, praying for mercy! Quick! Let one of these
+pillars serve him for a gibbet. Swing a rope around his neck!"
+
+"You may hang me!" cried out the serf in despair, "but more than one of
+you will have to fall under my cudgel!"
+
+The threat rekindled the fury of the Crusaders. Already, braving the
+rapid swing of Fergan's cudgel, several seigneurs were rushing forward
+to seize the serf, when suddenly the braying of clarions was heard from
+afar, together with loud and nearing cries of: "To arms! The Saracens
+are upon us! To arms! To the ramparts!" Several men-at-arms of the Duke
+of Aquitaine rushed into the hall, sword in hand, and calling out: "The
+Saracens have profited by the night to surprise the city. They have
+entered near the gate of Agra by the breech that we made. They are
+fighting on the ramparts. To arms, seigneurs, to arms! Duke of
+Aquitaine, to arms!" Hardly had these men-at-arms pronounced the name of
+the duke in the midst of the increasing tumult caused by the
+announcement of this unforeseen attack, than William IX. appeared, his
+clothes in disorder, coming out of one of the chambers that opened into
+the gallery. He was pale and terror-stricken, and held in his hands a
+parchment, while he cried in a terrified voice: "A Jewess! A Jewess!
+Damnation!"
+
+"William, arm yourself!" his companions called out to him, as they
+precipitately rushed out with the men-at-arms. "The Saracens are
+attacking the city! Let's run to the ramparts! To arms!"
+
+"A Jewess!" repeated the Duke of Aquitaine with eyes fixed, his brow
+bathed in perspiration, and seeming neither to hear nor to see his
+companions in arms. Perceiving the legate of the Pope, William threw
+himself on his knees at the feet of the prelate: "Holy father, have pity
+upon me! I am damned! While I was chatting with the queen of the
+wenches, Azenor entered the chamber where we were and, holding out this
+parchment, said to me she was a Jewess, and that the parchment, written
+in Hebrew, furnished the proof. I have been a miserable sinner. Holy
+father, have pity upon me! I am damned! Mercy for my soul! Upon my knees
+I ask you for absolution!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE KING OF THE VAGABONDS.
+
+
+At dawn, the sun rose over the plain that surrounds the city of Marhala,
+surprised at night by the Saracens and defended by the Crusaders. The
+infidels, relying more on their audacity than on their numbers, perished
+almost to a man in the assault. Only a small number of prisoners were
+taken. The approaches of the breech in the ramparts, not far from the
+gate of Agra, through which the Saracens sought to surprise the city,
+disappeared under a heap of corpses. Clouds of vultures hovered over
+that abundant quarry, but dared not yet let themselves down on it. Men
+of prey were ahead of the birds.
+
+These men, wholly naked, red and dripping blood, and hideous to behold,
+went and came like geniuses of death in the midst of that field of
+carnage. They would seize the body of a Saracen, strip it of its
+clothes, roll that in a bundle, and then, kneeling over the naked
+corpse, they pried open its jaws, rigid in death, carefully felt about
+in its mouth and under its tongue; finally, with the aid of long knives,
+they would cut open the corpse's gullet, chest and bowels, whose
+intestines they then pulled out and examined. Their faces, hands and
+members streaming blood, these demons were under the command of a chief.
+He gave orders and directed their sacrilegious profanations. They called
+him their king. It was Corentin the Gibbet-cheater, become chief of the
+vagabonds. His seneschal, one-time serf of the seigniory of Plouernel,
+was the identical Bacon-cutter, who, with a blow of his pitchfork had
+thrown Garin the Serf-eater from his horse just before the latter was
+butchered by the villagers.
+
+The King of the Vagabonds and his seneschal gave token of rare
+dexterity in their shocking trade. The two had just seized, one by the
+head the other by the feet, the corpse of a young Saracen. His face, his
+rich raiment, hacked by sabre blows, the bodies of several Crusaders
+stretched on either side of him--all bespoke the fierce resistance the
+warrior must have offered. "Oh, oh!" said the King of the Vagabonds,
+"that dog must have been some chieftain, it can be seen by his
+embroidered green caftan. Great pity that his dress is so slashed to
+pieces; it might have served as a mantle for Perrette."
+
+"You still think of the Ribald?" asked the Bacon-cutter, helping
+Corentin to strip the Saracen of his clothes; "your Perrette is in the
+Paradise of the wenches, on the crupper of some canon, or in the harem
+of some emir."
+
+"Seneschal, Perrette would leave Paradise, an emir or a canon if the
+Gibbet-cheater told her to. Come. Our corpse is now naked. Make a bundle
+of the clothes. They will find purchasers in the market-place of
+Marhala. Now that we have taken the peel from this Syrian fruit," he
+added, pointing to the dead body, "let's open it. It is inside that the
+precious almonds must be looked for, such as besans of gold and precious
+stones. Give me your knife. I wish to sharpen it against mine. The blade
+of mine has been dulled on the gullet of that old Saracen yonder with
+the white beard. The devil! His cartilage was as tough as that of an old
+goat," and while his seneschal was bundling up some clothes, the King of
+the Vagabonds sharpened his knife, casting upon the corpses strewn
+around him looks of satisfied covetousness, and remarked: "That's what
+it means to get up early in the morning. After their night's fight, the
+Crusaders have gone to sleep. When they will come to plunder the dead,
+we shall be at the dice!"
+
+"Great King! It is an easy matter to rise early if one has not gone to
+bed. We arrived in time to gather the harvest on this field of carnage."
+
+"Will you, vagabonds, still reproach me for having induced you to leave
+the fortress of the Marquis of Jaffa?" replied the king, continuing to
+sharpen his knife. "Think of lying in a stronghold in order to play the
+brigand in Palestine! It was folly!"
+
+"And yet, many of those new seigneurs who have left themselves down in
+the Holy Land as dukes, marquises, counts and barons, begin everywhere,
+just as they used to in Gaul, to ply the trade of highwaymen on the
+mainroads."
+
+"With this difference, seneschal, that there are no high roads here, and
+hardly anybody to rob. One must roam over ten or twelve miles of sand or
+rocks in order to meet a few thin troops of travelers, who, instead of
+kindly allowing themselves to be plundered, like the townsmen and
+merchants of Gaul, but too often strike back, show their teeth and use
+them too."
+
+"Great King! You speak wisely. Indeed, during those two months spent
+with the Marquis of Jaffa, we made but two sorry finds. At one of these,
+by the faith of the Bacon-cutter, we were warmly curried and rudely
+beaten, and all for almost nothing."
+
+"In exchange, this fine Saracen quarry awaited us this morning at the
+gates of Marhala. Our work done, we shall take a dip in the fountain
+sheltered by yonder cluster of date trees. Thanks to the bath, we, who
+are now red as skinned eels, shall become again white as little doves,
+after which, having but to take the pick of these Saracen wardrobes, and
+our pouches well filled, we shall make our royal entry in the best
+tavern of Marhala."
+
+"Where, mayhap, you will find again your queen, tapping for the
+customers and sleeping with them."
+
+"May heaven hear you, seneschal, and may the devil grant me my prayers!
+Now, quick to work. The sun is rising. We are naked and run the risk of
+being roasted by the sun before we are through. The bath first, the
+feast afterwards."
+
+"That word 'roasting' reminds me that this young Saracen is plump and of
+good muscle. In due time, what a fine mess would not a fillet of his
+large loins and round calves make, seasoned with some aromatic herbs and
+a pinch of saffron! Do you remember, among other ragouts, the head of
+that old sahib of the mountain, boiled with a certain peppery sauce?"
+
+"Seneschal, my friend, you are altogether too talkative. Instead of
+incessantly opening your mouth, whence flow only vain words, open that
+of this Saracen, and perhaps beautiful besans of gold or diamond of
+Bossorah may roll out."
+
+It was a shocking spectacle, like the violation of a sepulchre. The King
+of the Vagabonds took the head of the corpse between his knees, while
+the Bacon-cutter tried to force open the rigid jaws of the dead body.
+Unable to do so he said to Corentin: "That dog of an infidel must have
+been in a rage at the moment of expiring. His teeth are clenched like a
+vice."
+
+"And that embarasses you, you gosling? Insert the blade of your knife
+between his teeth, flat, then turn it round. That will separate the jaws
+sufficiently to be able to insert your fingers." And while the
+Bacon-cutter was conducting his abominable researches obedient to the
+directions of Corentin, the latter remarked with a ferocious sneer: "Oh,
+ye miscreant Saracens, you have the malignity of hiding in the hollow of
+your cheeks gold pieces and precious stones, and even of swallowing
+them, to the end of depriving the soldiers of Christ of those riches!"
+
+"Nothing!" exclaimed the seneschal with disappointment and interrupting
+the king, "nothing in the cheeks and nothing under the tongue."
+
+"Have you felt carefully?"
+
+"I have felt and felt over again, everywhere. Perhaps during this
+night's battle, some foxy Crusader, like a man of experience, have
+seized the throat of this Saracen at the moment when he expired and may
+thus have caused him to spit out the gold he was hiding in his mouth.
+Provided that dog did not swallow it all down."
+
+"The scamp was capable of doing that. Feel about in his throat. After
+that we shall sound the chest and bowels." So said, so done. The two
+monsters put the corpse through a shocking butchery. Finally their
+ferocious cupidity was satisfied. After a series of revolting
+profanations, they withdrew from the bleeding intestines of the corpse
+three diamonds, a ruby and five besans of gold, small thick pieces but
+barely the size of a denier. While the two vagabonds were finishing
+their ghoulish work, black clouds of thick and nauseous smoke rose from
+a pyre, started close by, by the other vagabonds, with green branches of
+turpentine tree. These fellows, instead of disemboweling the corpses,
+burned them, in order to look among the ashes for the gold and precious
+stones which the Saracens might have swallowed. These monstrosities
+having been gone through, the vagabonds proceeded to the neighboring
+spring where they washed their bloody bodies, and donned their clothes
+again, or decked themselves with the spoils of the Saracens. The booty
+was then divided--clothes, arms, turbans, shoes--and they wended their
+steps towards the gate of Agra. At the moment of entering the city, the
+King of the Vagabonds, mounting a heap of ruins, said to his men, who
+gathered around him: "Vagabonds, my sons and beloved subjects! We are
+about to enter Marhala, with booty on back and bysantins in pocket. I
+expect, I will it, I order it, in the name of wine, dice and wenches,
+that, before leaving Marhala, we shall have become again as beggarly as
+the vagabonds that we are! Never forget our rule: 'A true vagabond,
+twenty-four hours after a pillage, must have nothing left but his skin
+and his knife.' He who keeps a denier becomes cold to the quarry. He is
+expelled from my kingdom!"
+
+"Yes, yes! Long live our King! Three cheers for wine, dice and wenches!"
+responded the bandits. "The devil take the vagabond, who, rich to-day,
+keeps for the morrow aught but his skin and his knife! Long live our
+great King, Corentin the Gibbet-cheater!"
+
+And the savage troop marched towards the gate of Agra and entered the
+city of Marhala shouting and singing: "Glory to the brave Crusaders!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE MARKET-PLACE OF MARHALA.
+
+
+Luckily disentangled from the fury of the guests of the Duke of
+Aquitaine by the nocturnal attack of the Saracens, Fergan the Quarryman
+had profited by the confusion to escape from the Emir's palace with Joan
+and Colombaik. While the Crusaders were hurrying to the ramparts of the
+gate of Agra, the serf turned his steps with wife and child, far away
+from the spot of the battle. Before sunrise, quiet reigned again in
+Marhala. Descrying one of those numerous taverns, that generally sprang
+up after the capture of a city, and were set up in some Saracen house by
+the camp-followers of the army, Fergan stepped in. To the great
+astonishment of Joan, he pulled out of his belt a gold piece, which he
+exchanged with the tavern-keeper for silver coin, to pay for his
+lodging. Once more alone with his family, the quarryman could give a
+loose to his tender feelings and relate to them how, after being
+separated from them by the sand-spout, he found himself half buried
+under the sand, and losing consciousness. In the darkness of the night
+he was shaken out of his lethargy by a sharp scratch on his shoulder. It
+was a hyena, that, pawing up the sand under which he lay, prepared to
+devour him, taking him for dead, but instantly fled seeing him sit up.
+Thus, delivered from a double danger, the serf had wandered about during
+dark, amidst the mournful yelpings of the wild beasts at their quarry
+over the corpses that they dug up. At dawn he saw, already half
+devoured, the remains of Neroweg VI.
+
+After vainly searching for Joan and his child, Fergan considered them
+lost forever, and followed the route marked out by the human bones. At
+the end of several hours' marching, he came across the corpse of some
+seigneur, to judge by the richness of his clothes, torn to shreds by the
+beasts of prey. Among the tatters was an embroidered purse full of gold.
+He appropriated it without scruple, and was soon joined by a troop of
+travelers bound for Marhala. He journeyed in their company. Upon his
+arrival in the city, and learning that several other travelers who
+escaped the disaster of the sand-spout had come in ahead of him, he
+inquired after a deformed woman with a child. A beggar, who had
+accidentally seen Joan and her son enter the palace of the Emir, gave
+him the information, and he was enabled to arrive in time to wrest them
+from the danger they were just threatened with.
+
+After a recital of his adventures, and leaving his wife and Colombaik in
+the tavern, Fergan went out at sunrise to purchase some clothing at the
+market-place, where booty was constantly sold at auction. Fearing to be
+met by some of the guests of the Duke of Aquitaine, the serf had smeared
+soot mixed with grease over his face. Rendered thus unrecognizable, he
+entered the market-place. Instead, however, of finding the place
+occupied by traffickers in booty, he saw a large gang of men hastily
+engaged in the construction of a pyre under the overseership of several
+prelates. A cordon of soldiers, placed at a distance from the pyre, kept
+the inquisitive from drawing too near. Fergan had just elbowed himself
+to the front of the mob, when a deacon, clad in black, said aloud: "Are
+there among you any strong men who wish to earn two deniers, and help
+finish the pyre quickly? They shall be paid the moment the work is
+done."
+
+"I shall help, if wanted," answered Fergan. Two deniers were worth
+earning. They would eke out his treasury.
+
+"Come," said the priest, "you seem to be a lusty fellow. The faggots
+will weigh like straws on your broad shoulders." Five or six other
+wretches, having volunteered to join Fergan, the deacon took them to the
+center of the place, where, resting upon a large bundle of trunks of
+olive trees, palmettos and dried brushes, the pyre was being erected for
+the accomplishment of the miracle announced by Peter Barthelmy, the
+Marseilles priest and possessor of the Holy Lance. This Barthelmy
+derived a large revenue from his relic by exhibiting it for money to the
+veneration of the Crusaders. Other priests, jealous of the receipts
+pocketed by the Marseillan, had assiduously backbitten his lance.
+Fearing a decline of earnings, and wishing to furnish a proof of the
+virtue of his lance, and at the same time confound his detractors, he
+had promised a miracle. Fergan set to work with ardor to earn his two
+deniers. He soon perceived that a narrow path crossed the heap of
+kindling-wood, which, about thirty feet long and raised four or five
+feet on either side, sloped down towards the path that cut it in two.
+Thus, towards the middle and for a space about two yards wide, the pyre
+offered hardly any food to the fire. After a half hour's work, Fergan
+said to the deacon: "We shall make the heap even, and fill up the gap
+that crosses it, so that the pyre may burn everywhere."
+
+"Not at all!" the deacon hastened to say. "Your work is done on this
+side. We must now set up the stake and adjust the spit."
+
+Fergan, as well as his companions, curious to know the purpose of the
+stake and spit, followed the priest. A wagon hitched to mules, had just
+dumped several beams upon the place. One of these, about fifteen feet
+high, and furnished in some places with iron rings and chains, had at
+about its center a sort of support for the feet. Fergan's helpers
+followed the instructions of the deacon, and set up the stake at one of
+the corners of the pyre where the kindling wood was well heaped. Other
+workingmen placed not far away two iron X's, intended to support an iron
+bar about eight feet long and tapering into sharp points.
+
+"Oh! oh! What a terrible looking spit!" said Fergan to the priest,
+placing the iron bar on the two X's with no little labor. "Are they
+going to roast an ox?" Instead of answering the serf, the deacon
+listened in the direction of one of the streets that ran into the place,
+and, hastily fumbling in his pockets, said to Fergan and the other men,
+while handing to each the promised wages: "Your work is done. You may
+now go. The procession is approaching."
+
+Fergan and his assistants withdrew to the mob which the file of soldiers
+was holding back from the pyre. Church songs were heard, at first from a
+distance, but drawing ever nearer, and soon the religious procession
+issued into the market-place. Monks marched at the head, after them
+clergymen carrying crosses and banners, and then, in the midst of a
+group of high dignitaries of the Church, whose mitres and gold
+embroidered copes sparkled in the sun of the Orient, came the Marseilles
+priest, Peter Barthelmy, bare-footed and robed in a white shirt. He held
+up triumphantly in his hands the holy and miraculous lance. This
+contriver of miracles, of a countenance at once sanctimonious, artful
+and sly, preceded other prelates carrying banners. Azenor the Pale came
+next, clad in a long black robe, her hands bound behind and supported by
+two monks. She had been convicted of the abominable crime of being a
+Jewess. She was convicted of this enormity, not alone by the revelation
+that, in a paroxysm of jealousy, she had made to William IX., but also
+by the testimony of the parchment that she had handed to him in order to
+dispel his doubts. In that parchment, written in the Hebrew language and
+dating several years back, the father of Azenor urged his daughter to
+die faithful to the law of Israel. A few steps behind the victim,
+William IX., the Duke of Aquitaine, his hair in disorder and covered
+with ashes, dragged himself on his naked knees in abject penitence. Clad
+in a rough sack, his feet bare and dusty like his knees, and holding a
+crucifix in his two hands, the penitent cried out ever and anon in a
+lamenting voice, while smiting his chest with his fist: "_Mea culpa, mea
+culpa!_ Lord God, have mercy upon my soul! I have committed the sin of
+the flesh with an unclean Jewess, I am damned without your grace! Oh,
+Lord, _mea culpa! mea culpa!_" On foot and in splendid raiment, the
+legate of the Pope and the archbishop of Tyre, marched on either side of
+the Duke of Aquitaine, repeating from time to time in a voice loud
+enough to be heard by the penitent:
+
+"My child in Christ, trust in the mercy of the Lord! Render yourself
+worthy of His clemency by your repentance!"
+
+"Remain faithful to your vow of chastity, you who were given to
+debauchery!"
+
+"Remain faithful to your vow of poverty, you who were given to
+prodigality and magnificence!"
+
+"Remain faithful to your vow of humility, you who were proud and
+arrogant!"
+
+"But that will not suffice! You must surrender to the Church your
+earthly riches--lands, domains, castles, slaves--to the end that the
+priests may implore the Eternal for the remission of your transgressions
+and your numerous sins!"
+
+Behind these followed a few Saracens who had been captured at the late
+night surprise of Marhala. They were led, pinioned, by soldiers. The
+King of the Vagabonds, his seneschal the Bacon-cutter and several of the
+men of their band had been joined to this escort by order of Bohemond,
+Prince of Taranto, and chief of the army, who himself closed the
+procession, accompanied by a large number of crusading seigneurs, casque
+on head and lance in hand.
+
+This funeral train marched around the market-place, surrounded by an
+ever-swelling crowd, and ranked itself before the pyre, where the stake
+and the spit were in readiness.
+
+"The miracle of the lance!" cried the crowd, impatient to see Barthelmy
+cross a flaming pyre in his shirt and without burning--"the miracle of
+the lance!"
+
+"Woe is me!" muttered William IX., redoubling the blows with which he
+was lacerating his breast. "Woe is me! I am so great a sinner that
+perhaps the Eternal will not deign to manifest His omnipotence by a
+prodigy before me!"
+
+"Be comforted, my son!" answered the papal legate. "The Eternal will
+manifest Himself in order to confirm your faith, seeing that you have
+been touched by grace, and humble yourself before His Church."
+
+"Yesterday, father, I was an unclean criminal, an infamous evildoer, a
+miserable blind man. To-day my eyes are open to the truth. I see the
+everlasting flames that await me. Have pity upon me!"
+
+"Give up all your goods to the Church, remain poor as Job, the Church
+will then intercede for your salvation," replied the legate, issuing his
+orders to his deacon to set fire to the pyre.
+
+Immediately, walking almost without danger over the length of the path
+that crossed the paling, hidden by the height of the flames kindled at
+the four sides of the pyre, Peter Barthelmy seemed in the eyes of the
+credulous multitude actually to traverse the lake of fire. The serf saw,
+across a thick cloud of smoke that helped to increase the illusion,
+Peter Barthelmy, looking as if he was wading through flames up to the
+hip, run rapidly across the full length of the pyre, from which he
+emerged again brandishing his lance. The crowd, blind and fanatic,
+clapped their hands and shouted: "A miracle! A miracle!" Shocked at the
+impudence of the friar, who so shamelessly imposed upon the credulity of
+those poor people, Fergan decided to administer to him a stinging
+lesson. Affecting to yield to religious enthusiasm, he cried out: "Peter
+Barthelmy is a saint, a great saint! Whoever can secure the smallest bit
+of his clothing, or of his blessed body, even if but one hair, will be
+delivered of all ills!" The mob received Fergan's suggestion with
+fanatic approval. The file of soldiers, that held the multitude far
+enough back from the pyre, was broken through, and the most maniacal of
+these fanatics rushed upon Peter Barthelmy at the moment when, leaving
+the pyre a few steps behind him, he was brandishing his lance. An
+incredible scene ensued thereupon, related by Baudry, archbishop of
+Dole, an eye-witness of the occurrence, as follows in his "History of
+the Capture of Jerusalem:"
+
+"When Peter Barthelmy emerged from the pyre with his holy lance, the
+crowd rushed upon him and trampled him under foot, each wishing to
+touch him and carry off a piece of his shirt. He received several wounds
+in the legs. Bits of flesh were cut from his body. His ribs were knocked
+in. His spine was fractured. He would, in our opinion, have died on the
+spot, had not Raymond, seigneur of Pelet, an illustrious cavalier,
+quickly gathered a platoon of soldiers, thrown himself with them into
+the midst of the mob, and, at the risk of his own life, saved poor Peter
+Barthelmy."
+
+After this rude lesson given the cheat, Fergan approached the group of
+soldiers that were transporting the contriver of miracles in a dying
+state to a neighboring house. "The accursed brutes! The savages!"
+murmured the Marseilles priest, gasping for breath: "Have you ever seen
+such bedeviled rascals! The idea of wishing to turn me into relics!"
+
+"It is but a condign punishment for the besotted state of mind that,
+with infamous calculation, you plunge these wretched people in," said
+Fergan leaning over Barthelmy. The Marseillan turned around with a
+sudden start, but the serf had disappeared in the crowd, and passed to
+the other side of the pyre, now fully ablaze. At one of its corners was
+Azenor, chained to the stake. Her feet rested on the tablet which the
+flames began to lick. A few steps from the victim, on his knees among
+the priests and joining them in their mortuary songs, crouched the Duke
+of Aquitaine, from time to time crying amid sobs: "Lord! Cleanse me of
+my sins! May my repentance and the just punishment of this unclean
+Jewess earn grace for me!"
+
+"Ah, William!" cried out the condemned woman with a voice still strong
+and penetrating, "I feel the heat of the flames. They are about to
+reduce my body to ashes. These flames are less consuming than those of
+jealousy. Yesterday, driven to extremity, I made certain of my
+vengeance. A few instants of suffering will rid me of life, and your
+credulous stupidity avenges me. Look at yourself now, brilliant Duke of
+Aquitaine, the sport of priests, your implacable enemies, and the dupe
+of those who laugh at your imbecile fears! If there is a hell we shall
+meet there."
+
+"Silence, you infamous and unclean beast!" cried out the legate of the
+Pope, "the flames that envelop you are as nothing to the everlasting
+fires where you are to burn through all eternity. A curse upon your
+execrable race, that crucified the Saviour of the world!"
+
+"A curse upon the Jews! Death to the Jews! Glory to God in heaven and to
+his priests on earth!" shouted the spectators.
+
+Suddenly, heart-rending screams rose above the din. Azenor the Pale,
+writhed with pain under her iron fetters as the flames, reaching her
+limbs, set her robe and long hair on fire. Presently the stake at which
+she was chained caught fire under her feet, swayed in the air for an
+instant, tumbled over into the furnace, and disappeared there with the
+victim in the midst of a wild flare of flames. The Duke of Aquitaine
+then embraced the knees of the papal legate and appealed to him
+imploringly: "Oh, my father in Christ, I vow to relinquish all my goods
+to our holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church! I vow to follow the Crusade
+barefooted in a sack! I vow to bury myself in the depths of a cloister
+upon my return to Gaul! I vow to die in the austerities of penance, to
+the end that I may obtain from God the remission of my sins and evil
+ways!"
+
+"In the name of the All-Powerful, I take cognizance of your vows,
+William IX., Duke of Aquitaine!" responded the legate in a ringing and
+solemn voice. "Only the observance of these vows can render you worthy
+of a day of celestial mercy, thanks to the intercession of the Church!"
+And the Duke of Aquitaine, bent low at the feet of the legate, his
+forehead in the dust, repeated his protestations and lamentations, while
+the King of the Vagabonds, stepping out of the file of soldiers that
+surrounded the Saracen prisoners, and accompanied by his seneschal the
+Bacon-cutter, approached the legate, saying:
+
+"Holy father in God, I have come with my seneschal and a few of my
+subjects for the purpose of spitting one of those Saracen miscreants
+over the fire. You have but to deliver the victim to me."
+
+"That belongs to Bohemond, Prince of Taranto," the legate answered the
+King of the Vagabonds, pointing with his finger to a group of crusading
+seigneurs who had just witnessed the miracle of Peter Barthelmy and the
+death of Azenor the Pale. The Prince of Taranto approached Corentin and
+speaking in a low voice led him to the side where the iron spit lay
+placed on the iron X's. Then, drawing near the escort that surrounded
+the prisoners, the prince made a sign. The soldiers parted ranks, and
+five bound Saracens faced Bohemond and the other Crusaders. Two of these
+prisoners, a father and son, were particularly remarkable, one by his
+noble and calm face, framed in a long white beard, the other by the bold
+and juvenile beauty of his lineaments. The old man, wounded in the head
+and arm at the night attack, had torn a few pieces of his long mantle of
+white wool to bandage his and his son's wounds. Their superb scarfs of
+Tyrian wool, their silk caftans, embroidered with gold, although soiled
+with blood and dust, announced the rank of the chiefs. Thanks to an
+Armenian priest, who served as interpreter, they held the following
+discourse with the Prince of Taranto, who, addressing himself to the old
+man, said:
+
+"Were you the chief of those infidel dogs who attempted to surprise the
+city of Marhala by night?"
+
+"Yes, Nazarean; you and yours have carried war into our country. We
+defend ourselves against the invaders."
+
+"By the cross on my sword! vile miscreant, dare you question the right
+of the soldiers of Christ to this land?"
+
+"The same as I inherited my father's horse and black tent, Syria belongs
+to us, the children of those who conquered it from the Greeks. Our
+conquest was not pitiless like yours. When Abubeker Alwakel, the
+successor of the Prophet, sent Yzed-Ben-Sophian to conquer Syria, he
+said to him: 'You and your warriors shall behave like valiant men in
+battle, but kill neither old men, women nor children. Destroy neither
+fruit trees nor harvests. They are presents of Allah to man. If you meet
+with Christian hermits in the solitudes, serving God and laboring with
+their hands, do them no harm. As to the Greek priests, who, without
+setting nation against nation, sincerely honor God in the faith of
+Jesus, the son of Mary, we used be to them a protecting shield, because,
+without regarding Jesus as a God, we venerate him as a great, wise man,
+the founder of the Christian religion. But we abhor the doctrine that
+certain priests have drawn from the otherwise so pure doctrine of the
+son of Mary.'"
+
+These words of the old emir, absolutely in keeping with the truth, and
+that contrasted so nobly with the cruelty of the soldiers of the cross,
+exasperated Bohemond. "I swear by Christ, the dead and resurrected God,"
+he cried out, "you shall pay dearly for these sacrilegious words!"
+
+"_Be faithful to your faith, even unto the peril of your life_, said the
+Prophet," the Saracen replied. "I am in your power, Nazarean. Your
+threats will not keep me from telling the truth. God is God!"
+
+"The truth," added emir's son, "is that you Franks have invaded our
+country, ravaging our fields, massacring our wives and children,
+profanating the corpses!"
+
+"Silence, my son!" resumed the emir in a grave voice. "Mahomet said it:
+_The strength of the just man is in the calmness of his reasoning and in
+the justice of his cause._" The young man held his peace, and his father
+proceeded, addressing the Prince of Taranto: "I told you the truth; I
+feel sorry for you if you are ignorant of, or deny it. Our people,
+separated from yours by the immensity of the seas and vast territories,
+could not harm your nation. We have respected the hermits and the
+Christian priests. Their monasteries rise in the midst of the fertile
+plains of Syria, their basilicas glisten in our cities beside our
+mosques. In the name of Abraham, the father of us all--Musselmen, Jews
+and Christians--we have welcomed like brothers your pilgrims, who came
+to Jerusalem to worship the sepulchre of Jesus, and his wise men. The
+Christians exercised their religion in peace, for Allah, the God of the
+Prophet, said through the mouth of Mahomet, the Prophet of God: _Injure
+no one on account of his religion_. But our mildness has emboldened your
+priests. They have incited the Christians against us; they have outraged
+our creed, pretending theirs alone is true and that Satan inspired our
+prayers. We long remained patient. A thousand times the stronger in
+numbers, we could have exterminated the Christians. We limited ourselves
+to imprisoning them. Those of your priests who outraged us and sowed
+discord in our country, were punished according to our laws. You then
+came by the thousands from beyond the seas, you invaded our country, and
+you have let loose upon us the most atrocious ills. Our priests then
+preached a holy war; we have defended ourselves, and we shall continue
+to do so. God protects the faithful!"
+
+The calmness of the old emir exasperated the Crusaders. He would have
+been torn to pieces, together with his son and companions, but for the
+intervention of Bohemond, who with gesture and voice reined in the
+seigneurs. Addressing himself thereupon to the Saracen by means of the
+interpreter, he said: "You deserve death a hundred times, but I forgive
+you!"
+
+"I shall report your generosity to my people."
+
+"Be it so! But you shall also say to them: 'The Prince governor of the
+city and the seigneurs have to-day decided in council that all Saracens,
+henceforth captured, shall be killed and roasted, to serve as meat with
+their bodies to the seigneurs as well as to the army.'"[C]
+
+The Prince of Taranto, while speaking and acting like a cannibal, was
+following the inspiration of an atrocious policy. He knew that the
+eating of human flesh inspired the Mahometans with extreme horror,
+seeing they professed for their dead a religious veneration.
+Accordingly, Bohemond expected to conjure up such fear among the
+Saracens that it would paralyze their resistance, and they would no
+longer fight, fearing to fall dead or alive in the hands of the
+soldiers of Christ, and be devoured by them.[D]
+
+At the order of the Prince of Taranto, the King of the Vagabonds seized
+the emir's son, and, while the soldiers held the other prisoners back to
+compel them to witness the revolting spectacle, the young Saracen was
+slaughtered, disembowelled, spitted and broiled over the burning embers
+of the pyre that had just been the theatre of the miracle of Peter
+Barthelmy and of the death of Azenor the Jewess; and in the presence of
+the crusading seigneurs, of the legate of the Pope and of the clergy,
+the Saracen youth was devoured by the band of Corentin the
+Gibbet-cheater, assisted by the other wretches, whom a fury of fanatical
+self-glorification drove to join the anthropophagous feast. This done,
+the father of the victim and his companions were freed from their bonds
+and set at liberty, a liberty, however, that the old man did not profit
+from. He dropped dead on the spot with grief and horror. Another Saracen
+went crazy with horror; the other two fled distracted from the fated
+city.
+
+The frightful scene was hardly over, when messengers from Godfrey of
+Boullion arrived, notifying Bohemond to depart with his troops without
+delay, and join under the walls of Jerusalem the main army of Godfrey,
+who had just begun the siege of the Holy City.
+
+Immediately the trumphets were sounded in Marhala; the cohorts formed
+themselves; and the army of the Prince of Taranto leaving a garrison
+behind in the Saracen city, set out on the march for Jerusalem, singing
+that now well-known refrain of the Crusaders, which was re-echoed in
+chorus by the mob that followed in the wake of the army:
+
+"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the object of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that
+banner, that marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost! God wills it!
+God wills it! God wills it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.
+
+
+Fergan left the city with wife and child clad in new raiment, thanks to
+the purse he had found in the desert. An ass carried their provisions--a
+large pouch of water and a bag of dates. He also took precautions of
+arming himself for defence against marauders. To drop out of the stream
+of the Crusaders would at that season have been insanity. After the
+capture of Jerusalem, large numbers of Crusaders were expected to return
+to Europe, taking ship at Tripoli on Genoese or Venetian vessels.
+Fergan's little treasure would enable him to pay for the passage of
+himself and family to either of those cities, whence he planned to cross
+Italy, return to Gaul and settle down at Laon in Picardy, where he
+confidently expected to find Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the
+Rich and joint descendant with the quarryman of Joel, the ancient Gallic
+Chief. Fergan felt a lively desire to see Jerusalem, the city where,
+over a thousand years before, his ancestress Genevieve had witnessed the
+agony of the carpenter of Nazareth, that humble artisan, that great and
+kindly sage, the friend of the slaves, of the poor and of the afflicted,
+the enemy of hypocrite priests, of the rich and of the powerful of his
+days. Joan and Colombaik alternately rode the ass when they were tired.
+The serf experienced a rare pleasure at seeing for the first time his
+wife and child properly clad, and steadily regaining the strength they
+had lost by their recent fatigues and privations.
+
+They followed the wake of the army. At its head marched a band of
+cavaliers carrying the banner of St. Peter, the disciple of Jesus.
+Behind Peter's banner came the train-bands under the command of their
+respective seigneurs, carrying the banner of each seigniory embroidered
+with coat-of-arms, or war cries, such as: "To Christ, the Victorious!"
+"To the Reign of Jesus!" The latter motto appeared on the standard of
+the Prince of Taranto. The legate of the Pope followed next, accompanied
+by the clergy; then the troops of soldiers, on foot and on horseback;
+and finally the multitude of ragged men, women and children who trailed
+after the army. Fergan journeyed with these. To the end of husbanding
+their little purse, he employed himself taking charge of the mules or
+guiding the wagons, for which he received a few deniers and his food.
+The journey from Marhala to Jerusalem was trying in the extreme. A large
+number of helpless people dropped out on the route and died of thirst,
+hunger and fatigue, and became the pray of hyenas and vultures. Thus
+their bleaching bones, together with those of so many other victims,
+traced also the route to Jerusalem. Half a day's journey from the city
+Colombaik came near dying. Thrown down by a horse, his leg was broken in
+two places. As the child suffered excruciating pains he could not be
+transported on the ass. Leaving the other stragglers to continue their
+march, Fergan was left behind with Colombaik and Joan. The soil at that
+place was arid and mountainous. The pain suffered by Colombaik was
+intolerable. Hoping to descry some habitation, Fergan climbed to the top
+of a palm tree. At a great distance off the road nestled a collection of
+peasant houses at the foot of a hill, hidden under clusters of date
+trees. Aware of the kindheartedness natural to the Saracen people, whom
+nothing but the ferocity of the Crusaders pushed to a desperate
+resistance, above all aware of the religious regard that this nation has
+for the laws of hospitality, Fergan decided to transport his son with
+the aid of Joan to one of those houses and ask for help. The decision
+was put with all the greater promptness into execution out of fear for
+the marauders and vagabonds, who, hovering at a distance, would have
+slain them for the booty.
+
+The dwellers of the little hamlet had all fled at the approach of the
+army of the Crusaders, except one Arab and his wife. Both of them, bent
+with age and seated at the threshold of their house, held their beads in
+their hands and were praying, in calm resignation awaiting death,
+certain that some soldier or other of Christ would come and pillage and
+ravage their home. The old Saracen and his mate, seeing Joan and Fergan
+approach carrying in their arms the child, who moaned piteously,
+realized that they need not fear them as enemies, and hastened forward
+to their encounter. Ignorant of the language of the travelers as these
+were of theirs, the Saracen couple exchanged a few words among
+themselves, pointing sympathetically to the child, and while the woman
+went towards a little garden, the man motioned to Fergan and Joan to
+follow him into the house. This dwelling was whitewashed without, after
+the fashion of the country; it was crowned by a terrace, and had no
+other opening than a narrow door. Two mats served for beds. After
+motioning Fergan and Joan to lay the child upon one of these and then to
+bare his leg, the host, who seemed gifted with certain surgical
+abilities, lengthily examined Colombaik's leg. He then stepped out,
+making a sign for Fergan and his wife to wait for him.
+
+"Oh, Fergan!" exclaimed Joan, kneeling beside Colombaik, "with what
+solicitude did not that Saracen and his wife look upon our child! And
+yet we are strangers to them, enemies. The Crusaders whom we follow,
+ravage their country, massacre them, torture them to death! And yet see
+with what kindness these worthy people receive us!"
+
+"It is natural. The Mohamedan priests, while preaching the sacred love
+of country and resistance to foreign oppression, also preach the holy
+laws of humanity towards God's creatures of whatever faith. Alack!
+Certain Christian priests order, and themselves set the example of, the
+extermination of those who do not share their beliefs. An atrocious
+creed!"
+
+The Arab returned with his wife. She carried in her hand a vase of
+water, some palm leaves just pulled off, and some herbs that she had
+pounded between two stones. The Saracen brought several splints of the
+length of Colombaik's leg, together with a long bandage of cloth, with
+the aid of which she bound the splints firmly around the child's leg,
+after having covered it with the crushed herbs. The leg being bandaged,
+the old Arab woman sprinkled it with fresh water, and covered the whole
+limb with the palm leaves. Colombaik felt eased as if by enchantment.
+Full of gratitude, and unable to express themselves in a tongue that was
+not theirs, Fergan and Joan kissed the hands of their hosts. A tear
+rolled down upon the aged man's long beard, and he gravely pointed to
+heaven, meaning undoubtedly to tell his guests it was God that their
+thanks were due to. He then took the ass, which had remained standing at
+the door, and led it to the stable. The old woman brought in honey,
+fresh dates, sheep's milk and a buttered roll of meal. Fergan and Joan
+felt deeply touched by such a generous hospitality. Their child's
+sufferings were momentarily abating. The old man made them understand by
+a significant gesture, opening and closing his ten fingers three times
+and pointing to the child upon the mat, that he had to remain down
+thirty days, in order no doubt that the bones of his broken leg could
+again grow together and become strong. Thanks to the solitude where this
+house was ensconced in, the period necessary for the healing of the
+child ran peacefully by. They were the happiest days the serfs had yet
+known. After having exercised his hospitality towards them without
+knowing them, the aged Arabian grew attached to Fergan, Joan and
+Colombaik, touched by the gratitude that, to the best of their ability,
+they sought to manifest, and also by the tender affection that united
+Fergan and his wife. One day he took Fergan by the hand, led him up a
+stony hill, whence he pointed to the horizon, shaking his head
+expressive of uneasiness; he then pointed towards the foot of the hill
+at the tranquil habitation where they had dwelt nearly a month. Fergan
+understanding that he was urged to stay in that retreat, looked
+astonished at the Arabian. The latter thereupon folded his arms on his
+breast, closed his eyes, and, melancholily shaking his head, pointed to
+the earth, indicating that he was old, that soon he and his wife would
+die, and that, if Fergan was so inclined, the house, the garden, and the
+little field attached to it, would be his.
+
+Fergan was but a poor serf, led to the Crusade by the urgency of
+escaping with wife and child the vengeance of his seigneur and the
+horrors of serfdom. Nevertheless, at that supreme moment, yielding
+obedience to the orders left by the Gallic chief Joel to his
+descendants, he achieved an act of self-sacrifice before which men more
+fortunately situated than himself might have recoiled. He might have
+accepted the aged Arabian's offer and ended his days free and happy in
+this retreat, in the company of his wife and child. But he was the
+depositary of a portion of the chronicles and relics of his family. He
+knew that Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich, held the
+archives of their family back to the invasion of Gaul by Cæsar, while
+himself was charged with a latter portion of safe-keeping. Some day he
+hoped to be able, in obedience to the behest of Joel, to add to those
+chronicles the recital of his own and his family's ordeals during the
+terrible period of the feudal oppression, and, in his turn, narrate the
+events they witnessed during this Crusade, one of the momentous crimes
+of Rome. Accordingly, Fergan considered it a sacred duty to make every
+effort to return to Gaul, and join his relation Gildas the Tanner in
+Laon. Moreover, since his arrival in Syria, he had heard that the
+inhabitants of several large cities in Gaul, more enlightened and more
+daring than the poorer rustic plebs, were beginning to stir. He had
+heard accounts of the insurrection of several cities of Gaul against
+their seigneurs, bishops and abbots, masters of the places. Perchance,
+those bourgeois revolts might lead to revolts among the serfs of the
+field. He conceived as possible a general revolt against the hierarchy
+of Church, monarchy and seigneurs, and he considered it a crime not to
+strive to be in Gaul at that hour of uprising and general
+enfranchisement. Fergan declined the Arab's offer.
+
+July 15, 1099, arrived. Forever indelibly fixed remained that fatal date
+upon the serf's mind. Towards noon, leaning upon his mother and Fergan,
+Colombaik had been essaying his strength. For the first time in thirty
+days he had risen from his bed, and the two venerable hosts followed
+with tender solicitude the movements of the child. Suddenly the tramp of
+a horse was heard descending at a gallop the hill that rose above the
+house. The aged Saracen exchanged a few words with his wife and both
+stepped out precipitately. A few instants later they re-entered,
+accompanied by another grey-bearded Musselman covered with dust. His
+pale and disconcerted features expressed terror and despair. He spoke to
+the aged couple in abrupt words and panting for breath. Blood-stained
+bandages of linen around his right arm and leg betokened two recent
+wounds. Several times, in the midst of his excited words, the word
+"Jerusalem" was heard--the only word that the serfs could understand. As
+he spoke, fear, indignation and horror reflected themselves on the
+features of the aged Saracen and his wife, until presently their
+venerable faces were bathed in tears, and they fell upon their knees,
+moaning and raising their hands to heaven. At that moment the stranger,
+who in his pre-occupation had not noticed the serfs, recognized them by
+their clothes as Christians, emitted a cry of rage and drew his cimeter.
+Quickly rising to their feet, both the hosts ran to him, and after a few
+words, pronounced in a voice of tender reproach, the Saracen warrior
+returned his sabre to its scabbard and exchanged a few sentences with
+the aged couple. The latter seemed to conjure the stranger to remain
+with them; but he shook his head, pressed their hands in his, rushed
+out, threw himself upon his steaming horse, invoked the vengeance of
+heaven with a gesture, climbed the hill at a gallop, and vanished from
+sight. This friend of the aged couple had come to inform them of the
+capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. The recital of the massacres, the
+pillage, the unspeakable atrocities that the soldiers of Christ had
+soiled and dishonored their victims with, threw the aged couple into
+consternation. Anxious to ascertain the fact, Fergan addressed them,
+uttering the word "Jerusalem" in a sad and interrogating tone. Instead
+of answering, however, both drew brusquely away as if they extended to
+him the horror that the Crusaders inspired them with. Fergan exchanged a
+sad glance with Joan, when the host, no doubt regretting his first
+impulse, returned to the serfs, leaned over Colombaik, who had been laid
+down again, and kissed him on the forehead. Joan and Fergan,
+understanding the delicacy of the sentiment thus expressed, were moved
+to tears. The old Saracen took Fergan for one of the soldiers of that
+ferocious and impious Crusade, and deposited a kiss of pardon and
+oblivion upon the innocent brow of the child of the reputed malefactor.
+The aged Saracen then left the house with his wife.
+
+"Jerusalem has fallen into the power of the Crusaders," Fergan said to
+Joan. "I can reach the city in a few hours. I desire to go there. There
+is nothing for me to fear. I shall be back early to-morrow morning. We
+shall then decide what to do."
+
+Although uneasy at the prospect of his departure, the sweet Joan sought
+not to keep her husband back. After embracing her and entrusting to her
+his little treasury and the belt containing his family records and
+relics, Fergan left for Jerusalem. Hardly upon the road, which passed at
+quite a distance from his late retreat, he encountered a troop of
+pilgrims. They were also hastening to the holy city, whose domes,
+towers, minarets and even ramparts they began to perceive from afar
+after four hours march.
+
+That vast city formed a square a league long. The enclosure dominated
+from the west by the high mount of Zion, contained the four rocky hills
+on which Jerusalem was built in an amphitheatre,--to the east, Mount
+Moriah, on which rose the Mosque of Omar, built upon the site of the old
+Temple of Solomon; to the southeast, Mount Acra, to the north, Mount
+Bezetha; and further to the west the Mount of Golgotha, the Calvary
+where the young man of Nazareth was crucified under the eyes of Fergan's
+ancestress Genevieve. At the summit of Calvary rose the Church of the
+Resurrection, built on the very spot where Jesus died, a magnificent
+church until then religiously respected by the Saracens, together with
+its treasures, despite the war of the Crusaders. Within the church stood
+the sepulchre of Christ, the pretext for this unhallowed war. Such was
+the distant view of Jerusalem. As the travellers approached, they saw
+more distinctly, within the ramparts of walls, the outlines of
+amphitheaters of white square houses, surmounted with terraces, and here
+and yonder, standing out against the deep blue of the sky, the domes of
+mosques, the steeples of Christian basilicas, and several bouquets of
+palm trees. Not a tree was visible in the environs of the city. The
+reddish, stony and parched ground, radiated the torrid heat of the sun
+that was westerning behind the hills. In the neighborhood of the camp,
+whose tents glistened only a short distance from the ramparts, a large
+number of Crusaders were seen dead or dying of the wounds that they
+received at the sortie made by the besieged. The wounded filled the air
+with pitiful wails, vainly imploring help. All the men, not the
+able-bodied alone, but even those whose wounds allowed them to walk, had
+precipitated themselves upon the city, in order to share in the sack.
+The abandoned camp contained only corpses, the dying, horses and beasts
+of burden. As the travelers drew still nearer to the city, whose gates
+had been knocked in after the siege, a confused and formidable noise
+struck their ears. It was a frightful mixture of cries of terror, of
+rage and of desperate supplication, above which ever and anon rose the
+fanatical clamor: "God wills it! God wills it!" After staggering and
+stumbling over thousands of corpses, strewn near the approaches of the
+gate of Bezetha, Fergan arrived at the entrance of a long street that
+issued into a vast square, in the middle of which rose the marvelous
+Mosque of Omar on the very site where once stood the ancient Temple of
+Solomon. It was as if the serf had stepped into a river of blood, red
+and reeking, and carrying in its current thousands of mutilated corpses,
+heads and disjointed members.
+
+The street that Fergan stepped into belonged to the new ward, the
+richest of the city. Stately dwellings and not a few marble palaces,
+surmounted with balustraded terraces, rose on either side of this vast
+thoroughfare paved with wide slabs of stone. A furious multitude--soldiers,
+men, women and children, all belonging to the Crusade--swarmed over this
+long street, uttering ferocious yells. A young Saracen woman rushed out
+of the door of the third house to the right of Fergan. She was deadly
+pale with terror, her hair streamed behind her, and her rich clothes
+were in shreds. In her arms she carried two children, two or three years
+old. Behind her an aged man, already wounded, appeared on the threshold,
+walking backward and striving to defend her. The flow of blood covered
+his visage and clotted his long white beard, while he struggled to keep
+back two Crusaders. One of these, carrying on his left shoulder a bundle
+of costly clothes, pursued the aged Saracen with sword thrusts, and
+finally ran him through the breast, throwing him dead at the feet of the
+young mother. The second Crusader, who, no doubt disdaining to carry a
+heavy booty, had strung around his neck several gold chains pillaged in
+this house, immediately seized the young woman by the throat and rolled
+her over on a heap of corpses, while the first crushed under his
+iron-tagged heels the heads of the two children that had dropped from
+their mother's arms. At that instant, one of the women who followed the
+army hastened by, a hideous and savage-looking hag, brandishing in her
+hand the stump of a knife, red with blood. A lad, about the age of
+Colombaik, accompanied the fury. "Each one his turn," said she to the
+soldier; "leave for me those whelps of the devil, my son will dispatch
+them!" And placing the knife in the lad's hand, she added: "Cut off
+their heads, disembowel those infidel dogs!" The child obeyed the hag's
+orders and disemboweled the two little children.
+
+Further away, a band of vagabonds and wenches, drunk with wine and
+carnage, was besieging a palace that the men of Heracle, seigneur of
+Polignac, had seized. As the symbol of possession, these had raised the
+embroidered banner of their seigneur upon the terrace of the splendid
+building. After throwing a shower of stones at the soldiers of the
+seigneur of Polignac, the vagabonds and wenches assailed the soldiers
+with sticks, pikes and cutlasses, shouting hoarsely in the midst of the
+bloody melée: "Death! To the sack! This house and its riches belong to
+us as well as to the seigneurs! To the sack! Death! Death!"
+
+"Exterminate this band of vagabonds!" shouted back the soldiers,
+thrusting about them with their lances and swords. "Death to these
+jackals who mean to devour the prey of the lion!"
+
+As Fergan advanced along this street he witnessed shocking scenes. The
+sight of a gigantic soldier carrying, strung on his upright lance, three
+little children from five to six months old, was a spectacle never to be
+forgotten. Suddenly he found himself shoved hither and thither, and
+presently shut in within a circle of armed men who seemed to be arranged
+in some kind of order before the entrance of one of the most splendid
+palaces on the street. Lemon and oleander trees, planted in boxes, but
+now broken in two and upset, still ornamented the moresque balustrades
+of the terrace. The band, among which there were several women, and that
+left a wide empty space free between itself and the walls, emitted yells
+of savage impatience. Presently, the sleeves of his brown frock rolled
+back to the elbows, and his hands red with blood, a monk leaned forward
+over the balustrade of the terrace. It was Peter the Hermit, the
+companion of Walter the Pennyless. The identical Cuckoo Peter, whose
+hollow eyes glistened with savage fanaticism, now called out to the
+crowd in a hoarse voice: "My brothers in Christ, are you ready? Draw
+near and receive your share of the booty."
+
+"We are ready, holy man, and have been long waiting," answered several
+bandits; "we are losing our time here; they are pillaging elsewhere,
+holy father in God! We want our share of the booty."
+
+"Here comes your share of this great feast, my brothers in Christ. The
+vapor of the infidels' blood rises towards the Lord like an incense of
+myrrh and balsam! Let not one of the miscreants, that we are about to
+throw down to you from this terrace, escape with his life!"
+
+Peter the Hermit vanished and almost immediately the bust of a Saracen,
+clad in the purple caftan embroidered in gold, appeared above. Although
+bound hands and feet, the wild jumps of the unhappy man showed that he
+resisted with all his might the efforts of those who strove to throw him
+down into the street. A few minutes later, however, half his body had
+been forced over the balustrade. He straightened up once more, but
+immediately was hurled into space and dropped, head foremost, thirty
+feet below. A joyous clamor broke out at the man's fall, and redoubled
+when, with a dull thud, his skull struck the pavement and broke. He
+lived a few seconds longer, and strove to turn on his side while
+emitting violent imprecations. But soon, riddled with sword thrusts,
+broken with clubs and mauled with stones, there remained of him but a
+mangled lump in the midst of a pool of blood. "Father in God," cried out
+the mob, "the job is done! Hurry up! Send us another!"
+
+The hideous figure of Peter the Hermit re-appeared above the balustrade.
+He leaned his head forward and contemplated the remains of the Saracen.
+"Well done, my children!" The monk had hardly disappeared again, when
+two youths of fifteen to sixteen years, brothers no doubt, and bound
+face to face, were thrown down from the terrace. The violence of the
+fall snapped the bands that held them together. The elder was killed on
+the spot, the younger's legs were broken. For a few moments he dragged
+himself on his hands, moaning piteously and seeking to approach his
+brother's corpse. The Crusaders pounced upon these new victims. Women,
+monsters in human form, pulled out their entrails, indulged in obscene
+and infamous mutilations upon the two corpses, and throwing into the air
+the bleeding parts, cried out exultingly: "Let's exterminate the
+infidels! God wills it!"
+
+Twenty times did Peter the Hermit re-appear on the terrace, and twenty
+times were bodies thrown down over the balustrade, and torn to pieces by
+the crowd, drunk with bloodshed. Among these victims were five young
+girls and two other boys from ten to twelve years of age.
+
+All the inhabitants of Jerusalem who were captured, even those who had
+paid ransom for their lives--men, women and children--all, to the number
+of seventy thousand human beings, were thus massacred. The extermination
+lasted two days and three nights, obedient to the following order of the
+seigneur Tancred, one of the heroes of the Crusade: "_We consider it
+necessary to put to the sword without delay both the prisoners and those
+who paid ransom._"
+
+The last of the victims, cast at the mob by Peter the Hermit, were being
+massacred, when another band of Crusaders, running up from the other end
+of the street and marching towards the large square, passed by shouting:
+"The people of Tancred are pillaging the Mosque of Omar. * * * By all
+the saints of Paradise and all the devils of hell, we want our part of
+the booty!"
+
+"And we stay here amusing ourselves with corpses!" cried out the
+butchers under Peter the Hermit's terrace. "Let's on to the mosque! To
+the sack! To the sack!"
+
+Again Fergan was carried by the torrent of the crowd and arrived upon a
+spacious square littered with Saracen corpses, seeing that, after the
+assault had succeeded, the Saracens had retreated, fighting from street
+to street, and drawn themselves up before the mosque, where a last
+battle was delivered. At that place, these heroes were all killed
+defending the temple, the refuge of the women, the children and the old
+men, too feeble to fight, and who relied upon the pity and mercy of the
+vanquishers. Easier far had it been to excite the pity of a hungry tiger
+than that of the Crusaders.
+
+Several tiers of marble stairs led down to the Mosque of Omar, whose
+floor was about three feet below the level of the street. Such had been
+the butchery indulged in by the Crusaders, and so much blood had run
+down into the temple, which measured more than one thousand feet in
+circumference, that the blood, rising above the first stairs, began to
+run over into the square. The interior of the Mosque of Omar offered to
+the eye but one vast sheet of blood, still warm, and the vapor of which
+rose like a light mist above an innumerable mass of corpses, here
+wholly, yonder only partially submerged in the red lake, where heads and
+members hacked from the trunk with hatchets, were seen floating at
+large. Of the Crusaders who entered the Mosque of Omar for pillage, some
+waded in blood to their waists. The warmth of the flowing blood and the
+site of the shocking butchery made Fergan reel with dizziness. His heart
+thumped against his ribs and his strength gave way. In vain he sought
+support against one of the porphyry columns at the facade of the mosque.
+He dropped down unconscious, his legs steeped in blood.
+
+Fergan knew not how long he remained in that condition. When he regained
+consciousness it was night. The brightness of a large number of torches
+struck his eye. Religious songs, repeated in chorus by thousands of
+voices, fell upon his ears. Flanked by two files of soldiers, who
+marched in measured tread with torches in their hands, he saw a long
+procession pass by the temple. The procession wended its way to the
+Mount of Golgotha, close to the Church of the Resurrection, where stood
+the sepulchre of Jesus. At the head of the procession triumphantly
+marched the legate of the Pope, Peter the Hermit and the clergy,
+chanting praises to the All-powerful; after them the chiefs of the
+Crusaders, among them William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, clad in an old sack
+and smiting his breast. These were followed by the train-bands of the
+seigneurs, together with a multitude of soldiers, men, women, children
+and pilgrims, singing in chorus _Laudate Creator_. The crowd was so
+numerous that when the prelates and the chiefs of the Crusade, who
+headed the procession, reached the front of the Church of the
+Resurrection, the last ranks were still crowding upon each other in the
+middle of the square of the mosque. Other Crusaders marched outside of
+the two files of torch-bearing soldiers.
+
+When Fergan approached the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
+brilliantly lighted within, he heard loud roars of laughter mingled with
+maudlin imprecations. The King of the Vagabonds and his band, in company
+with their wenches, all drunk with wine and carnage, had taken
+possession of the holy place, and had begun to pillage it of its
+ornaments. At the center of the sanctuary stood Perrette the Ribald, her
+hair disheveled like a Bacchante's.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+THE COMMUNE OF LAON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES.
+
+
+For centuries Laon had for its temporal seigneur the bishop of the
+diocese, and figured from the start among the foremost cities of
+Picardy. Since the Frankish conquest, and down to the date of the events
+here narrated (1112), Laon constituted a part of the special domains of
+the kings. Clovis made himself master of the city through the treason of
+Saint Remy, who baptized that crowned bandit at Rheims. Clovis' wife,
+Clotilde, founded in the city the collegiate church of Saint Peter, and
+later Brunhild built a palace there. A bishop of Laon, Adalberon, the
+paramour of Queen Imma, was her accomplice in the poisoning of Lothair,
+the father of Louis the Indolent,--a homocidal example that was soon
+imitated upon himself by his Queen, Blanche, another adulterous
+poisoner, who, through the murder committed by her, confirmed the
+usurpation of Hugh Capet, to the injury of the last Carlovingian king.
+Charles, Duke of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis the Indolent, having
+become through the latter's death the heritor of the crown of the
+Frankish kings, took possession of Laon. Hugh Capet besieged him there,
+and, after several assaults, succeeded in capturing the city, thanks to
+the connections that Adalberon, the adulterer and poisoning bishop, had
+preserved in the place. Since then, Laon continued as a sovereign
+ecclesiastical seigniory, but always under the suzerainty of the French
+King. In the year 1112, the date of this narrative, the reigning king
+was named Louis the Lusty. As obese as, but much less indolent than his
+father, Philip I, the excommunicated lover of the handsome Berthrade who
+died in 1108, Louis the Lusty did not, like his father, submit to the
+affronts and vexations of the feudal seigneurs; he waged war to the
+knife against them to the end of extending with their spoils his own
+domains, that then took in only Paris, Melun, Compiegne, Etampes,
+Orleans, Montlhery, Puiset and Corbeil. Thus, in addition to the scourge
+of the private wars among the seigneurs, the people bent under the
+affliction of the wars of the king against the seigneurs, and of the
+Normans against the king. The Normans, the descendants of old Rolf the
+Pirate, had conquered England under their duke William. But, although
+settled down in that ultramarine country, the Kings of England preserved
+in Gaul the duchy of Normandy and Gisors, and from thence dominated the
+territory of Vexin, almost to the gates of Paris, waging incessant war
+upon Louis the Lusty. Thus Gaul continued to be ravaged by bloody
+strifes, with none other than the people, the serfs and villeins, as the
+perpetual victims. The wretched agricultural plebs, decimated by the
+execrable craze of the Crusades, that held out despite the recapture of
+Jerusalem by the Turks, found itself crushed by a double burden, their
+decreased numbers being compelled by increased labor to provide for the
+needs, the prodigalities and the debaucheries of the clergy and the
+seigneurs.
+
+The bourgeois and other townsmen, better organized, better able to
+realize their power, above all more enlightened than the serfs of the
+fields, had revolted in many cities against their lay or ecclesiastical
+seigneurs, and, by dint of daring, of energy and stubbornness, had, at
+the price of their own blood, regained their freedom and secured the
+abolition of the degrading and shameful rights that the feudal families
+had been long enjoying. A small number of cities, even without resorting
+to arms, had, by virtue of great pecuniary sacrifices, purchased their
+enfranchisement from the seigniorial rights, with round sums of money.
+Delivered from their former secular and creed servitude, the city
+populations celebrated with enthusiasm all the circumstances connected
+with their emancipation. Thus, on April 15, 1112, the bourgeois
+merchants and artisans of the city of Laon were in gala since early
+morning. From one side to the other of the streets, male and female
+neighbors called one another from their windows and exchanged gladsome
+salutations.
+
+"Well, neighbor," said one, "the bright anniversary of the inauguration
+of our Commune Hall and belfry has arrived!"
+
+"Do not mention it, neighbor; I have not slept all night! With my wife
+and children we were up till three o'clock in the morning burnishing up
+my iron casque and coat of mail. Our armed militia will add great luster
+to the ceremony. May God be praised for this great day!"
+
+"And the procession of our artisans' guilds will be no less superb!
+Would you believe it, neighbor, that I, who during all my life of a
+carpenter have not, as you may imagine, ever held a needle in my hands,
+helped my wife to sew together the stripes of our new banner?"
+
+"Thank God, the weather will be beautiful for the ceremony. Look how
+clear and brilliant the dawn is!"
+
+"Couldn't be otherwise! Such a feast could not lack good weather. I
+expect that when I shall hear for the first time the peals from our
+communal belfry every clank will make my heart bound!"
+
+These dialogues and many others, naive testimony of the joy of the
+inhabitants of Laon, took place along the length of all the streets from
+house to house, from the humblest to the richest. Almost all the
+windows, opened since the break of day, exposed to view the laughing
+faces of men, women and children, all actively engaged with preparations
+for the festivities.
+
+The gladsome stir in almost all the quarters of the city, rendered all
+the more striking the gloomy and sombre and, so to say, sullen aspect of
+a certain number of dwellings of ancient architecture, and whose gates
+were, as a rule, flanked by two turrets with pointed roofs, surmounted
+with a weather-vane. Not a chink of these dwellings, blackish with age,
+was open on this morning. They belonged to the ecclesiastical
+dignitaries of the metropolitan church, or to noble knights, who, not
+owning estates large enough to live in the country, inhabited the
+cities, and ever sided against the bourgeois and with the lay or
+ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, in Laon, these clergymen and
+knights were designated as the _episcopals_, while the inhabitants, who,
+according to the language of the day, "took the oath of the Commune,"
+were called the _communiers_. The antique turrets of the dwellings of
+the episcopals were at once a species of fortification and a symbol of
+the nobility of their origin. On that morning, these dwellings, silent
+and shut up, seemed to denote the displeasure given to the noble
+episcopals by the rejoicings of the Laonese laboring classes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE CHARTER OF LAON.
+
+
+But there were other dwellings, also flanked with turrets, besides those
+of the nobles. These others were gaily decorated, and the whiteness of
+their masonry, contrasting with the aspect of the ancient architecture
+of the nobles, to which they seemed to be annexes, bespoke a more recent
+date.
+
+One of these establishments, thus fortified only a short time since, lay
+at the corner of Exchange street, the leading mercantile thoroughfare of
+the city. The old door, whose threshold and lintels were of stone, and
+at either side of which rose two white and high turrets recently built,
+had been thrown open at the very first break of day, and several
+townsmen were seen going in and out. They came for certain instructions
+on the ceremonies. In one of the chambers of this dwelling sat Fergan
+and Joan the Hunchback. It was about twelve years since they had left
+the Holy Land. The hair and beard of Fergan, now over forty years of
+age, began to betray streaks of gray. He was no longer the serf of olden
+days--restless, savage, tattered. His features breathed happiness and
+serenity. Equipped almost wholly as a soldier, he wore a jacket of iron
+mail and a corselet of steel. He was seated near a table at which he
+wrote. Joan, clad in a robe of brown wool, and wearing on her head a
+sober bonnet, from under which a long white veil fell upon her
+shoulders, looked no less blissful than her husband. On the sweet face
+of this brave mother, once so severely tried, the expression of profound
+felicity was depicted. At the request of Fergan she had just drawn from
+an old oaken cabinet a little iron casket, which she placed upon the
+table where Fergan was writing. The casket, an inheritance from Gildas
+the Tanner, contained several parchment scrolls, yellow with the age of
+centuries, besides the several relics so dear to the family of the
+Gallic chief Joel, and among which was the silver cross of Genevieve,
+together with the pilgrim's shell that Fergan had taken from Neroweg VI
+in the desert of Syria. Fergan had just finished transcribing on a
+parchment a copy of the communal charter, under which, for the last
+three years, the city of Laon was free and led a peaceful and
+flourishing existence. The quarryman wished to join the copy of that
+charter to the archives of the family of Joel, as a witness of the
+awakening spirit of freedom of his own days, and of the inexorable
+resolution of the people to battle against the kings, the clergymen and
+the seigneurs, descendants or heritors of the Frankish conquest. For the
+last fifteen or twenty years back, other cities besides Laon, driven to
+extremities by the horrors of feudalism, had, some through insurrection,
+others through great sacrifices of money, obtained similar charters,
+under shelter of which they governed themselves like republics, similar
+to the heroic and brilliant days of Gaul's independence, centuries
+before the invasions of the Romans. The copy of the communal charter of
+Laon, the original of which, deposited in the Mayor's office, bore the
+name and signature of Gaudry, bishop of the diocese of Laon, and of
+Louis the Lusty, King of the French, ran as follows:
+
+     CHARTER OF THE COMMUNE OF LAON.
+
+     I.
+
+     All men, domiciled within the walls of the city and in its suburbs,
+     belonging to any seigneur who holds as a fief the territory which
+     they inhabit, shall swear allegiance to this Commune.
+
+     II.
+
+     Throughout the full extent of the city each shall render assistance
+     to the other, loyally and to the best of his ability.
+
+     III.
+
+     The men of this Commune shall be free holders of their goods.
+     _Neither the King, nor the Bishop, nor any other, shall be entitled
+     to make any levy upon them_, except by the judgment of their own
+     town council.
+
+     IV.
+
+     Each shall, on all occasions, observe fidelity towards those who
+     shall have taken the oath of the Commune, and shall aid them with
+     deed and advice.
+
+     V.
+
+     Within the limits of the Commune, all the men shall mutually help
+     one another, according to their power; and they shall in no wise,
+     whatever it be, suffer the seigneur, Bishop or any other, to
+     distrain any property from them, or compel them to pay imposts.
+
+     VI.
+
+     Thirteen _Councilmen_ shall be elected by the Commune. One of these
+     councilmen shall be elected _Mayor_ by the suffrage of all those
+     who shall have taken the oath of the Commune.
+
+     VII.
+
+     The Mayor and the Councilmen shall make oath to favor no person by
+     reason of friendship, and to render an equitable decision in all
+     matters, according to their powers; all others shall take the oath
+     of obedience and to sustain with arms the decisions of the Mayor
+     and Councilmen. When the bell of the belfry shall sound to assemble
+     the Commune, anyone who does not attend shall pay a fine of twelve
+     sous.
+
+     VIII.
+
+     If anyone injure a man who shall have taken the oath of the Commune
+     of Laon, a complaint being lodged with the Mayor and Councilmen,
+     they shall, after due trial, enforce justice upon the body and
+     property of the guilty party.
+
+     IX.
+
+     If the guilty party takes refuge in a fortified castle, the Mayor
+     and Councilmen shall notify the seigneur of the castle, or his
+     lieutenant. If in their opinion satisfaction shall have been
+     rendered against the guilty party, that will suffice; but if the
+     seigneur refuses satisfaction, _they shall themselves enforce
+     justice upon the property and upon the men of said seigneur_.
+
+     X.
+
+     If any member of the Commune shall have entrusted his money to some
+     one of the city, and he to whom the money has been so entrusted
+     takes refuge in some strong castle, the seigneur having been
+     notified, shall either return the money, or drive the debtor from
+     his castle. If the seigneur does neither, justice shall be enforced
+     upon his goods and his men.
+
+     XI.
+
+     Whenever the Mayor and the Councilmen shall desire to fortify the
+     city, they shall be free to do so on whatever seigneur's territory
+     it may be.
+
+     XII.
+
+     The men of the Commune shall be free to grind their corn, and bake
+     their bread wherever they please.
+
+     XIII.
+
+     If the Mayor and Councilmen of the Commune require money for the
+     use of the city, and raise a tax, they may levy the same on the
+     inheritances and property of the townsmen, and on the sales and
+     profits made in the city.
+
+     XIV.
+
+     No stranger, a copy-holder of any Church or seigneur, and
+     established _outside of the city and its suburbs_, shall be
+     included in the Commune without the consent of his seigneur.
+
+     XV.
+
+     Whosoever shall be received in this Commune shall build a house
+     within the space of one year, or shall purchase vineyards, or shall
+     bring into the city moveable property, to the end that justice may
+     be enforced, should a complaint be raised against him.
+
+     XVI.
+
+     If anyone slander the Mayor in the exercise of his functions, the
+     slanderer's house shall be demolished, or he shall pay ransom for
+     the same, or he shall deliver himself to the mercy of the
+     Councilmen.
+
+     XVII.
+
+     No one shall molest or vex the strangers of the Commune. If any
+     dare do so, he shall be deemed a violator of the Commune, and
+     justice shall be enforced upon his person and his property.
+
+     XVIII.
+
+     Whosoever shall have wounded with arms any one who, like himself,
+     shall have taken the oath of the Commune, then, unless he justifies
+     his act under oath or with witnesses, he shall lose his hand, and
+     shall pay nine livres; six for the fortifications of the city and
+     of the Commune, three for the ransom of his hand. If he is unable
+     to pay, he shall leave his hand at the mercy of the Commune.
+
+Fergan had just finished transcribing the charter, when the door of his
+room opened. Colombaik stepped in. A young and comely wife of eighteen
+years at the most accompanied him. The son of the quarryman, a fine
+strapping young man of twenty-two, united in the expression of his face
+the sweetness of his mother and the energy of his father. Like the
+latter, he also was clad half townsman half soldier. His casque of black
+steel, ribbed with shining iron, imparted a martial air to his pleasing
+and open countenance. He carried a heavy cross-bow on his shoulder. From
+his right side hung a leather holster that held the bolts needed for his
+weapon. His wife, Martine, only daughter of the old age of Gildas, the
+elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich, was of the age and endowed with the
+charms of Isoline, a victim like her father of the cupidity of Neroweg
+VI.
+
+"Father!" Colombaik cried out joyfully upon entering the room and
+alluding to his war-like outfit, "in your quality of constable of our
+bourgeois and artisan militia, do you find me worthy of figuring in the
+troop? Does Colombaik, the soldier, make you forget by his martial
+outfit Colombaik, the townsman and tanner?"
+
+"Thank heaven, Colombaik the soldier will not, I hope, have occasion to
+blot out Colombaik the tanner," put in Joan with her sweet smile, "any
+more than Fergan the constable will have occasion to blot out Fergan the
+master quarryman. You will both continue to battle, you with your
+beaters against the hides in the tannery, your father with his pick
+against the stones of his quarry. Is not that your hope and desire, dear
+Martine?" Joan added, turning to the wife of her son.
+
+"Certainly, my good mother," responded Martine. "Fortunately they are
+far behind, those evil days when the bourgeois and artisans of Laon, in
+order to escape the exactions of the bishop, of the clergymen, and of
+the knights, often had to barricade themselves in their houses and
+sustain a regular siege; and when, but too often, despite their
+resistance, their houses were entered and they were carried to the
+episcopal palace, where they were tortured for ransom. What a
+difference, my God, since we have been living under the Commune! We now
+are so free, so happy!" But Martine added with a sigh: "Oh, I regret
+that my poor father did not live to witness the change! His last moments
+would not have been saddened by the uneasiness that our future gave him.
+Seeing the terrible acts of violence indulged in by Bishop Gaudry,
+together with the nobles, against the inhabitants of Laon, acts that
+might any day have reached us as they reached so many others among our
+neighbors, my father always had before him the frightful fate of my
+uncle Bezenecq and his poor daughter Isoline!"
+
+"Be at ease, my dear wife," rejoined Colombaik; "those accursed days
+shall not return! No, no! To-day old Gaul bristles with free Communes,
+as three hundred years ago it bristled with feudal castles. The Communes
+are our fortresses! Our belfry tower is our donjon. We no longer have to
+fear the seigneurs!"
+
+"Ah, Martine, my sweet child," said Joan with deep emotion to the wife
+of her son, "happier than we, you happy youngsters will not see your
+children and your husbands enduring the horrors of servitude."
+
+"Yes, we, the bourgeois and artisans of the cities are emancipated,"
+Fergan rejoined pensively; "but serfdom presses as cruelly now as in the
+past upon the serfs of the fields. I fought, for that reason, with all
+my power, the clause in our charter that excludes from the Commune the
+serfs living outside of the village, or those who do not possess money
+enough to build a house here. Is it not to exclude them, when the
+consent of their seigneurs, or a sufficient sum with which to build a
+house in the city is required from them, who own not even their own
+arms? And yet, that sole wealth of the industrious man is equal to any
+other." Turning then to Martine: "Oh, the father of your father and of
+Bezenecq spoke like a whole-souled and wise man when, years ago, while
+vainly inciting the townsmen to the insurrections that are to-day
+breaking out in so many cities of Gaul, he aimed, not at the revolt of
+the bourgeois and artisans merely, but also at that of the serfs. Serfs
+and bourgeois united would not be long in crushing the seigniories. But
+reduced to its own forces, the task of the bourgeoisie will be long and
+arduous.... We must be prepared for fresh struggles...."
+
+"And yet, father," interposed Colombaik, "since the day when, in
+consideration of a good round sum, the bishop renounced his seigniorial
+rights and sold us our freedom for cash, has he ever dared to ride the
+high horse against us,--he, that brutal Norman warrior, who, before the
+establishment of the Commune, had the eyes of townsmen put out and often
+killed them for the mere offense of having condemned his acts of
+shameful debauchery,--he, who in his own cathedral, only four years
+ago, killed with his own hands the unhappy Bernard des Bruyeres? No, no;
+despite his wickedness, Bishop Gaudry knows full well that, if, after
+pocketing our money as a consideration for giving his consent to our
+Commune, he were to try to return to his former practices, he would pay
+dear for his perjury. Three years of freedom have taught us to prize the
+sacred boon. We would know how to defend it, arms in hand, like the
+Communes of Cambrai, Amiens, Abbeville, Noyon, Beauvais, Rheims, and so
+many others."
+
+"For all that, Colombaik," remarked Martine, "I cannot help trembling
+when I see Black John, that African giant, who once was the bishop's
+hangman, cross the streets of our city. That negro seems ever to be
+plotting some act of cruelty, like some savage beast, that but waits for
+some opportune moment to snap his chain."
+
+"Be at ease, Martine," Colombaik answered with a smile. "The chain is
+solid, no less solid than that which holds that other bandit, Thiegaud,
+the serf of the Abbey of St. Vincent, and favorite of Bishop Gaudry, who
+familiarly calls him his friend 'Ysengrin,' a name given by children to
+the companion of the wolf. But, would you believe it, mother, that
+Thiegaud, a fellow stained with all imaginable crimes, that abominable
+reprobate, yet adores his daughter."
+
+"Even the wild beasts love their young ones," answered Joan. "Did not
+Worse than a Wolf, our former seigneur, with whom your father fought
+when we were in Palestine, weep when he thought of his son?"
+
+"That's true, mother; and so it is with this other wolf Thiegaud. The
+tenant of the little farm that your father left us, my dear Martine, was
+telling me yesterday that a short time ago Thiegaud's daughter came near
+dying, and he was almost crazed with grief. Moreover the wretch is as
+jealous of the chastity of his daughter as if he himself had led a clean
+life! The scamp tried to rob us, I am sure. When our tenant mentioned
+Thiegaud's name to me it was because the fellow pretended to want to
+buy in the name of the bishop, who is a passionate hunter, as you know,
+a young colt raised on our meadow."
+
+"Take care!" said Fergan warningly. "The bishop is over head and ears in
+debt. If you sell the horse you will receive no money."
+
+"I know the fine sire! I told our tenant: 'If Thiegaud pays cash for the
+horse, sell it to him; if not, don't.' The days are gone by when the
+seigneurs had the right to buy on credit, which is to say, the right to
+buy without ever paying. To try and compel them to pay was tantamount to
+placing liberty and even life in jeopardy. To-day, however, if the
+bishop should dare rob a communier, the Commune would enforce justice
+upon the episcopals, whether they willed it or not. That's the text of
+our charter, signed, not by the bishop only, but also by King Louis the
+Lusty--a signature, 'tis true, that we paid dearly for."
+
+"We paid for it through the nose," rejoined Fergan. "That gross king
+chaffered and haggled for two days on a stretch. Our friend Robert the
+Eater was one of the communiers sent to Paris three years ago to secure
+our charter. What a gang of cut-throats make up that court! To start
+with, it was necessary to generously oil the palms of the royal
+councilors in order to dispose them in our favor. Louis the Lusty then
+wanted to have the proposed sum increased by a fourth, then by a third.
+Finally, over and above the redemption of his ancient rights of quarters
+and stabling for himself and his army, whenever he visited the city, he
+demanded the annual use of three houses, and if he did not avail himself
+of them, an equivalent of twenty livres a year, and three years in
+advance. You must admit, my children, that it is selling rather dear
+those 'rights of crown,' as they call them, monstrous rights, born of
+the iniquitous and bloody deeds of the conquest."
+
+"So it is, father," answered Colombaik; "we may well say that, in
+selling to us for their weight in silver, what they please to call their
+rights, the king and his seigneurs act like highwaymen, who put the
+dagger to your throat and say: 'I robbed you yesterday; now give me your
+purse, and I shall not rob you to-morrow.'"
+
+"It is better to yield your money than your blood," said Joan. "By dint
+of work and privation one may recover his savings, and one is at least
+freed from those fearful savages, whom I cannot think of without
+shuddering."
+
+"Moreover, father," put in Martine, "it seems to me we need all the less
+fear the return of the tyranny of the seigneur, seeing that the king
+hates them as much as we, and fights them to the knife. We hear every
+day of his wars against the large vassals, of the battles he fights with
+them, and of the provinces he plucks them of."
+
+"But, children, who profits by war? Who is it that pays the piper for
+the ravages it causes? The people. Yes, the King hates the seigneurs
+because from century to century they seized upon a large number of
+provinces, that one time belonged to the Frankish crown when it
+conquered Gaul. Yes, the King fights the seigneurs to the knife, but
+likewise does the butcher wage relentless war against the wolves who
+devour the cattle intended for the shambles. That's the reason of the
+hatred of Louis the Lusty and the prelates towards the lay seigneurs.
+Church and royalty desire to annihilate the seigneurs in order
+themselves to lead at will the plebs cattle, bequeathed to them by the
+conquest. Oh, my children, my heart is full of hope. But so long as
+serfs, artisans and bourgeois shall not stand united against their
+hereditary enemies, the future looms up before me big with new perils.
+Happier than our forefathers, we have initiated a holy struggle, our
+children will have to continue it through centuries to come."
+
+"And yet, father, are we not now living in absolute peace and
+prosperity, free from crushing imposts, governed by magistrates of our
+own choice, who have no object other than the public weal? Our city
+becomes daily more industrious and affluent. The bishop and his
+episcopals can not be hair-brained enough to seek to restore old
+conditions and assail our liberty. We have weapons wherewith to defend
+ourselves!"
+
+"My child, if we wish to preserve our franchises, we must redouble our
+vigilance and energy, and keep ourselves ever ready for the fray."
+
+"Why pre-occupy ourselves so much about the future, father? Why should
+we have to redouble our vigilance?"
+
+"Bishop Gaudry and the nobles of the city used to subject us, at their
+will and without mercy, to crushing imposts and hateful rights. We said
+to them: 'Renounce forever your rights and your annual taxes; emancipate
+us; subscribe to our Commune; we shall give you a considerable sum in
+full future payment.' Now, then, these idle people, wasteful and
+covetous, thought only of the present and accepted our offer. By this
+time, however, the money has been spent, or there is little of it left.
+They are regretting that, in the language of the story, they killed the
+goose that lay the golden eggs. They are seeking to break the contract."
+
+"What!" cried out Colombaik. "They would contemplate breaking the pact
+that they freely entered into--"
+
+"Listen to me," interposed Joan. "I do not wish to exaggerate the
+apprehensions of your father for the future. Nevertheless, I believe to
+have noticed--" but breaking off she continued: "After all, I may have
+been mistaken--"
+
+"What have you in mind, mother?"
+
+"Can it be that you have not noticed that for some time back the
+knights, the city clergy, in short, all the folks of the party of the
+bishop, whom they call the episcopals, have been deporting themselves
+with a swaggering air towards the townsmen and artisans in the streets?"
+
+"You are right, Joan," remarked Fergan pensively. "I have been struck,
+less, perhaps, by the swagger of the episcopals, than by the insolence
+of their menials. It is a grave symptom, an indication of their
+resentment."
+
+"Good! A ridiculous rancor, and nothing else!" said Colombaik smiling
+disdainfully. "Those holy canons and their noble pursuivants do not
+forgive the bourgeois for being free like themselves, and for having,
+like themselves, and when they please, turrets to their houses--a
+pleasure that I have bestowed upon myself, thanks to the finest stones
+of your quarry, father. Thus, our tannery could now sustain a siege
+against those ill-tempered episcopals. Besides, I have contrived for
+Martine a pretty little alcove in one of the turrets, and her initials,
+cut by me in copper, glisten in the weather-vane from the top of our
+turrets, just as the initials of a lady of rank."
+
+"It will, no doubt, be more than ever well to have a strong house,"
+observed Fergan. "It is not the weather-vanes on our turrets, but thick
+walls that trouble the episcopals."
+
+"They will have to become accustomed to our strong houses. If not, by
+heaven--"
+
+"No passion, Colombaik," put in the benign Joan, again interrupting the
+impetuous young man. "Your father has made the same observation that I
+did; and since the retainers of the knights look provoking, their
+masters must be near becoming so themselves. This morning's ceremony
+will surely, for more reasons than one, attract a large number of
+episcopals along the line of the procession. For heaven's sake, my
+child, no rashness!"
+
+"Do not alarm yourself, Joan," rejoined Fergan, "we are too conscious of
+our good rights and of the strength of the Commune, not to keep cool in
+sight of mere insolence. But prudence does not exclude firmness."
+
+Hardly had the quarryman pronounced these words when the door flew open,
+and a young and attractive woman entered with a pert air. She was a
+brunette, sprightly and handsomely dressed, like the rich bourgeois that
+she was. An orange-colored silk petticoat was fastened to her exquisite
+waist with a silver belt; her skirt, made of fine Arras cloth and
+bordered with marten fur, hardly reached her knees; on her black hair,
+that shone like jet, she wore a bonnet, red like her stockings, which
+set off her well-shaped calves; finally, her feet were shod in smart
+shoes of shining Morocco leather. Simonne, that was her name, was the
+wife of Ancel Quatre-Mains, a master baker, renowned throughout the city
+of Laon and even the suburbs, for the excellence of his bread, his cream
+tarts, his honey cakes, his almond wafers and other dainties that were
+confectioned in his shop. He also drove the trade of flour merchant, and
+the Commune had chosen him one of its Councilmen. Ancel
+Quatre-Mains[E]--the name was due to his prodigious quickness in
+kneading the dough--presented a singular contrast to his wife,--as calm
+and thoughtful as she was pert and giddy-headed, as chary of words as
+she was loquacious, as corpulent as she was lithesome. His physiognomy
+betokened imperturbable good-nature, coupled in his instance with a
+lively sense of justice, a generous heart, and extraordinary skill at
+his trade.
+
+Wishing to please his pretty wife, whom he loved as much as he was loved
+by her, the master baker had harnessed himself in war accoutrements. A
+large number of townsmen, until then deprived of the right to carry
+arms--a right exclusively reserved to the seigneurs, the knights and
+their pursuivants--found a pleasure and a triumph in such martial
+arrays. Ancel Quatre-Mains only slightly shared their taste; but in
+order to suit Simonne, who was greatly captivated by the military garb,
+he had put on a gobison, a species of strongly bolstered and thick
+leather corselet, that, not having been measured for him, pressed in his
+chest and caused his prominent stomach to protrude still more. On the
+other hand, his iron casque, much too large for him, kept falling over
+his eyes, an inconvenience that the worthy baker corrected from time to
+time by pushing his unlucky headgear to the back of his head. At times
+his legs also got entangled with the long sword that swung from a buff
+shoulder-belt, embroidered with red silk and silver thread by Simonne
+herself, who wished to imitate the tokens of approval bestowed by the
+noble ladies upon their gallant knights. Ancel had long been the friend
+of Fergan, who loved and esteemed him greatly. Simonne, brought up with
+Martine and slightly her senior, cherished her like a sister. Thanks to
+their close neighborhood, the two young women visited each other every
+day after the routine of their household and even trade duties had been
+attended to, because, if Martine helped Colombaik in several departments
+of his tannery, Simonne, who was no less industrious than lovable,
+leaving to Ancel and his two apprentices the care of preparing the
+bread, would confection with her own pretty hands, as white as the wheat
+flour that they handled, the delicious cakes that the townsmen and even
+the noble episcopals were so fond of.
+
+Simonne stepped in the house of her neighbor with her habitual pertness.
+But her charming face, no longer smiling and happy as usual, was now
+expressive of lively indignation, and entering a few steps ahead of her
+husband, she cried out: "The insolent wretch! As true as Ancel is called
+Quatre-Mains, I would have wished, 'pon the word of a Picardian woman,
+that I had four hands to slap her face, noble dame though she be! The
+old hag, as ugly as she is wicked and quarrelsome!"
+
+"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Fergan smiling, knowing well the nature of Simonne,
+"you, ordinarily so gay and full of laughter! You seem highly incensed,
+neighbor!"
+
+"What has happened, Simonne? Who has excited your anger to such a
+pitch?" added Martine.
+
+"Trifles," said the baker, shaking his head and answering the
+questioning looks of Fergan, Joan and Colombaik; "it is nothing, good
+neighbors."
+
+"How so?... Nothing!" cried out Simonne, turning with a start to her
+husband. "Oh! According to you such insolence must pass unperceived!"
+
+The baker again shook his head, and, profiting by the opportunity to be
+rid of his casque, that pressed him heavily, he placed it under his arm.
+"Oh! It is nothing!" proceeded Simonne, now addressing Fergan and Joan.
+"I take you for judges. You are wise and thoughtful people."
+
+"And what are we two, Martine and I?" queried Colombaik, laughing
+merrily. "So, then, you discard us?"
+
+"I do not take you for judges, neither you nor Martine, because you
+would be too much of my opinion," replied Simonne; "Master Fergan and
+his wife are not, as far as I know, suspected of being hot-heads! Let
+them decide whether I am angry at nothing," she said, shooting a fresh
+look of indignation at the baker, who, greatly incommoded by his long
+sword, had sat down, placing it across his knees after laying his casque
+on the floor. "This is what happened," Simonne proceeded: "Agreeable to
+the promise I yesterday made to Martine of coming for her this morning
+to assist at the inauguration of our belfry, Ancel and I left the house
+early. Going up Exchange street we passed before the window of the
+fortified house of Arnulf, a nobleman of Haut-Pourcin, as he styles
+himself."
+
+"I know the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin," observed Colombaik; "he is one of
+the bitterest episcopals in town."
+
+"And his wife is one of the most brazen she-devils that ever joined a
+caterwauling!" cried out Simonne. "Judge for yourselves, neighbors. She
+and her maid were standing at one of the lower windows when Ancel and I
+went by. 'Look at her,' she said in a loud voice to her maid, laughing
+obstreperously; 'look at the baker's wife, how she struts in new clothes
+with her petticoat of Lombard silk, silver belt and skirt bordered with
+marten fur! May God pardon me! To see such creatures daring to put on
+silk and rich furs like us noble ladies, instead of humbly keeping to a
+petticoat of linsey-woolsey and a skirt hemmed with cat's skin, the
+proper clothing for the base station in life of these villeins! What a
+pity! Fortunately her yellow dress is of the color of her pastry and her
+bannocks! It will serve them for ensign!'"
+
+"That's only in favor of the excellent baking of Simonne's cakes, no
+so, neighbors?" put in the baker, "because, when the bannock comes out
+of the oven, it should be yellow as gold."
+
+"See what a fool I am! I failed to take the words of the noble woman for
+a compliment!" Simonne resumed, saying: "But I answered her insolence
+plump and plain: 'The word of a Picardian woman, upon it, Dame
+Haut-Pourcin, if my petticoat is the ensign of my bannocks, your face is
+the ensign of your fifty years, despite all your cosmetics, and all your
+affectations of youth, of maidenhood and of freshness!'"
+
+"Oh!" Colombaik broke out laughing. "An excellent answer to the old
+fairy, who, indeed, is always dressing like a young girl. There you have
+the nobility! The pretty dresses of our women trouble them as much as
+the turrets of our houses. Let them split with rage!"
+
+"My answer struck home," proceeded Simonne. "The dame of Haut-Pourcin
+shook like a fury at the bars of her window, yelling: 'You
+street-walker!... You gallows-bird!... To dare to talk that way to
+me!... You vile emancipated serf!... But patience!... Patience!... I
+shall soon have you cow-hided by my servants!'"
+
+"'Oh, oh! As to that,' I answered her, 'do not talk nonsense, Dame
+Haut-Pourcin,'" put in the baker; "'the days are gone by when the noble
+dames had the woman of the bourgeois beaten!'"
+
+"Yes," added Simonne with indignation, "and do you know what that harpy
+replied, while shaking her fist at Ancel? 'Off with you,' said she, 'you
+lumbering churl! The vile bourgeoisie will not much longer talk so big!
+Soon we will no longer see clowns wearing the casques of knights, and
+jades like your wife, wearing silk petticoats paid for by their
+paramours,'" saying which, Simonne, whose anger had until then been
+shaded with frolicsome animation, became purple with confusion. Two
+tears rolled down her large black ayes, and she added in a moved voice:
+"Such an outrage ... to me.... And Ancel says that's nothing! Such an
+outrage exasperates me!"
+
+"Come now, be cool. Are you not as honorable a woman as you are an
+industrious housekeeper?" said the baker affectionately approaching
+Simonne, who was wiping off her tears with the back of her hand. "That
+stupid insult cannot touch you, my dear, and does not even deserve to be
+remembered."
+
+"Ancel is right," said Fergan. "That old woman is gone crazy. Crazy
+people's words do not count. But, friends, there is this about it. We
+must recognize that the insolence of the episcopals increases from day
+to day. Those allusions to former times foreshadow an evil intent on
+their part. It is well to be forewarned."
+
+"What, father, will those people be so badly advised as to think of
+attacking our Commune? Is their insolence to be taken notice of? Will it
+be necessary for us to place ourselves on our guard against their evil
+designs?"
+
+"Yeast that ferments is always sour, my child," replied the baker,
+reclining his head pensively. "The remark of your father is just. The
+provocations of the episcopals have a secret cause. I was just saying to
+Simonne: 'It is nothing!' I now say: 'It is something!'"
+
+"Very well! Let it be so! Let them dare!" cried out Colombaik. "We are
+ready for those noblemen and clergymen, for all the tonsured fraternity
+and their bishop to boot!"
+
+"And if the women take a part, as at the insurrection of Beauvais,"
+exclaimed Simonne, clenching her little fists, "I, who have no children,
+shall accompany my husband to battle, and the dame of Haut-Pourcin will
+pay dear for her insults. 'Pon the word of a Picardian woman, I shall
+slap her insolent face as dry as an Easter wafer!"
+
+The good baker was smiling at the heroic enthusiasm of his pretty wife
+when the peal of a large bell was heard from a distance. Fergan, his
+family and neighbors, listened to the sonorous and prolonged sound with
+a tremor of joy.
+
+"Oh, my friends!" said Fergan with emotion, "do you hear it sound for
+the first time from the belfry of our Commune? Do you hear it? To-day
+it summons us to a feast; to-morrow it will call us to the meeting of
+the council where we attend to the business of the city; some day it
+will give us the signal for battle. A belfry of the people! Your voice
+of bronze, at last awakening ancient Gaul from her slumber, has given
+the signal for the insurrection of the Communes!"
+
+While the quarryman was speaking, all the bells of the churches of Laon
+began to chime in with the peals of the belfry. The deafening clangor
+soon dominated and completely drowned the isolated tinkling of the
+communal bell. This rivalry of bell-ringing was no accident, nor yet a
+token of sympathy. It was an affront, premeditated by the bishop and his
+partisans. They realized the patriotic importance that the communiers of
+Laon attached to the inauguration of the symbol of their emancipation,
+and decided to mar the festivity.
+
+"Oh, those friars! Always spiteful and hypocritic until the day when
+they deem themselves strong enough to be merciless!" exclaimed
+Colombaik. "Have your way, ye black-gowns! Ring at your loudest! The
+canting bells of your churches shall not silence our communal belfry!
+Your bells ring mankind to servitude, to imbecility, to the renunciation
+of their dignity; the belfry gathers them to fulfil their civic duties
+and to defend freedom! Come, father, come! The bourgeois militia must by
+this time be assembled around the pillars of the market-place. You are
+constable and I a captain-of-ten. Let's start. Do not let us be waited
+for. Liberty or death!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EPISCOPALS AND COMMUNIERS.
+
+
+Fergan put on his casque, and presently giving his arm to Joan the
+Hunchback, as Colombaik gave his to Martine, and Quatre-Mains to his
+wife Simonne, the three couples sallied forth from Colombaik's tannery,
+followed by his apprentices, who, likewise were members of the Commune.
+
+The rivalry of the bells continued undiminished. At intervals the bells
+of the churches intermitted their clangor, no doubt in the hope of
+having silenced the belfry. Its sonorous and regular peal proceeded,
+however, unchecked, and the clerical clangor was renewed with redoubled
+fury. The incident, puerile in seeming, but serious at bottom, produced
+a deep resentment towards the party of the nobles. It was a long
+distance from the tannery of Colombaik to the market-place, the
+rendezvous of the bourgeois militia. Large crowds blocked the streets,
+moving towards the communal Town Hall, that had been three years
+building and was recently finished. Only the casting and hanging of the
+bell in its campanile had retarded the inauguration of the monument so
+dear to the townsmen. More than once did Joan turn back to look, not
+without uneasiness, in the direction where her son followed with
+Martine, together with Quatre-Mains and Simonne. Joan's apprehensions
+were well founded. A large number of the domestics of the noble and
+clerical households were dispersed among the crowd, and from time to
+time hurled some vulgar insult at the communiers, upon which they would
+immediately take to their heels. Knights, clad in full armor, crossed
+and re-crossed the streets, their fists upon their hips, their visors
+up, and casting disdainful and defiant looks upon the people. These
+provocations increased particularly in the vicinity of the rendezvous of
+the militia, at the head of which, and armed as if for battle, the Mayor
+of Laon and his twelve Councilmen were to march in procession to the
+Town Hall in order to inaugurate by a solemn session the meeting of
+these magistrates, held until then at the house of John Molrain, the
+Mayor.
+
+The market-place of Laon, like that of all the cities of Gaul, consisted
+of large stalls, where, on Saturdays, occasionally also on other days of
+the week, the merchants, leaving their everyday shops, exposed their
+products for sale. Outsiders and the suburb population, who drew their
+supplies from Laon, thus found at one place all that they might want.
+But on that day the market served as the gathering place for a goodly
+number of bourgeois and artisans, who had armed themselves to join the
+procession and impart to it an imposing appearance. In case of war,
+every communier was obliged to furnish himself with a pike and an axe,
+or club, at the first call from the belfry, and hasten to the
+rendezvous. As a rule the crowd seemed indifferent to the insolent gibes
+and provocations of the episcopals. The communiers, at least a majority
+of them, felt themselves strong enough to despise the challenges to
+riot. A few, however, yielded to a certain sense of fear for the
+iron-clad nobles, who were accustomed to the use of weapons, and with
+whom the Laonese, who owed their enfranchisement to a contract and not
+to an insurrection, had not yet had occasion to measure themselves.
+Finally and moreover, hardly freed from their rude and base servitude,
+many of the townsmen still preserved, involuntarily, a certain habit, if
+not of respect, yet of dread for people whose cruel oppression they had
+so long been subject to. Shortly, the captains-of-tens, commanding
+squads of tens, and the captains-of-hundreds, commanding companies of
+hundreds, all under the command of Fergan, who had been chosen
+constable, or chief of the militia, drew up their ranks along the stalls
+of the market-place. Colombaik was a captain-of-ten, his body was
+complete except for one lad called Bertrand, the son of Bernard des
+Bruyeres, a rich bourgeois who, three years previous, was assassinated
+in the cathedral by Gaudry, bishop of Laon.
+
+"Probably," said Colombaik, "poor Bertrand will not join us to-day. This
+is a feast day, and there are no more feast days for the poor fellow
+since the murder of his father."
+
+"Yet there comes Bertrand!" cried out one of the militiamen, pointing at
+a young man, who, pale, frail and sickly-looking, of a timid and kind
+appearance, wearing a steel casque and armed with a heavy axe that
+seemed to weigh down his shoulder, was approaching from a distance.
+"Poor Bertrand!" the militiaman added, "so feeble and wretched! He is
+excused for not having avenged the death of his father upon our accursed
+bishop!" Cordially received by his companions, Bertrand answered their
+solicitous inquiries with some embarrassment, and silently took his
+place in the ranks. The Mayor arrived soon after, accompanied by his
+Councilmen, some unarmed, others armed like Ancel Quatre-Mains, who
+joined them there. John Molrain, the Mayor, a man in the vigor of life
+and of a countenance at once calm and energetic, marched at the head of
+the magistrates of the city. One of them carried the banner of the
+Commune of Laon,--if the steeple of the people's belfries rose daringly
+in the teeth of the feudal donjons, the communal banners floated no less
+high than those of the seigneurs. The banner of Laon represented two
+embattled towers, between which rose a naked sword. The emblem
+signified: "Our city, fortified by walls, will know how to defend itself
+by arms against its enemies." Another Councilman carried in a vermillion
+casket, lying upon a silk cushion, the communal charter, signed by the
+bishop and the nobles, and confirmed by the signature of Louis the
+Lusty, King of the French. Finally, a third carried, also upon a
+cushion, the silver seal of the Commune, which served to attest the acts
+and decrees rendered by the town Council in the name of the Commune.
+This large medal, cast in bass relief, represented the Mayor, who, clad
+in his long robe and with his right hand pointing heavenward, seemed to
+be taking the oath, while his left hand held a sword with the point
+resting on his breast. "I, Mayor of Laon, have sworn to maintain and
+defend the franchises of the Commune: sooner die than betray my
+trust!"--such was the patriotic meaning of the communal seal, in short,
+"Liberty or death!"
+
+When the city magistrate arrived, Fergan, who was issuing his last
+orders to the militiamen, saw a priest, the archdeacon of the cathedral,
+called Anselm, step out of the crowd. Fergan held the tonsured
+fraternity in singular aversion, yet greatly esteemed Anselm, a true
+disciple of Christ. "Fergan," whispered the archdeacon to the quarryman,
+"press your friends to redouble their calmness and their prudence, I
+conjure you. Prevent them from replying to any provocation. I can tell
+you no more. The time is short. I must proceed to the episcopal palace."
+Saying this, Anselm disappeared in the crowd. The advice of the
+archdeacon, a wise man, beloved by all, and, due to his office, in a
+position to be reliably informed, struck Fergan. He no longer doubted
+there was a conspiracy, secretly hatched by the episcopals against the
+Commune. Profoundly preoccupied, he placed himself at the head of his
+militiamen, in order to escort the Mayor and the Councilmen to the Town
+Hall. The obscure names of this magistracy, taken from Fergan's family
+archives, and over which he inscribed the exhortation: "May they be ever
+dear to your memory, ye sons of Joel!" were: John Molrain, Mayor.
+Councilmen: Foulque, the son of Bomar; Raoul Cabricoin; Ancel,
+son-in-law of Labert; Haymon; Payen-Seille; Robert; Remy-But;
+Menard-Dray, Raimbaut the sausagemaker; Payen-Oste-Loup; Ancel
+Quatre-Mains, and Raoul-Gastines.
+
+The procession started amidst the joyful acclamations of the crowd, who
+enthusiastically shouted their rallying-cry: "Commune! Commune!"
+swollen by the sonorous peals from the belfry, the clerical clangor
+having finally ceased, due to the apprehension of the episcopals, lest
+the prolonged ringing of their bells was taken for their participation
+in the festivities. Before arriving at the place where the Town Hall
+stood, the procession defiled before the house of the knight of
+Haut-Pourcin, a large and fortified dwelling, flanked with two thick
+towers, that were joined by an embattled terrace, projecting above the
+door. Upon this species of balcony were gathered a large number of
+knights, clergymen, nobles and elegantly bedezined ladies, some young
+and handsome, others old and ugly. Among the least old of the latter and
+yet ugliest of all, the dame of Haut-Pourcin was conspicuous. A gaunt
+virago of about fifty, bony, of parchment skin, and of arrogant mien,
+she wore a violet cloak with gold buttons and a cape of peacock
+feathers; on her grizzly hair she had coquettishly fastened a chaplet of
+lillies of the valley in full bloom, like a shepherdess. The whiteness
+of her floral ornaments heightened the yellowish color of the dame's
+bilious complexion, a complexion, however, that was less yellowish than
+her long teeth. At sight of the procession, headed by the Mayor and his
+Councilmen, she turned to those near her, crying out in a sour and
+piercing voice that was distinctly heard by the communiers, the terrace
+lying only twelve or fifteen feet above the street: "Mesdames and
+messeigneurs, have you ever seen a pack of asses tramping to their mill
+with a more triumphant air?"
+
+"Oh!" answered one of the knights aloud, laughing and pointing with his
+switch at the Mayor, John Molrain: "And look at the master-ass that
+leads the rest! How he prances under his furred saddle-cloth!"
+
+"Pity his headgear conceals his long ears from us!"
+
+"Blood of Christ! What a shame to see these Gallic clowns, made slaves
+by our ancestors, now carrying swords like us of the nobility!" put in
+the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin. "And we, the descendants of the
+conquerors; we knights tolerate such villainy!"
+
+"Halloa, there, Quatre-Mains the baker!" yelled the dame of Haut-Pourcin
+in a squeaky voice, leaning over the railing of the terrace, "Seigneur
+Councilman, trotting cuckolded and content while armed for war! The last
+bread that my butler fetched from your shop was not baked enough, and I
+suspect you of having cheated me in the weight!"
+
+"Halloa, there, Remy the currier!" added a bulky canon attached to the
+cathedral, "Seigneur Councilman, who are there loitering about,
+administering the affairs of the city, why are you not at work on the
+mule saddle that I ordered?"
+
+"Oh, messeigneurs, there comes the cavalry!" exclaimed a young woman
+laughing and smelling at a nosegay of sweet marjorams. "Look at the
+swagger of the vagabond who commands his braves, would you not think he
+was about to hew down everything in sight?"
+
+"Oh, messeigneurs, look at that hero yonder! Oppressed by his visor, he
+is carrying his casque front side back and his sabre on his shoulder!"
+
+"And that one, who holds his sword like a wax-taper! Guess he is a
+Pope's soldier!"
+
+"And yonder goes one who came near putting out the eye of his neighbor
+with his pike! What a ridiculous set! What silly people!"
+
+"For heaven's sake, messeigneurs, are you not frozen with terror at the
+thought that, some day, we may find ourselves face to face and lance in
+hand, with this bourgeoisie, this formidable rabble-rout of shaven
+fronts, big paunches and flat feet?"
+
+At first, patiently endured by the communiers, these insults,
+accentuated with outbursts of contemptuous laughter and disdainful
+gestures, ended, nevertheless, by irritating the more impetuous. Dull
+murmurs rose from the crowd; the procession halted, despite the
+entreaties of Fergan, who urged upon the militiamen the silence of
+contempt. Some threatened the episcopals with their fists, others with
+their arms; but their tormentors redoubled their gibes at the sight of
+such signs of irritation. Suddenly John Molrain, the Mayor, rushing to
+one of the stone benches, common near the doors of dwellings to assist
+riders in mounting their horses, jumped upon it, ordered silence, and
+addressed the crowd in a sonorous voice, that reached the ears of the
+episcopals:
+
+"Brothers, and all those who have taken the oath of the Commune of Laon,
+make no reply to impotent insults! Let any dare attack the Commune with
+deeds and not with words, then will we, your Mayor and Councilmen,
+summon the offender before our tribunal, and justice will be enforced
+upon our enemies--prompt and energetic justice! Until then, let us
+answer all provocation with disdain. The resolute man, strong in his
+rights, despises insults. At the hour of judgment, he condemns and
+punishes!"
+
+These wise and measured words quieted the excitement of the crowd, but
+they also reached the ears of the nobles, assembled on the terrace of
+the house of the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin, and added fuel to their rage.
+They menaced the communiers with their canes and swords, while
+redoubling their gibes. "Your swords are not long enough, they do not
+reach us!" Colombaik cried out to them, while passing under the balcony
+with his division of the militia. "Come down into the street! We shall
+then see whether iron is heavier in the hands of a bourgeois than in
+that of a knight!"
+
+This challenge was answered by the episcopals with fresh insults.
+However, they dared not descend into the street, where they would have
+been seized and taken prisoners by the militia. For a moment delayed on
+its march, the procession resumed its way and arrived at the place of
+the Town Hall, a monument dear to the artisans and other townsmen.
+
+The edifice, a spacious and handsome structure recently erected, formed
+an oblong square. Elaborate sculptures ornamented its facade and the
+lintels of its numerous windows and architrave, which consisted of three
+ogive arcades sustained by elegant sheaves of stone columns. But the
+portion of the edifice upon which particular care had been devoted, both
+in point of construction and ornamentation, was the tower of the belfry
+and the campanile, where hung the bell. This tower, proudly rising above
+the roof, stood out in full view. From tier to tier a slender sheet
+supported rounds of small columns surmounted with ogives chiseled in
+trefoil, so that across the network of chiseled stone the spiral of the
+staircase was visible that led up to the campanile, veiled in white
+cloth up to the moment when the procession issued upon the place. When
+the covering dropped off and the campanile stood unveiled, a shout of
+admiration and patriotic enthusiasm rose from all breasts. Nothing so
+airy as that campanile, looking like a gilded cage of iron, whose
+outlines stood out against the blue of the sky like a lace-work of gold,
+glittering in the rays of the sun. Above the dazzling dome, the communal
+banner floated in the spring breeze of that beautiful April morning. The
+enthusiastic cheers of the crowds rose again and again, and the north
+wind must have carried to the ears of the episcopals the cry, a thousand
+times repeated:
+
+"Commune! Commune! Long live the Commune!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ECCLESIASTICAL SEIGNIORY OF GAUDRY.
+
+
+The episcopal palace of Laon rose close to the cathedral. Thick walls,
+fortified with two heavy towers, between which stood the gate,
+surrounded the dwelling from all sides. From the view-point of the
+benign morality of Jesus--the friend of the poor and the
+afflicted--nothing was less episcopal than the interior of this palace.
+One would imagine himself in the fortified castle of some feudal
+seigneur, a broiler and hunter. The singular contrast between the place
+and the character that it should have presented, left a painful
+impression upon all upright hearts, and such, indeed, was the feeling
+experienced by archdeacon Anselm, when, shortly after engaging Fergan to
+urge upon the communiers indifference towards the provocations of the
+episcopals, that disciple of Christ crossed the yard of the bishop. Here
+falconers were engaged washing and preparing the raw meat destined for
+the falcons, or cleaned up their roosts; yonder, the huntsmen, their
+horns on their guard-chains and whip in hand, led for pastime a pack of
+large dogs of Picardy, prized so highly by hunters. Further away, serfs
+of the episcopal domain were being drilled in the handling of arms under
+the command of one of the bishop's equerries. This last circumstance
+struck the archdeacon with amazement, and increased his fears for the
+peace of the city. The venerable man was overcome with sadness and two
+large tears dropped from his eyes.
+
+Although an associate of clergymen, Anselm was a man of great kindness
+of heart, pure, disinterested, austere and of rare learning. He was
+called "doctor of doctors." He declined the episcopacy several times,
+fearing, it was said, to seem to censure, by the Christian meekness of
+his nature and the chastity of his habits, the conduct of most of the
+bishops of Gaul. His face, at once pale and serene, his hair thinned by
+study, imparted a distinguished aspect to his person, tempered by the
+kindliness of his eyes. Modestly dressed in his black gown, Anselm was
+slowly crossing the yard of the abbey, contrasting their noisy tumult
+with the repose of his own studious retreat, when he saw, approaching
+him from a distance, a negro of giant stature, dressed in Oriental garb,
+his head covered with a red turban. This African slave, of mean and
+savage physiognomy, was named John since his baptism. He was, many years
+before, given as a present to Bishop Gaudry by a Crusader seigneur,
+returned from the Holy Land. By little and little Black John grew to be
+the favorite of his new master, the intermediary of the latter's
+debaucheries, or the instrument of his cruelties, before the
+establishment of the Commune. Since that transformation, the persons and
+property of the communiers had become safe. If an injury was done to
+either, the Commune obtained or itself enforced justice against the
+wrong-doer. Accordingly, the bishop and the nobles had been forced to
+renounce their habits of violence and rapine.
+
+When the archdeacon saw Black John, the latter was descending a
+staircase that ended in a door, wrought under a vault closed with a
+grating, that separated the first two walks of a green reserved for the
+bishop. A woman, wrapped in a mantle that completely concealed her face,
+accompanied the slave. Anselm could not restrain a gesture of
+indignation. Knowing the dwellers of the palace, and aware that the
+staircase under the vault led to the apartments of the bishop, he had no
+doubt that the veiled woman, leaving the palace at so early an hour and
+under the guide of Black John, the bishop's regular procurer, had passed
+the night with the prelate. Blushing with chaste confusion, the
+archdeacon had turned his head away with disgust at the moment when,
+having opened the grated gate, the slave and his female companion
+passed close by him. Stepping into the vault, the archdeacon entered the
+green,--a spacious enclosure, that, swarded and planted with trees,
+spread before the windows of the private apartments of Bishop Gaudry.
+
+This man, a Norman by extraction and descended from the pirates of old
+Rolf, after having fought in the ranks of William the Bastard, when he
+conquered England, was later, in 1106, promoted to the bishopric of
+Laon. Cruel and debauched, covetous and prodigal, Gaudry was, besides
+all, a passionate huntsman. Still agile and vigorous, although beyond
+the prime of life, he was at that moment trying a young horse and
+breaking it in to step on the green that Anselm had just entered. In
+order to feel more at ease, the bishop had taken off his long morning
+robe, lined with fur, and kept on nothing but his sock-pointed shoes,
+his hose and a short jacket of flexible material. Bare-headed, his gray
+hair to the wind, still an able and bold cavalier, and riding bare-back
+the young stallion, that had for the first time come from the paddock,
+Gaudry was pressing his nervy knees against the flanks of the mettlesome
+animal, resisting its boundings and kicking, and forcing it to run in a
+circle over the sward of the green. The bishop's equerry applauded with
+voice and gesture the skill of his master, while a serf of robust frame
+and gallows-bird countenance followed the riding lesson with cunning
+eyes. This serf, who belonged to the abbey of St. Vincent, a fief of the
+bishopric, was named Thiegaud. The fellow--originally charged with the
+collection of toll over a bridge near the city, a dependency of the
+castellan Enguerrand de Coucy, one of the most ferocious feudal tyrants
+of Picardy who was dreaded for his audacity and cruelty--had been guilty
+of a number of extortions and even murders. Gaudry, struck by the
+resolute character of the scamp, demanded him from the castellan of
+Coucy in exchange for another serf, and charged him with the collection
+of the arbitrary taxes that he imposed upon his vassals, a charge that
+Thiegaud filled with remorseless severity. Thus the bishop treated the
+serf with great familiarity, habitually called him his "friend
+Ysengrin"--the wolf's companion--and, at a pinch, used him for a
+go-between in his debaucheries, not, however, without awakening the
+vindictive jealousy of Black John, who felt secretly enraged at the
+sight of another than himself in the secret confidence of his master.
+
+Gaudry, while riding around the green, saw the archdeacon, made the
+stallion suddenly face about, and after a few more boundings the
+impetuous animal brought the bishop close to Anselm. Lightly jumping
+off, the bishop said to his equerry, throwing the bridle over to him:
+"I'll keep the horse; take him to my stables; he will be matchless in
+the hunt of stags and boars!"
+
+"If you keep the horse, seigneur bishop," answered Thiegaud, "give me a
+hundred and twenty silver sous. That's the price they demand."
+
+"That's all right. What's the hurry?" rejoined the bishop, and turning
+to his equerry: "Gerhard, take the horse to the stable."
+
+"Not so," said Thiegaud, "the tenant-farmer is waiting at the gate of
+the palace. He has been ordered to take the horse back or receive its
+price in money. It is the orders of the owner of the stallion."
+
+"The impudent scamp who gave that order deserves to receive as many
+lashes as his horse has hairs in his tail!" cried out the bishop. "Have
+I not, as a matter of right, six months' credit in my own seigniory?"
+
+"No," coolly answered Anselm, "that seignioral right has been abolished
+since the city of Laon is a free Commune. Never forget the difference
+between the present and the past. The seignioral rights are abolished."
+
+"I am reminded of that but too often!" answered the bishop with
+concentrated vexation. "However that may be, Gerhard, obey my orders and
+take the horse to the stable."
+
+"Seigneur," said Thiegaud, "the owner is waiting, I tell you. He must
+have the money, a hundred and twenty silver sous, or the animal back."
+
+"He shall not have the horse!" answered the bishop angrily striking the
+ground. "If the farmer dares to grumble, tell him to send me his master.
+We shall see whether he will have the audacity to appear on such an
+errand before his bishop."
+
+"He will surely have the audacity, seigneur bishop," replied Thiegaud.
+"The owner of the horse is Colombaik the Tanner, a communier of Laon and
+son of Fergan, master quarryman of the mill hill. I know these people. I
+notify you that the father and son are of those ... who dare ...
+anything."
+
+"Blood of Christ! and devil's horns! we have had words enough!" cried
+out the bishop. "Gerhard, take the stallion to the stables!"
+
+The equerry obeyed, and the archdeacon was on the point of remonstrating
+with Gaudry on the injustice and danger of his conduct, when, hearing a
+great noise in the yards contiguous to the green, the bishop, already in
+a bad humor and yielding to the passion of his temperament, rushed out
+of the green, without taking time to put on his robe again and leaving
+it behind on a bench. He had hardly crossed the first yard, followed by
+the equerry, who led the horse, and by Thiegaud, who in his perversity
+was smiling at this latest iniquity of his master, when he saw a crowd
+of the domestics of his household coming towards him. They were all
+yelling and gesticulating violently, and surrounded Black John, whose
+gigantic stature rose above them by the full length of his head. No less
+excited than his fellows, Black John also yelled and gesticulated,
+foaming at the mouth with rage and brandishing his Saracen dagger.
+
+"What means this hurly?" inquired the bishop of Laon stepping before the
+advancing crowd. "Why do you scream in that way?"
+
+Several voices answered at once: "We are crying out against the
+bourgeois of Laon! The dogs of the communiers!"
+
+"What has happened? Answer quick!"
+
+"Black John will tell monseigneur!" several voices called in great
+excitement.
+
+The African giant turned towards his fellows, motioned them to be
+silent, and wiping on his sleeves the bloody blade of his dagger, said
+to the bishop in an excited voice, still trembling with rage, but not
+without calculatingly casting upon Thiegaud a look of rancorous hatred:
+
+"I had just led Mussine the Pretty to the outer gate--"
+
+"My daughter!" Thiegaud ejaculated stupefied at the very moment when,
+angrily stamping the ground, the prelate checked the indiscreet words of
+his slave with a silent gesture. Black John remained mute like one who
+understands too late the folly he committed, while the rest of the
+bishop's domestics stealthily giggled at the consternation of Thiegaud.
+Some dreaded him for his malignity, others envied him for his intimate
+relations with their master. Thiegaud, livid at the startling
+revelation, flashed at Gaudry a sinister look quick as lightning; his
+features thereupon as quickly reassumed their usual expression, and he
+started to laugh louder than the rest at the awkward blunder of Black
+John. He even went the length of indulging in ironical deference towards
+Gaudry. The latter, long acquainted with the criminal life of the serf
+of St. Vincent, was not surprised at seeing him remain so indifferent to
+the disgrace of his daughter. Nevertheless, yielding to that respect for
+man that even the most depraved characters never succeed in wholly
+stripping themselves of, the bishop silenced the suppressed merriment
+with an imperious gesture and said: "Those giggles are unseemly.
+Thiegaud's daughter came early in the morning, as so many other
+penitents do, to consult me on a case of conscience. After listening to
+her in the confessional, I ordered John to accompany her to the gate."
+
+"That's so true," added Thiegaud with perfect composure, "that, having
+to bring this morning a horse to our seigneur the bishop, I expected to
+return with my daughter. But she left by the vaulted door while I was
+still on the green."
+
+"Friend Ysengrin," resumed the prelate with a mixture a haughtiness and
+familiarity, "my words can dispense with your testimony." And wishing to
+cut off short this incident, which had the archdeacon, silent but
+profoundly indignant, for a witness, Gaudry said to the black slave:
+"Speak! What has happened between you and the communiers, whom may the
+pest carry off and hell confound! May Satan take them all!"
+
+"I was opening the gate for Mussine the Pretty, when three bourgeois,
+coming from the suburbs and bound for the principal entry of the city,
+to assist at the ceremonies announced by the belfry of those rogues,
+passed by the palace. Seeing a veiled woman come out, those scamps set
+up a malicious laugh, and nudged one another in the ribs while keeping
+on their way. I ran after them and asked: 'What are you laughing about,
+you dogs of communiers?' They gave me an insolent answer and called me
+the bishop's hangman. I then drew my dagger and stabbed one of them in
+the arm, and leaving his companions and him loudly threatening to demand
+justice from the Commune, I returned and locked the door after me. By
+Mahomet, I am proud of what I did. I avenged my master for the insults
+of those curs!"
+
+"Black John did well!" cried the domestics of the bishop. "We can no
+longer go out without being shamed by the communiers of Laon."
+
+"The other day," put in one of the falconers, "the butcher of Exchange
+street, one of the Councilmen of the Commune, refused to give me meat on
+credit for the falcons!"
+
+"At the taverns we are compelled to pay before drinking! The shame and
+humiliation of it!"
+
+"It was not thus three years ago!"
+
+"Those were good days! A retainer of the bishop then took without paying
+whatever he wanted from the merchants; he caressed their wives and
+daughters; and none dared say a word. By the womb of the Virgin Mary, we
+were then masters! But since the establishment of the Commune it is the
+bourgeois who command! The devil take the Commune! Three cheers for the
+good old times!"
+
+"To hell with the communiers, they make us die of shame for our seigneur
+the bishop!" exclaimed one of the young serfs who had been shortly
+before exercising in the use of arms. And resolutely addressing the
+prelate, who, so far from quieting down the excitement of his people,
+seemed delighted at their recriminations, and encouraged them with a
+smile of approval: "Say the word, our bishop! There are here fifty of us
+who have learned to manage the bow and pike! Place a few knights at our
+head, and we will descend upon the city, leaving not a stone upon
+another of the houses of that bourgeois and artisan rabble!"
+
+"Say the word!" cried out Thiegaud, "and I will bring you, my holy
+patron, a hundred woodsmen and colliers from the forest of St. Vincent.
+They will make a bonfire of the houses of those bourgeois and artisans
+fit to roast Beelzebub! Death and damnation to the communiers!"
+
+If the bishop of Laon had entertained any doubt upon the indifference of
+the serf of St. Vincent regarding his daughter's shame, it was removed
+by the man's words. Accordingly, doubly satisfied with the tokens of
+Thiegaud's devotion, the bishop addressed his people in these words: "I
+am glad to find you in such a frame of mind. Remain so. The hour for
+going to work will arrive sooner than you may think. As to you, my brave
+John, you have avenged me on the insolence of those communiers. Fear
+not. Not a hair of your head shall be touched. As to you, friend
+Ysengrin, notify the farmer that I keep the horse, and I shall pay him
+if I choose. Then, see our friends the woodsmen and colliers of the
+forest. I may need them any day. When that day shall come, they shall
+be free, in reward for their good will, to plunder at their pleasure the
+houses of the bourgeois of Laon." Turning thereupon towards the
+archdeacon, who had witnessed this scene without uttering a word, he
+said to him: "Let's go in. What has just taken place under your own eyes
+will have prepared you for the interview we are to have, and for which I
+summoned you hither."
+
+Anselm followed the prelate, and both entered the bishop's apartments.
+
+"Anselm, you have just seen and heard things that, doubtlessly, left a
+disagreeable impression upon your mind. We shall take that up
+presently," said Gaudry to the archdeacon when they were closeted
+together. "I summoned you to the palace because I am aware of your
+foible for the common folks of the bourgeoisie, and in order to afford
+you the opportunity to render a signal service to your favorites. Listen
+to me carefully."
+
+"I shall strive to meet your intentions, seigneur bishop."
+
+"You shall go to the bourgeois and artisans of the city and say to them:
+'Renounce, good people, that execrable spirit of novelty, that
+diabolical passion that drives the vassal to rise against his master.
+Abjure, soon as possible, the brazen and impious pride that persuades
+the artisan and townsman to withdraw from the seignioral authority and
+to govern themselves. Return to your trades, to your shops. The
+administration of public affairs can get along very well without you.
+You quit the Church for the Town Hall; you open your ears to the sound
+of your own belfry, and shut them to the chimes of the church bells.
+That is not good for you. You will end by forgetting the submission you
+owe to the clergy, to the nobles and to the King. Good people, never
+allow the distinctions of the stations in life to be confounded; each to
+his rights, each to his duties. The right of the clergy, of the nobility
+and of the King is to command and to govern; the duty of the serf and
+the bourgeois is to bow before the will of their natural masters. This
+communal and republican comedy, that you have been playing for now
+nearly three years, has lasted too long. Abdicate willingly your roles
+of Mayor, Councilmen and warriors. People at first laughed at your silly
+pranks, hoping you would return to your senses. But it takes too long;
+one's patience is exhausted. The time has come to put an end to the
+Saturnalia. In order to avoid a just punishment, return of your own
+accord to the humility of your station in life. Cut your Councilmen's
+robes into skirts for your wives; return your arms to people who know
+how to handle them; respectfully surrender to the Church, as an homage
+of atonement, that ear-splitting bell of that belfry of yours; it will
+enrich the chimes of the cathedral. Your superb banner will make a
+becoming altar-cloth, and as to your magnificent silver seal, melt it
+back into money wherewith to purchase some hogsheads of old wine which
+you will empty in honor of the restoration of the seigniory of your
+bishop in Jesus Christ. Do so, and all will be well, good people. The
+past will be forgiven you upon condition that you will henceforth be
+submissive, humble and penitent towards the Church, the noblemen and the
+King, and that of your own accord, you renounce your pestiferous
+Commune.'"
+
+Anselm listened to the bishop with a mixture of amazement, indignation
+and profound anxiety. He did not interrupt the speaker to the end,
+wondering how that man, whom he could not deny either cleverness or
+sagacity, yet could be so untutored upon men and things as to conceive
+such a project. So profound was the emotion of the archdeacon that he
+remained silent for a while. Finally he answered the bishop in a grave
+and clear voice: "You solicit my assistance to advise the inhabitants of
+Laon to give up their charter, that very charter that both you and they
+have agreed to and sworn to uphold by a common accord?"
+
+"That agreement was concluded by the chapter and council of seigneurs
+who governed during my absence, while I was away in England."
+
+"Must I remind you that, upon your return from London, and in
+consideration of a large sum paid by the bourgeoisie, you signed the
+charter with your own hand, that you sealed it with your own seal, and
+that you swore upon your faith that it would be faithfully observed?"
+
+"I was wrong in doing so. The Church holds her seigniories from God
+alone. She may not alienate her rights. I am absolved from such
+engagements."
+
+"Have you returned the money that you received for your consent to the
+Commune? Has restitution been made?"
+
+"The money I received represented, at the most, four years' revenues
+that I habitually drew from the inhabitants of Laon. Three years have
+elapsed since the establishment of this Commune. I am only one year in
+advance of my vassals. My right is to tax at will and mercy. I shall
+double the tax of the current year, and being quits, I shall, if I
+please, demand the tax for the next year."
+
+"Yours would be such a right had you not alienated it. But you cannot
+repudiate your signature, your seal and your oath. Your engagement is
+binding."
+
+"What is there in a signature? One or two words placed at the bottom of
+a parchment! What is a seal? A lump of wax! What is an oath? A breath of
+air that is lost in space, and which the wind carries off!"
+
+Although highly wrought up by the prelate's answer, Anselm restrained
+his indignation and proceeded: "You, then, persist in your purpose to
+break your oath and abolish the Commune of Laon?"
+
+"Yes, I intend to smash it."
+
+"You refuse to keep your sacred engagement? Be it so! But the communiers
+of Laon have had their charter confirmed by the present King. They will
+turn to him to compel you to respect its clauses. You will have two
+foes to face--the people and the King."
+
+"To-morrow," answered the bishop, "Louis the Lusty will be here at the
+head of a goodly number of knights and men-at-arms,--all resolved to
+crush those miserable bourgeois if they dare defend their Commune. It is
+all settled between us."
+
+"I can hardly believe what you say, seigneur bishop," replied the
+archdeacon. "The King, who confirmed and swore to the charter for the
+enfranchisement of the bourgeois of Laon, and who received the price
+agreed upon, he surely will not be ready to perjure himself and commit
+such an infamy."
+
+"The King begins to listen to the voice of the Church. He understands
+that, though it be good politics and profitable withal, to sell charters
+of emancipation to the cities that are subject to lay seigniories, his
+rivals and ours, it is to seriously compromise his own power if he were
+to favor emancipation from the ecclesiastical seigniories. The King is
+determined to restore to the episcopal authority all the ecclesiastical
+cities that have been enfranchised, and to exterminate their inhabitants
+if they dare oppose his pleasure. To-morrow, perhaps this very day, the
+King will be in the city at the head of armed men. The nobles of the
+city have been apprised, like myself, of the pending arrival of the
+King. We shall notify our will to the people."
+
+"My presentiments did not deceive me when I urged the communiers to
+redouble their self-control and prudence!"
+
+"You were on the right road. It is, therefore, that, aware of your
+influence with those clowns, I sent for you, to commission you to induce
+them to renounce their hellish Commune of their own free will, if they
+would escape a terrible punishment. We demand absolute submission."
+
+"Bishop of Laon," Anselm answered solemnly and with a tremulous voice,
+"I decline the mission that you charge me with. I do not wish to see the
+blood of my brothers flow in this city. If your projects were but
+suspected, an uprising would break out on the spot among the people,
+and yourself, the clergy and the knights in the city would be the first
+victims of the rage of the communiers. Your houses would be burned down
+over your heads."
+
+"There is no insurrection to be feared," put in the bishop laughing
+loudly. "John, my negro, will take by the nose the wildest of those
+clowns and will bring him on his knees to my feet, begging for mercy,
+trembling and penitent. I need but to say the word."
+
+"If you dare touch the rights of the Commune, then you, the priests and
+the nobles will all be exterminated by the people in arms. Oh, may
+heaven's curse fall upon me before I shall by a single word help to
+unchain such a storm!"
+
+"So, then, you, Anselm, a subordinate to my authority, you refuse the
+commission that I charge you with?"
+
+"I swear to you upon the salvation of my soul, you are staking your life
+at a terrible game! May I not have to dispute your bleeding remains from
+the popular fury in order to give them Christian burial!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+BOURGEOIS AND ECCLESIASTICAL SEIGNEUR.
+
+
+The Bishop of Laon had long remained steeped in revery. The tone of
+conviction, the imposing authority of the archdeacon's character, left a
+profound impression upon the man. Though there was no crime he would
+recoil at in the satisfaction of his passions, yet he fervently clung to
+life. Accordingly, his blind contempt for the common people
+notwithstanding, he wavered for a moment in his projects, and, recalling
+to memory the triumphant revolts, that under similar circumstances, had
+in recent years been witnessed in other Communes of Gaul, he was lost in
+sombre, silent perplexity, when the sudden entry of Black John awoke him
+from his quandary.
+
+"Patron," said Black John, breaking into the room with a malefic grin,
+"one of the bourgeois dogs has himself walked into the trap. We are
+holding him, as well as his female, who, by Mahomet, is of the comliest.
+If the husband is a mastiff, the wife is a dainty greyhound, worthy of a
+place in the ecclesiastical kennels!"
+
+"Quit your jokes!" remarked the bishop with impatience. "What is the
+matter now? Speak up!"
+
+"A minute ago there was a rap at the main gate. I was in the yard with
+the serfs who are exercising in arms. I peeped through the wicket and
+saw a burly fellow, with a casque that fell over his nose, and bursting
+in his steel corselet, and as incommoded by his sword as a dog to whose
+tail a kettle has been tied. A young and pretty woman accompanied him.
+'What do you want?' said I to the man. 'To speak with the seigneur
+bishop, and on the spot, too, on grave matters.' To hold one of these
+dogs of communiers in pawn, struck me as timely. After sending one of
+the men to see through the loopholes in the tower whether the bourgeois
+was alone, I opened the door. Oh, you would have laughed," Black John
+proceeded, "had you seen the good man embrace his wife before crossing
+the threshold of the palace, as though he were stepping into Lucifer's
+house, and heard his wife say: 'I shall wait for you here; my uneasiness
+will be shorter than if I had remained at the Town Hall.' By Mahomet! I
+said to myself, my patron is too fond of receiving pretty penitents to
+leave this charmer outside; and taking her up like a feather I carried
+her into the yard. I had a good mind to shut the gate in the husband's
+face, but I considered it was better to keep him too here. His little
+wife, furious like a cat in love, screamed and scratched my face when I
+took her up in my arms, but after she was allowed to join her gander of
+a husband, she put on airs of bravery and spat in my face. They are both
+in the next room. Shall they be brought in?"
+
+The announcement of the arrival of one of the communiers, the objects of
+the bishop's hatred, revived the anger of the seigniorial ecclesiastic,
+that had been checked for a moment by the words of Archdeacon Anselm.
+The bishop jumped up, crying out: "By heaven! By the Pope's navel! That
+bourgeois arrives in time! Bring him in!"
+
+"His wife too?" asked the negro, opening the door. "She will act as a
+counter-irritant to your worship," and without waiting for his master's
+answer, the negro vanished.
+
+"Take care!" Anselm said, more and more alarmed. "Take care what you are
+about to do! The Councilmen are elected by the inhabitants! To do
+violence to one of their chosen men would be a moral offence!"
+
+"We have had enough remonstrances!" cried out Gaudry with haughty
+impatience. "You seem to forget that I am your superior, your bishop!"
+
+"It is your conduct that would make me forget it. But it is for the sake
+of the episcopacy, for the sake of the salvation of your soul, for the
+sake of your own life that I adjure you not to apply the match to a
+conflagration that neither yourself nor the King might be able to
+extinguish!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed the bishop with a wrathful sneer; "What! That
+conflagration could not be extinguished even in the blood of those
+damned dogs, of the revolted clowns, themselves?"
+
+The prelate had just pronounced these execrable words, when Ancel
+Quatre-Mains entered, accompanied by his wife, Simonne, and preceded by
+Black John, who, leaving them at the door of the apartment, withdrew
+again with a smile on his cruel lips. The Councilman was pale and deeply
+moved. The good nature, habitual to his features, had now made place to
+an expression of deliberate firmness. It must, nevertheless, be admitted
+that his casque thrown too far back on his head and his stomach
+protruding below his steel corselet imparted to the townsman an almost
+grotesque appearance that could not fail to strike the Bishop of Laon.
+Accordingly breaking out in a loud guffaw, not unmixed with rage and
+disdain, and pointing to Ancel, he said to the archdeacon: "Here have
+you a bright sample of the gallant men who are to cause bishops, knights
+and kings to tremble and retreat. By the blood of Christ, what a
+grotesque appearance!"
+
+The Councilman and his wife, who drew close to him, looked at each
+other, unable to understand the words of the bishop. No less alarmed
+than her husband, two distinct sentiments seemed to fill Simonne's
+mind--fear of some danger to Ancel and horror for Gaudry.
+
+"Well, now, seigneur Councilman, august elective magistrate of the
+illustrious Commune of Laon!" said the prelate in a jeering and
+contemptuous accent. "You wanted to see me. Here I am. What do you
+want?"
+
+"Seigneur bishop, I have had no ambition, and so I haven't, of coming
+here. I'm merely fulfilling a duty. This month I'm the judicial
+Councilman. As such, I am charged with the trials. It is in that
+capacity that I have come here to fill my office."
+
+"Oh, oh! Greetings to you, seigneur prosecutor!" replied the prelate
+sneeringly, bowing before the baker. "May we at least know the subject
+of the process?"
+
+"Certes, seigneur bishop, seeing the action is against yourself and
+against John, your African servant, I shall inform you of the charge."
+
+"And while my husband is fulfilling a judicial mission," pertly put in
+Simonne, "he shall also demand justice and indemnity for the insults
+hurled at me by the noble dame of Haut-Pourcin, the wife of one of the
+episcopals of the city, so please your seigneur bishop!"
+
+"By heaven, my negro John was right, I have never seen a prettier
+creature!" observed the dissolute bishop, attentively examining the
+baker's wife, whom until that instant he had taken little notice of; and
+seeming to reflect for a moment he asked: "How long have you been
+married, little darling? Answer your bishop truthfully!"
+
+"Five years, monseigneur."
+
+"My good man," resumed Gaudry addressing the Councilman, "you must have
+ransomed your wife from the right of the first night at the time when
+the canon of Amaury was charged with its supervision?"
+
+"Yes, seigneur," answered the baker, while his wife, casting down her
+eyes, blushed with shame at hearing the bishop refer to that infamous
+right of the bishop of Laon, who, before the establishment of the
+Commune had the right to demand "first wedding night of the bride"--a
+galling shame, that, occasionally, the husband managed to redeem with a
+money payment.
+
+"That miserable beggar of old Amaury!" exclaimed the prelate with a
+cynical outburst of laughter. "It was all in vain for me to tell him:
+'When a bride and bridegroom come to announce at church their
+approaching wedding, inscribe on a separate roll the names of the brides
+that are comely enough to induce me to exact from them the amorous tax
+of nature.' But there were none of these according to Amaury; and yet I
+have before my eyes a striking proof of his fraudulence or his
+blindness. Almost all the brides were homely, according to him!"
+
+"Happily, seigneur bishop, those evil days are gone by," answered Ancel,
+hardly able to restrain his indignation. "Those days will never return
+when the honor of husbands and wives was at the mercy of bishops and
+seigneurs!"
+
+"Brother," put in the archdeacon, painfully affected by the words of the
+bishop, and addressing Ancel, "believe me, the Church herself blushes at
+that monstrous right, that prelates enjoy when they are at once temporal
+seigneurs."
+
+"What I do know, Father Anselm," the baker answered with judicial
+deliberateness and raising his head, "is that the Church does not forbid
+the ecclesiastics to use that monstrous right, we see them using it and
+deflowering young brides."
+
+"By the blood of Christ!" cried out the bishop, while the archdeacon
+remained silent, unable to gainsay the baker; "that right proves better
+than any argument how absolutely the body of the serf, the villein or
+the non-noble vassal is the absolute and undisputed property of the lay
+or ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, so far from blushing at that
+right, the Church claims it back for its own seigneurs, and
+excommunicates those who dare contest it."
+
+The archdeacon, not daring to contradict the bishop, seeing the bishop
+spoke the truth, lowered his head in mute pain. The Councilman resumed
+with a mixture of sly good nature and firmness: "I am, seigneur bishop,
+too ignorant in matters of theology to discuss the orthodoxy of a right
+that honorable folks speak of only with indignation in their hearts and
+shame on their brows. But, thanks be to God, since Laon has become an
+enfranchised Commune, that abominable right has been abolished, along
+with many others. Among the latter is the right of demanding goods
+without money, and of taking some one else's horse without paying for
+it. This, seigneur bishop, leads me to the matter that has brought me
+here."
+
+"You, then, mean to start a process against me?"
+
+"I am fulfilling my functions. An hour ago, Peter the Fox, tenant farmer
+of Colombaik the Tanner, deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen
+assembled at the Town Hall that you, Bishop of Laon, kept, against all
+right, a horse belonging to the said Colombaik, and that you refuse to
+pay the price demanded by the owner."
+
+"Is that all?" the bishop asked laughing. "Have I committed no other
+sin? Have you no other charges to bring against me?"
+
+"Germain the Strong, master carpenter of the suburb of Grande-Cognee,
+supported by two witnesses, has deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen
+that, while passing before the gate of the episcopal palace, he was
+first insulted and then stabbed in the arm by Black John, a domestic of
+your household, which constitutes a grave crime."
+
+"Well, then, seigneur justiciary," said the bishop still laughing,
+"Condemn me, brave Councilman. Formulate your judgment and sentence."
+
+"Not yet," coldly answered the baker. "The suit must first be entered;
+then the witnesses must be heard; next comes the judgment; and fourth
+its enforcement. Everything in its order."
+
+"Just see! I am instructed! Let it be, I shall be patient. Yet I am
+curious to see how far your audacity will lead you, communier of Satan.
+Go ahead and to work!"
+
+"My audacity is that of a man who fulfills his duty."
+
+"An honest man, who dares not allow himself to be intimidated," put in
+Simonne with deftness; "a man who will know how to cause the rights of
+the Commune to be respected, who is not troubled by disdain. A man of
+sense and of action."
+
+"I love to see your rogish face," replied the bishop, turning to the
+young woman; "it gives me the necessary humor to listen to this loafer,
+I swear it by your round and plump throat, by your beautiful black eyes,
+and by your secret charms!"
+
+"And I swear by the poor eyes of Gerhard of Soisson, whom you have so
+cruelly deprived of sight, that the sight of you is odious to me, Bishop
+of Laon! You, whose hands are still red with the blood of Bernard des
+Bruyeres, whom you murdered in your own church!" And uttering these
+imprudent words, drawn from her by an impulse of generous indignation,
+the baker's wife brusquely turned her back upon the bishop.
+
+Enraged at hearing himself reproached in such a manner for two of his
+crimes, the Bishop of Laon became livid with rage, and half rising from
+his seat, whose arms he clutched convulsively, he cried out: "Miserable
+serf! I shall teach you to control your viper's tongue!--"
+
+"Simonne!" said the Councilman to his wife in a tone of earnest reproof,
+interrupting the prelate. "You should not speak that way. Those past
+crimes belong before the bar of God, not of the Commune, as are the
+misdemeanors that I am prosecuting. The bishop is summoned to answer
+only the two charges that I have preferred."
+
+"I shall save you half your trouble!" cried out Gaudry in a towering
+rage, and dropping his jeering tone towards the Councilman. "I declare
+that I am keeping a farmer's horse; I declare that my negro John stabbed
+a clown of the city this morning. Now, then, decide, you stupid brute!"
+
+"Seeing you admit these wrong-doings, seigneur Bishop of Laon, I decide
+that you return the horse to its owner, or that you pay him his price, a
+hundred and twenty silver sous; and I decide that you render justice for
+the crime committed by your black slave John."
+
+"And I shall keep the horse without paying for it; and I hold that my
+servant John did justly punish an insolent communier! Now, pronounce
+your sentence."
+
+"Bishop of Laon, those are very serious words," answered the Councilman
+with emotion. "I conjure you, deign to think that over while I shall
+read to you aloud two clauses from our charter, sworn to by yourself,
+signed with your own hand, and sealed with your own seal; do not forget
+that; and moreover confirmed by our seigneur the King." Whereat the
+Councilman, producing a parchment from his pocket, read as follows: "'If
+anyone injure a man who shall have taken the oath of the Commune of
+Laon, a complaint being lodged with the Mayor and Councilmen, they
+shall, after due trial, enforce justice upon the body and upon the
+property of the guilty party.... If the guilty party takes refuge in a
+fortified castle, the Mayor and Councilmen shall notify the seigneur of
+the castle, or his lieutenant. If in their opinion satisfaction shall
+have been rendered against the guilty party, that will suffice; but if
+the seigneur refuses satisfaction, they shall themselves enforce justice
+upon the property and upon the men of the said seigneur.' That, seigneur
+bishop, is the law of our Commune, agreed and sworn to by yourself and
+us. If, then, you do not return the horse, if you do not give us
+satisfaction for the crime of your servant John, we shall see ourselves
+forced to ourselves enforce justice upon you and upon your men."
+
+Certain of the support of the King, the bishop and the episcopals had
+for some time desired to provoke a conflict with the communiers. They
+felt certain of success, and looked in that way to reconquer by force
+their seigniorial rights, a one-time inexhaustible treasure, but
+alienated by them three years previous, for a considerable sum of money,
+that had by this time been dissipated. By refusing to satisfy the
+legitimate demands of the Councilmen, the bishop was inevitably bound to
+lead to a collision at the very moment when Louis the Lusty would arrive
+at Laon with a numerous troop of knights. Accordingly, making no doubt
+that the people would be crushed in the struggle, and considering
+himself seconded by circumstance, Gaudry, so far from angrily answering
+the baker, now replied with a sarcastic affectation of humility: "Alack,
+illustrious Councilman, poor seigneurs that we are, we shall have no
+choice but to try and resist you, my valiant Caesars, and to prevent you
+from enforcing justice upon our goods and our persons, as you
+triumphantly announce. We shall have to don our casques and cuirasses,
+and await you, lance in hand, mounted on our battle horses! Alack!"
+
+"Seigneur bishop," answered the baker, anxiously joining his hands,
+"your refusal to do justice to the Commune, is equivalent to a
+declaration of war between our townsmen and you!"
+
+"Alack!" replied Gaudry ironically imitating Ancel's gesture, "we shall
+then have to resign ourselves to battle. Fortunately the episcopal
+knights know how to manage the lance and sword wherewith they will run
+you through."
+
+"The battle will be terrible in our city," cried out the Councilman
+excitedly. "Why would you reduce us to such extremities, when it depends
+upon you to avert such a calamity by proving yourself equitable and
+faithful to your oath?"
+
+"I implore you, yield to these wise words," now put in the archdeacon
+addressing Gaudry. "Your refusal will unchain all the scourges of civil
+war, and cause torrents of blood to flow. Woe is us!"
+
+"Seigneur bishop," the Councilman resumed with insistence and in a sad
+yet firm tone: "What is it that we demand of you? Justice. Nothing more.
+Return the horse or pay for it. Your servant has committed a crime.
+Inflict exemplary punishment upon him. Is that asking too much of you?
+Are you ready by your resistance to hand over our beloved country to
+innumerable calamities, and cause the shedding of blood? Reflect on the
+consequences of the conflict. Think of the women whom you will have
+widowed, the children whom you will have orphaned! Think of the
+calamities that you will conjure over our city!"
+
+"I'm bound to think, heroic Councilman," replied the bishop with a
+disdainful sneer, "that you are afraid of war!"
+
+"No, we are not afraid!" cried out Simonne, unable longer to control her
+impetuous nature. "Let the belfry summon the inhabitants to the defense
+of the Commune, and you will see that, as at Beauvais, as at Noyons, as
+at Rheims, the men will fly to arms and the women will accompany them to
+nurse the wounded!"
+
+"By the blood of Christ, my charming Amazon, if I take you prisoner, you
+will pay the arrears due to your seigneur."
+
+"Seigneur bishop," interposed the Councilman, "such words ill-become the
+mouth of a priest, above all when the issue is bloodshed. We dread war!
+Yes, undoubtedly, we dread it, because its evils are irreparable. I fear
+war as much or more than anyone else, because I wish to live for my
+wife, whom I love, and to enjoy in peace our modest means, the fruit of
+our daily labor. I fear war by reason of the disasters and the ruin that
+follow upon its wake."
+
+"But you will fight like any other!" cried out Simonne almost irritated
+at the sincerity of her husband. "Oh, I know you! You will fight even
+more bravely than others!"
+
+"More bravely than others is saying too much," naively interposed the
+baker. "I have never fought in my life. But I shall do my duty, although
+I am less at home with the lance or the sword than with the poker of the
+furnace in my bakery. Each to his trade."
+
+"Admit it, good man," retorted the bishop laughing uproarously, "you
+prefer the fire of your furnace to the heat of battle?"
+
+"On my faith, that's the truth of it, seigneur bishop. All of us good
+people of the city, bourgeois and artisans that we are, prefer good to
+evil, peace to war. But, take my word for it, there are things we prefer
+to peace, they are the honor of our wives, our daughters and sisters,
+our dignity, our independence, the right of ourselves and through
+ourselves to administering the affairs of our city. We owe these
+advantages to our enfranchisement from the seigniorial rights.
+Accordingly, we shall all allow ourselves to be killed, to the last man,
+in the defence of our Commune and in the protection of our freedom.
+That's why, in the name of the public peace, we implore you to do
+justice to our demand."
+
+"Patron," broke in at this point Black John who entered the room
+precipitately, "a forerunner of the King has just arrived. He announces
+that he precedes his master only two hours, and that he comes
+accompanied with a strong escort."
+
+"The King must have hastened his arrival!" cried out the prelate
+triumphantly. "By the blood of Christ, everything is working according
+to our wishes!"
+
+"The King!" exclaimed the Councilman with joy, "The King in our city!
+Oh, we now have nothing more to fear. He signed our charter, he will
+know how to compel you to respect it, Bishop of Laon. Your wicked
+intentions will now be paralyzed."
+
+"Certes!" answered Gaudry with a sardonic smile. "Count with the support
+of the King, good people. He comes in person, followed by a large troop
+of knights armed with strong lances and sharp swords. Now, then, my
+valiant bourgeois, go and join your shop heroes, and carry my answer to
+them. It is this: 'Gaudry, bishop and seigneur of Laon, certain of the
+support of the King of the French, awaits in his episcopal palace to see
+the communiers come themselves to enforce justice upon his property and
+his men!'" And turning then to Black John: "Order my equerry to saddle
+the stallion that was brought here this morning. I know no more
+mettlesome horse to ride on ahead of the King and in the beard of those
+city clowns. Let the knights of the city be notified, they shall serve
+for my escort. To horse! To horse!" Saying which, the prelate stepped
+off into another room, leaving the baker as stupefied as he was alarmed
+at the sight of his crumbling hopes. He heard the bishop's words
+regarding the King's intention, yet hesitated to give them credence.
+The townsman remained thunderstruck.
+
+"Ancel," said the archdeacon to him. "There is no doubt about it. Louis
+the Lusty will side with the episcopals. A conflict must be avoided at
+any price. Recommend the other Councilmen to redouble their prudence. I
+shall, on my part, endeavor to conjure off the storm that threatens."
+
+"Come, my poor wife," said the Councilman, whose eyes were filling with
+tears! "Come! Woe is us, the King of the French is against us. May God
+protect the Commune of Laon!"
+
+"As to me," answered Simonne, "upon the faith of a Picardian woman, I
+place my reliance upon the stout hearts of our communiers, upon the
+pikes, the hatchets and the swords in our hands!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GATHERING STORM.
+
+
+Louis the Lusty had made his entry into the city of Laon on the eve of
+Holy Thursday of the year 1112. On the day following the arrival of the
+Prince, Colombaik, his mother and his wife were seated together in the
+basement chamber of their house. Dawn was about breaking. Fergan's son,
+Martine and Joan the Hunchback had watched all night. A lamp threw its
+light upon them. The two women, uneasy in the extreme, were stripping
+old linen into bandages and lint, while Colombaik, together with his
+three apprentices, plying their saws and planes, were actively engaged
+in fashioning pike-shafts, four feet long, of oak and ash branches
+recently lopped off. Colombaik did not seem to share the apprehension of
+his mother and his wife, who silently pursued their work, listening from
+time to time in the direction of the little window that opened on the
+street. They awaited, with as much impatience as anxiety, the return of
+Fergan, absent since the previous evening. What tidings would he bring?
+
+"Lively, my lads," Colombaik was jovially saying to his apprentices,
+"ply your planes and your saws with dispatch! It does not much matter if
+these pike-shafts be rough. They are to be used by hands as callous as
+our own. May there be a chance to use them!"
+
+"Oh, master Colombaik," remarked one of the young apprentices laughing,
+"as to that, these handles will be less smooth to the touch than the
+fine doe skins that we tan for the embroidered gloves of the noble dames
+and their elegant young ladies."
+
+"The ornament of a pike is its iron head," rejoined Colombaik; "but
+little Robin the Crumb-cracker, the apprentice of the blacksmith, is
+long in fetching us those ornaments. However, with him it will not be as
+with the little apprentice of our friend the baker. There is no fear of
+Robin's nibbling at his goods on the way." The lads laughed at the joke
+of Colombaik. But accidentally turning his eyes in the direction of Joan
+and Martine, he was struck by the increasing uneasiness of their looks.
+"Good mother," said he to Joan in a tender and beseeching voice, "pardon
+me if I have saddened you with jokes that may be out of season at this
+time."
+
+"Oh, my child," answered Joan, "if I look sad, it is not on account of
+your jokes, but the result of thoughts suggested by the sight of men
+shaping weapons, and women preparing lint for the wounded."
+
+"And when we consider," put in Martine, unable to keep back her tears,
+"that a father, a son, a husband may happen to be among the wounded!
+Confound the people who brought war upon the city! Confound this clergy
+of the devil and their train of churchmen!"
+
+"Dear Martine, and you, good mother," Colombaik rejoined, seeking to
+calm the two women, "to prepare for war is not to wage it. It is prudent
+to be on one's guard, just in order to secure peace, honorable peace."
+
+"Your father!... Here is your father!" Joan cried out abruptly, hearing
+a rap at the street door. She rose, together with Martine, while one of
+the apprentices ran to open the door. But the expectation of the two
+women was not verified. They heard a childish voice cry out gleefully:
+"It burns!... It burns!... Who wants buns.... It burns!" And Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, the blacksmith's apprentice, a lad about twelve years of
+age, wide awake, but all black with the smoke of the forge, stepped in,
+holding in his little leather apron about twenty pike-heads which he
+dropped on the floor. "Who wants fire-buns!... They are hot!... They
+just come from the furnace!..."
+
+"Master Colombaik feared you had been nibbling the goods on the way,"
+one of the young tanners observed with a laugh. "We hold you quite
+capable of doing so, little Robin!"
+
+"You are right. I took my bite on the way!" laughingly answered the
+urchin. "But in order to chew my pretty piece of pointed iron, I need
+one of your fine ash branches. Let me have one."
+
+"What the devil would you do with a pike?" asked Colombaik, smiling upon
+him. "You are barely twelve years old. That is no toy for urchins."
+
+"I want to use it, if there be blows coming. My master,
+Paynen-Oste-Loup, will tap the backs of the great episcopals; so will I!
+I shall roll over the little noblemen in my best style. Those scamps
+have hurt my feelings quite often, pointing their finger at me and
+calling out: 'Look at the little villain with the black face! He looks
+like a blackamoor!'"
+
+"Hold, my bold lad," said Colombaik to Robin; "here is a good oak handle
+for you. Give us the news. What is doing in the city?"
+
+"They are rejoicing as on Christmas eve. Light is seen at all the
+windows. The forges are shooting up flame. The anvils ringing. They are
+making an infernal racket. One would think that the blacksmiths,
+locksmiths and armorers were all working at their master-pieces; and one
+would think all the shops are smithies."
+
+"This time it is your father!" Joan cried out to her son, hearing a
+second rapping at the door. Fergan soon appeared. He entered at the
+moment when Robin was leaving, brandishing his oak branch and shouting:
+"Commune! Commune! Death to the episcopals!"
+
+"Oh!" said the quarryman, following the blacksmith's apprentice with his
+eye. "How could we fear for our cause when even the children--"; and
+interrupting himself to address his wife, who ran with Martine to meet
+him: "Come, now, dear bundles of timidity! The news makes for peace."
+
+"Can it be true!" exclaimed the two women, folding their hands together.
+"There is to be no war?" And running to Colombaik, on whose neck she
+threw herself, Martine cried out: "Did you hear your father? There is to
+be no war! What happiness! It is over! Let's rejoice!"
+
+"Upon my soul, dear Martine, so much the better!" remarked the young
+tanner, returning the embrace of his wife. "We shall not recoil before
+war, but peace is better. So, then, father, everything is adjusted? The
+bishop pays, or surrenders the horse? Justice will be enforced against
+that scamp of a Black John? And the King, true to his oath, backs the
+Commune against the bishop?"
+
+"My friends," answered the quarryman, "we must, all the same, not hope
+for too much."
+
+"But what about what you said just before," replied Joan with returning
+uneasiness, "did you not tell me the news was good?"
+
+"I said, Joan, that the news was favorable to peace. Here is what
+happened last night: You heard the insolent answer of the bishop,
+reported at the meeting of the Councilmen by our neighbor Quatre-Mains,
+the baker, an answer that was rendered all the more threatening by the
+entry of the King into our city at the head of an armed troop of men.
+The Councilmen decided to take measures of resistance and safety. As
+constable of the militia, I ordered watchmen placed at all the towers
+that command the gates of the city, with orders to close them and allow
+none to enter. I likewise issued orders to the guilds of the
+blacksmiths, locksmiths and armorers to turn out quickly a large number
+of pikes, to the end of being able to arm all the male inhabitants.
+Quatre-Mains, like a man of foresight and good judgment, proposed
+sending under a good escort for all the flour in the mills of the
+suburbs, fearing the bishop may have them pillaged by his men to starve
+out Laon. These precautions being taken, they were reported to the
+Council. We did not recoil before war, but did all we could to conjure
+it away. It was agreed that John Molrain was to appear before the King
+and pray him to induce the bishop to do us justice, and to promise
+henceforth to respect our charter. The Mayor went to the house of the
+Sire of Haut-Pourcin, where the King had taken quarters. Unable,
+however, to see the Prince, he conferred long with Abbot Peter de la
+Marche, one of the royal counselors, and showed him that we demanded
+nothing but what was just. The abbot did not conceal from John Molrain
+that the bishop, having ridden ahead with the King, had entertained him
+for a long time, and that Louis the Lusty seemed greatly irritated
+against the inhabitants of Laon. John Molrain had had dealings with the
+Abbot de la Marche on the confirmation of our Commune. Knowing the
+abbot's cupidity, he said to him: 'We are resolved to maintain our
+rights with arms, but before arriving at such extremities we desire to
+try all the means of conciliation. No sacrifice will be too great for
+us. Already have we paid Louis the Lusty a considerable sum to obtain
+his adhesion to our charter, let him deign to confirm it anew and to
+order the bishop to do us justice. We offer the King a sum equal to that
+which he received before. And to you, seigneur abbot, a handsome purse
+as a testimony of our gratitude.'"
+
+"And attracted by such a promise," put in Colombaik, "the abbot surely
+accepted?"
+
+"Without making any promises, the tonsured gentleman agreed to
+communicate our offer to the King when he retired, and he made an
+appointment with John Molrain for eleven in the evening. The Councilmen,
+having approved the proposition of the Mayor, went over the city,
+soliciting each of our friends to contribute according to his power
+towards the sum offered to the King. This last sacrifice was expected to
+roll away from our city the threatened dangers of war. All the
+inhabitants hastened to put in their quota. Those who had not enough
+money, gave some vessel of silver; women and young girls offered their
+trinkets and their collars; finally, towards evening, the sum or its
+equivalent in articles of gold and silver was deposited in the communal
+treasury. John Molrain returned to the King to hear his answer. The
+Abbot de la Marche informed the Mayor that the King did not seem
+indisposed to accept our propositions, but that he desired to wait till
+morning before taking a definite resolution. There is where matters now
+stand. In a hurry to make the rounds of our watchmen, and having no time
+to come here for money, I requested our good neighbor the baker to pay
+for us our share of the contribution. Colombaik shall take to Ancel the
+money he advanced for our family."
+
+"Surely the King will accept the offer of the Councilmen," observed
+Joan, "what interest could he have in refusing to profit by so large a
+sum? He is a greedy prince. He will accept our money."
+
+"What a wretched trader that Louis the Lusty is!" exclaimed Colombaik.
+"He has us pay him to confirm our charter, and he has us pay him a
+second time to re-confirm it. Patient people that we are! We must pay,
+and pay again!"
+
+"What does it matter, my child," said Joan; "provided no blood flows,
+let us pay a double tribute, if necessary!"
+
+"'It is with iron that tribute should be paid to kings,' said our
+ancestor Vortigern to that other tonsured representative sent by Louis
+the Pious," rejoined Colombaik, looking almost with regret at the iron
+pikes that his apprentices, who had not intermitted their work, were
+engaged upon. "Oh, those times are long gone by!"
+
+"Fergan!" suddenly Joan called out, inclining her head towards the
+street; "listen! Is not that the bell, and the voice of a crier. Let's
+find out what is up--"
+
+At these words the quarryman's family approached the open window. The
+sun had just risen. A crier of the bishop, distinguishable by the arms
+embroidered on the breast of his coat, was seen passing the house. He
+alternately rang his bell and then cried out: "In the name of our
+seigneur the King! In the name of our seigneur the Bishop! Inhabitants
+of Laon assemble in the market-place at the eighth hour of the day!" and
+the crier rang anew his bell, the sound of which was soon lost in the
+distance. For an instant the family of the quarryman remained silent,
+each seeking to guess the object of the King and the bishop in ordering
+the assemblage. Joan, always yielding to hope, said to Fergan: "The King
+probably wishes to assemble the inhabitants in order to announce to them
+that he accepts the money and confirms the charter anew."
+
+"If such was the intention of Louis the Lusty, if he had accepted the
+offer of the Commune, he would have notified the Mayor," the quarryman
+answered, sadly shaking his head.
+
+"Perhaps he has done that. We may expect him to have done so, father."
+
+"In that case the Mayor would have issued orders to ring the belfry
+bell, in order to assemble the communiers and announce to them the happy
+tidings. I do not like this convocation, made in the name of the King
+and the bishop. It presages nothing good. We have everything to fear
+from our enemies."
+
+"Fergan!" replied Joan alarmed, "must we, then, renounce all hope of an
+accommodation? Is it war? Is it peace?"
+
+"We shall soon be clear upon that. It will not be long before the eighth
+hour will sound," whereupon Fergan resumed his casque and his sword,
+which he had put away upon entering, and said to his son: "Arm yourself
+and let's go to the market-place. As to you, my young ones," said he,
+turning to the apprentices, "continue adjusting the pike-heads to the
+shafts."
+
+"Fergan!" exclaimed Joan anxiously, "you foresee war?"
+
+"Oh, Colombaik," said Martine, weeping and throwing herself upon the
+neck of her husband, "I die with fear, when I think of the dangers that
+you and your father are about to run!"
+
+"Be comforted, dear wife, by ordering these preparations of resistance
+to continue, my father only adopts a measure of prudence," answered
+Colombaik. "The situation is not desperate."
+
+"My dear Joan," the quarryman said sadly, "I have seen you bear up more
+bravely on the sands of Syria. Remember what perils you, your child and
+I escaped during our long journey in Palestine, and when we were serfs
+of Neroweg VI--"
+
+"Fergan," Joan broke in, overcome with anguish, "the dangers of the past
+were terrible, and the future looks menacing."
+
+"We were all so happy in this city!" muttered Martine. "Those wicked
+episcopals, so anxious to turn our joy into mourning, have,
+nevertheless, the same as the communiers, wives, mothers, sisters,
+daughters!"
+
+"That is true," said Fergan bitterly; "but those men of the nobility and
+their families, driven by the pride of station and living in idleness,
+are furious at no longer being able to dispose of our hard labor. Oh! If
+they tire our patience and if they mean to reconquer their hateful
+rights, woe be unto the episcopals! Terrible reprisals await them!" And
+embracing Joan and Martine, the quarryman added: "Good-bye, wife;
+good-bye, my child."
+
+"Good-bye, good mother; good-bye, Martine," Colombaik said in his turn,
+"I accompany my father to the market-place. Soon as we shall have
+definite information, I shall return to let you know. Remain at ease and
+without any apprehensions."
+
+"Come, daughter," said Joan to Martine, after once more embracing her
+husband and her son, who forthwith went out, "let's resume our sad task.
+For a moment I had hoped we could drop it."
+
+The two women began anew to prepare lint and bandages, while the young
+apprentices, resuming their work with renewed ardor, continued shafting
+the iron pikes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+"TO ARMS, COMMUNIERS!"
+
+
+An ever increasing crowd flowed into the market-place. Not now, as on
+the previous day, did joy and the breath of security brighten the faces
+of men, women and children gathering to celebrate the inauguration of
+the communal Town Hall and belfry, the symbol of the emancipation of the
+inhabitants. No; neither women nor children assisted at this gathering,
+so different from the first. Only the men met, sombre, uneasy, some
+determined, others crestfallen, and all foreseeing the approach of a
+public danger. Assembled in large groups around the pillars of the
+market-place, the communiers discussed the latest tidings--not yet known
+by Fergan at the time when, in the company of his son, he left his
+house--significant and alarming tidings. The watchmen on the towers,
+between which one of the gates of the city opened on a promenade that
+extended between the ramparts and the episcopal palace, had seen a large
+troop of woodmen serfs and colliers, with Thiegaud, the bandit and
+favorite of Bishop Gaudry, march into the palace at daybreak. A short
+time after daybreak, the King, accompanied by his knights and
+men-at-arms, had also retired into the fortified dwelling of the
+prelate, leaving Laon by the south gate, which the sentinels had not
+dared to refuse to open to the royal cavalcade. The courtiers of the
+King having warned him that the inhabitants of the city had been up all
+night, and that the blacksmiths' and locksmiths' anvils had constantly
+rung under the hammer in the manufacture of a large number of pikes,
+such preparations of defence, such a nocturnal excitement, all so
+contrary to the peaceful habits of the townsmen, awoke the royal
+suspicions and fears, and he had hastened to transfer his quarters to
+the episcopal palace, where he considered himself safer. Instructed on
+the departure of the Prince, the Mayor, John Molrain had himself run to
+the episcopal palace, where admission was refused him. Foreseeing as
+much, the Mayor had provided himself with a letter to the abbot
+counselor of the King, in which Molrain repeated his propositions of the
+previous day, and implored the King to accept them in the name of public
+peace. Molrain added that the Commune held the promised sum at the
+disposal of the King. To a letter so wisely framed and so conciliating,
+the King sent for answer that in the morning the inhabitants of Laon
+would be apprized of his pleasure. During that same night, it had been
+noticed in the city that the episcopals, entrenched in their fortified
+and solidly barricaded houses, had frequently exchanged signals among
+themselves by means of torches placed at their windows and alternately
+lighted and extinguished. These alarming tidings demolished almost
+completely the hope of an accommodation, and threw the communiers into a
+state of increasing anxiety. The Councilmen had been the first to appear
+at the market-place, where they were soon joined by the Mayor. The
+latter, grave and resolute, ordered silence, mounted one of the stands
+in the deserted stalls and said to the crowd:
+
+"The eighth hour of the day will soon sound. I have ordered the
+messenger of the King to be allowed into the city when he presents
+himself at the gate. The King and the bishop have ordered us to meet
+here, at the market-place, to hear their pleasure. We prefer to receive
+the royal message at our Town Hall. That is the seat of our power. The
+more that power is contested from us, all the more zealous should we
+show ourselves in holding it high."
+
+The Mayor's proposition was received with acclamation, and while the
+crowd followed the magistrates, Fergan and his son, commissioned to wait
+for the King's messengers, saw Archdeacon Anselm approaching with
+hurried steps. Thanks to his goodness and his uprightness, the prelate
+was beloved and venerated by all. Making a sign to the quarryman to
+draw near, he said to him in an agitated voice: "Will you join me in an
+endeavor to avert the frightful misfortunes that this city is threatened
+with?"
+
+"The King has not, then, been moved even by the last sacrifice that we
+imposed upon ourselves? He refused the offer of John Molrain?"
+
+"The bishop, learning that the Mayor had offered the King a considerable
+sum for the re-confirmation of your charter, offered Louis the Lusty
+twice as much to abolish the Commune, and promised rich presents to the
+King's counselors."
+
+"And the King gave ear to such an infamous auction sale?"
+
+"He gave ear to the suggestions of his own cupidity. He listened to the
+counselors that surround him, and he accepted the bishop's offer."
+
+"The oath that Louis the Lusty took, his signature, his seal affixed to
+our charter--all that is then nullified?"
+
+"The bishop absolved the King of his oath, by virtue of his episcopal
+power of binding and unbinding here on earth. A sacredotal chicanery."
+
+"The King is in error if he expects to receive the price of that
+infamous traffic. The treasure of the bishop is empty. How could the
+King, so astute a trader, rely upon the promises of Gaudry?"
+
+"Once the bishop's seigniorial power is restored, he will clap upon the
+townsmen, who will have again become taxable and subject to any imposts
+at his mercy, a tax to pay the sum promised to the King, and the latter
+himself will lend armed assistance to the bishop to levy the new
+contributions."
+
+"Fatality!" cried out Fergan in an outburst of rage. "We shall,
+accordingly, have paid to obtain our enfranchisement, and are to pay
+over again to fall back into servitude!"
+
+"The projects of the bishop are as criminal as insane. But if you desire
+to ward off even greater dangers, you will try to allay the popular
+effervescence when the decision of the King shall be announced to the
+Councilmen."
+
+"You advise a cowardly act! No, I shall not seek to pacify the people,
+when the insolent challenge shall have been thrown in their faces! You
+will hear me the first to cry out: 'Commune! Commune!' and I shall march
+at the head of my forces against the bishop. It will be a battle to the
+knife!"
+
+"Will you promise me not to precipitate so bloody a solution, that I may
+make new efforts to lead the bishop back to more equitable sentiments?"
+
+Anselm had hardly finished speaking when a man on horseback, preceded by
+a sergeant-at-arms, covered with iron and the visor of his casque up,
+appeared at the entrance of the street.
+
+"Here is the royal messenger," said the quarryman to the archdeacon,
+advancing towards the two cavaliers; "if the resolution of the King and
+the bishop is such as you have just informed me of, let the blood that
+is to run fall upon them!" Addressing then the royal messenger:
+
+"The Mayor and the Councilmen are awaiting you in the large reception
+room of the Town Hall of the Commune."
+
+"Monseigneur the King and monseigneur the Bishop commanded the
+inhabitants to assemble here at the market-place, in order to hear the
+rescript that I bring," answered the messenger; "I must obey the orders
+given me."
+
+"If you wish to fulfil your mission, follow me," replied the quarryman.
+"Our magistrates, representing the inhabitants of the city, are
+assembled at the Town Hall. They have not chosen to wait here." Fearing
+some trap, the King's messenger hesitated to follow Fergan, who,
+surmising his thoughts, added: "Fear nothing; your person will be
+respected; I answer for you with my head."
+
+The sincerity that breathed through the words of Fergan reassured the
+envoy, who, from greater prudence, ordered the knight, by whom he was
+escorted, to accompany him no further, lest the sight of an armed man
+should irritate the crowd. The royal messenger then followed the
+quarryman.
+
+"Fergan," the archdeacon called in a penetrating voice, "a last time I
+conjure you, seek to curb the popular anger. I return to the King and
+the bishop to renew my endeavors against the fatal course they are
+starting on."
+
+With that the archdeacon precipitately left the quarryman, who, leaving
+the market-place, reached the Town Hall, and stepping ahead of the
+messenger into the crowd repeated several times, while elbowing his way
+through: "Room and respect for the envoy; he is alone and unarmed!"
+
+Arrived at the threshold of the Town Hall, the envoy left his horse in
+charge of Robin the Crumb-cracker, who pressed forward offering to guard
+the palfrey; and accompanied by the quarryman he went up to the large
+reception hall where were gathered the Mayor and the Councilmen, some in
+arms, others merely in the robes of their office. The faces of the
+magistrates were at once grave and uneasy. They misgave the approach of
+events disastrous to the city. Above the Mayor's seat stood the Communal
+banner; on a table before him, lay the official silver seal. The
+gathering was silent and wrapt in thought.
+
+"Mayor and Councilmen! Here is the royal envoy who wishes to make a
+communication to you."
+
+"We shall listen to him," answered the Mayor, John Molrain; "let him
+communicate to us the message he is charged with."
+
+The King's man seemed embarrassed in the fulfillment of his errand. He
+drew from his breast a parchment scroll, sealed with the royal seal, and
+unfolding it he said in a tremulous voice: "This is the pleasure of our
+seigneur the King. He has ordered me to read this rescript to you aloud,
+and to leave it with you, to the end that you may not remain in
+ignorance upon its contents. Listen to it with respect."
+
+"Read," said John Molrain; and turning to the Councilmen: "Above all, my
+friends, whatever our sentiments, let us not interrupt the envoy during
+the reading."
+
+The King's man then read aloud:
+
+     "Louis, by the Grace of God, King of the French, to the Mayor and
+     inhabitants of Laon, Greeting:--
+
+     "We order and command you strictly to render, without contradiction
+     or delay, to our well-beloved and trusty Gaudry, Bishop of Laon,
+     the keys of this city, which he holds under us. We likewise order
+     and command you to forward to our well-beloved and trusty Gaudry,
+     Bishop of the diocese of Laon, the seal, the banner and the
+     treasury of the Commune, which we now declare abolished. The tower
+     of the belfry and the Town Hall shall be demolished, within the
+     space of one month at the longest. We order and command you, in
+     addition, to henceforth obey the bans and orders of our
+     well-beloved and trusty Gaudry, Bishop of Laon, the same as his
+     predecessors and himself have always been obeyed before the
+     establishment of the said Commune, because we may not fail to
+     guarantee to our well-beloved and trusty bishops the possession of
+     the seigniories and rights which they hold from God as
+     ecclesiastics and from us as laymen.
+
+     "This is our will.
+
+     "LOUIS."
+
+The recommendation of John Molrain was religiously observed. The King's
+envoy read his message in the midst of profound silence. In the measure,
+however, as he proceeded with the reading of the act, every word of
+which conveyed a threat and was an outrage, an iniquity, a perjury
+towards the Commune, the Mayor and Councilmen exchanged looks
+successively expressive of astonishment, rage, pain and consternation.
+Overwhelming, indeed, was the astonishment of the Councilmen, to whom
+Fergan had not yet had time to communicate his conversation with the
+archdeacon. However, aware of the evil intentions of the King, yet they
+had not been able to imagine such a flagrant violation of the rights
+that had been granted, acknowledged and solemnly sworn to by the Prince
+and the bishop. Great, indeed, was the anger that seized the Councilmen;
+the least bellicose among them felt his heart stirred with indignation
+at the insolent challenge hurled at the Commune, at the brazen robbery
+contemplated by the King and bishop in the attempt to restore their
+odious rights, the permanent abolition of which was proclaimed by a
+charter sold for heavy money. Great was also the pain felt by the
+Councilmen at the royal order to surrender to the bishop their banner,
+their seal and their treasury, and to tear down their Town Hall and its
+belfry. That belfry, that seal, that banner, such dear symbols of an
+emancipation obtained after so many years of oppression, of servitude
+and of shame,--all were to be renounced by the communiers. They were to
+fall back under the yoke of Gaudry, when, in their legitimate pride,
+they expected to bequeath to their children a freedom so painfully
+acquired. Tears of rage and despair rolled down from all eyes at the
+bare thought of such a disgrace. Great was the consternation of the
+Councilmen; even the more energetic of them, while caring little for
+their own lives, determined to defend the communal franchises unto
+death, nevertheless anticipated with profound pain the disasters that
+their flourishing city was threatened with, the torrents of blood that
+civil war was about to shed. Victory or defeat, what distress, what
+ravages, what a number of widows and orphans in prospect!
+
+At that supreme moment, some of the Councilmen, they later admitted it
+themselves, after having first triumphed over a transitory feeling of
+faintness, felt their resolution waver. To enter into a struggle with a
+King of the French was, for the city of Laon, an act of almost insane
+foolhardiness. It was to expose the inhabitants to almost certain deeds
+of retribution. Moreover, these magistrates--all of them husbands and
+most of them fathers, men of peaceful habits--were not versed in war.
+Undoubtedly, to submit to bear the yoke of the bishop and of the
+nobility meant abysmal degradation; it meant to submit for all future
+time themselves and their descendants to indignities and incessant
+exploitation. Life, it is true, would be safe, and by virtue of tame
+submission to the bishop some concessions might be obtained to render
+life less miserable. Fortunately, the instances where such unworthy
+wavering in the face of peril was experienced, had the advantage of
+unrolling before the shaken hearts the abysmal infamy that fear might
+drive them to. Promptly returning to their senses, these men realized
+that the fatal choice was between degradation and servitude on the one
+side, and, on the other, the dangers of a resistance sacred as justice
+itself; that they had to choose between shame or a glorious death. Their
+self-respect soon regained the upper hand, and they blushed at their
+own weakness. When the envoy of Louis the Lusty had finished reading the
+royal message, none of the Councilmen who had just been a prey to cruel
+perplexities raised the voice to advise the relinquishment of the
+franchises of the Commune.
+
+The reading of the King's rescript being ended, John Molrain said to the
+envoy in a solemn voice: "Are you authorized to listen to our
+objections?"
+
+"There is no room for objections to an act of the sovereign will of our
+seigneur the King, signed by his own hand and sealed with his own seal,"
+answered the messenger. "The King commands in the fullness of his power;
+his subjects obey with humility. Bend your knees, bow down your
+foreheads!"
+
+"Is the will of Louis the Lusty irrevocable?" resumed the Mayor.
+
+"Irrevocable!" answered the envoy. "And as a first proof of your
+obedience to his orders, the King herein orders you, Councilmen, to hand
+over to me the keys, the seal and the banner of the city. I have orders
+to take them to the bishop, in token of submission to the abolition of
+the Commune."
+
+These words of the messenger carried the exasperation of the Councilmen
+to its pitch. Some bounded from their seats or raised to heaven their
+threatening fists; others covered their faces in their hands. Threats,
+imprecations, moans, escaped from all lips. Dominating the tumult, John
+Molrain ordered silence. All the Councilmen resumed their seats. Then,
+rising full of dignity, calmness and firmness, the Mayor turned to the
+banner of the Commune, that stood behind his seat, pointed towards it
+with his hand and said to the messenger of the King: "On this banner,
+that the King commands us to give up like cowards, are traced two towers
+and a sword: The towers are the emblem of the city of Laon, the sword is
+the emblem of the Commune. Our duty is inscribed upon that banner--to
+defend with arms the franchises of our city. That seal, which the King
+demands as a token of relinquishment of our liberties," John Molrain
+proceeded, taking up from the table a silver medal, "this seal
+represents a man raising his right hand to heaven in witness of the
+sacredness of his oath; in his left hand he holds a sword, with the
+point over his heart. This man is the Mayor of the Commune of Laon. This
+magistrate is swearing by heaven to rather die than betray his oath.
+Now, then, _I, Mayor of the Commune of Laon, freely elected by my fellow
+townsmen, I swear to maintain and to defend our rights and our
+franchises unto death_!"
+
+"To that oath we shall all be faithful!" cried the Councilmen with
+frantic enthusiasm. "We swear sooner to die than to renounce our
+franchises!"
+
+"You have heard the answer of the Mayor and Councilmen of Laon," said
+John Molrain to the King's man when the tumult was appeased. "Our
+charter has been sworn to and signed by the King and by Bishop Gaudry in
+the year 1109. We shall defend that charter with the sword. The King of
+the French is all-powerful in Gaul, the Commune of Laon is strong only
+in its rights and in the bravery of its inhabitants. It has done
+everything to avoid an impious war. It now awaits its enemies."
+
+Hardly had John Molrain pronounced these last words when a deafening
+uproar rose outside the Town Hall. Colombaik had joined his father to
+accompany the royal messenger to the council hall. But after hearing the
+rescript of the King, he was not able longer to restrain his
+indignation. Hastily descending to the street, packed with a dense mass,
+he announced that the King abolished the Commune and re-established the
+bishop in the sovereignty of his so justly abhorred rights. While the
+news spread like wild-fire from mouth to mouth through the whole city,
+the crowd, massed upon the square, began to make the air resound with
+imprecations. The more exasperated communiers invaded the hall, where
+the council was gathered, and cried, inflamed with fury: "To arms! To
+arms! Down with the King, the bishop and the episcopals!"
+
+Sufficiently uneasy before now, the royal messenger grew pale with fear,
+and ran for protection behind the Mayor and Councilmen, saying to them
+in a trembling voice: "I have only obeyed orders; protect me!"
+
+"Fear nothing!" called Fergan. "I have answered for you with my head. I
+shall see you safe to the gates of the city."
+
+"To arms!" cried John Molrain, addressing himself to the inhabitants who
+had invaded the hall. "Ring the belfry bell to convoke the people to the
+market-place. From there we shall march to the ramparts! To arms,
+communiers! To arms!"
+
+These words of John Molrain caused the King's messenger to be forgotten.
+While several inhabitants climbed to the tower of the belfry to set the
+big bell ringing, others descended quickly to the street and spread
+themselves over the city crying: "To arms!" "Commune!" "Commune!" And
+these cries, taken up by the crowds, were soon joined by the clangor
+from the belfry.
+
+"Molrain," Fergan said to the Mayor, "I shall accompany the envoy of
+Louis the Lusty to the city's gate that opens opposite the episcopal
+palace, and I shall remain on guard at that postern, one of the most
+important posts."
+
+"Go," answered the Mayor; "we of the Council shall remain here in
+permanence to the end of deciding upon the measures to be taken."
+
+Fergan and Colombaik descended from the council hall. The King's man
+walked between them. The people, running home for their arms, had
+cleared the square; only a few groups were left behind. Little Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, who had been charged with the care of the messenger's
+palfrey, had hastened to profit by the opportunity of straddling a horse
+for the first time in his life, and was carrying himself triumphantly in
+the saddle. At sight of the quarryman, he quickly came down again and
+said, while placing the reins into his hands: "Master Fergan, here is
+the horse; I prefer the infantry to the cavalry. I shall now run for my
+pike. Let the little episcopals look out. If I meet any, I'll massacre
+them."
+
+The bellicose ardor of the stripling seemed to strike the royal envoy
+even more forcibly than anything he had yet seen. He remounted his horse
+escorted by Fergan and his son. The redoubled peals from the belfry
+resounded far into the distance. In all the streets that the King's man
+traversed on his way to the city gate, shops were hastily closing, and
+soon the faces of women and children appeared at the windows, following
+with anxious mien the husband, father, son or brother, who was leaving
+the house to meet in arms at the call of the belfry. The King's
+messenger, sombre and silent, could not conceal the astonishment and
+fear produced in him by the warlike excitement of that people of
+bourgeois and artisans, all running with enthusiasm to the defence of
+the Commune. "Before you arrived at the gate of the city," Fergan said
+to him, "you surely expected to meet here with a craven obedience to the
+orders of the King and the bishop. But you see it for yourself, here, as
+at Beauvais, as at Cambrai, as at Noyons, as at Amiens, the old Gallic
+blood is waking up after centuries of slavery. Report faithfully to
+Louis the Lusty and to Gaudry what you have witnessed while crossing the
+city. Perchance, at the supreme moment, they may recoil before the
+iniquity that they are contemplating, and they may yet save grave
+disasters to this city that asks but to be allowed to live peacefully
+and happy in the name of the faith that has been plighted."
+
+"I have no authority in the councils of my seigneur the King," answered
+the envoy sadly, "but I swear in the name of God, I did not expect to
+see what I have seen, and hear what I have heard. I shall faithfully
+report it all to my master."
+
+"The King of the French is all-powerful in Gaul, the city of Laon is
+strong only in its right and the bravery of its inhabitants. It now
+awaits its enemies! You see it is on its guard," added Fergan, pointing
+to a troop of bourgeois militia that had just occupied the ramparts
+contiguous to the gate by which the King's envoy made his exit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+RETRIBUTION.
+
+
+The episcopal palace, fortified with towers and thick walls, was
+separated from the city by a wide space, lined with trees and that
+served as a promenade. Fergan and his son were busy organizing the
+transport of materials destined for the defence of the walls in case of
+an attack, when the quarryman saw the outer gate of the episcopal palace
+thrown open. Several of the King's men came out, looked around
+cautiously, as if to make sure that the promenade was clear, re-entered
+the palace in hot haste, and almost immediately a strong escort of
+knights rode out, and took the road that led to the boundary of Picardy.
+This vanguard was closely followed by a few warriors, clad in brilliant
+armor, one of them, notable for his enormous stomach; two ordinary men
+could have been easily held in this one's cuirass. The rider's casque
+was topped with a golden crown engraved with fleur-de-lis. The long
+scarlet saddle-cloth, that covered his horse almost wholly, was likewise
+embroidered in gold fleur-de-lis. These insignias, coupled with the
+extraordinary corpulence of the rider, designated Louis the Lusty to
+Fergan. A few steps behind the Prince the quarryman recognized the
+messenger, whom, shortly before, he had himself accompanied to the gate
+of the city, and who, now was engaged in an animated conversation with
+the Abbot de la Marche. The train closed with several baggage mules and
+servants; the rear was brought up by another squad of knights. The whole
+cavalcade soon fell into a gallop, and Fergan saw the King at a distance
+turning towards the ramparts of Laon, whose belfry bell did not cease
+ringing, and menace the city with a gesture of rage by shaking at it his
+closed fist, covered with a mailed gauntlet. Giving then the spurs to
+his horse, Louis the Lusty soon disappeared at the turning of the road
+in the midst of a cloud of dust.
+
+"You flee before the insurgent communiers, oh, King of the Franks, noble
+descendant of Hugh Capet!" cried out Colombaik in the passionate heat of
+his age. "Old Gaul is waking up! The descendants of the kings of the
+conquest flee before the popular uprisings! The day predicted by
+Victoria has arrived!"
+
+Ripened with age and experience, Fergan said to his son in a grave and
+melancholic voice: "My son, let us not take the first glimmerings of the
+approaching dawn for the light of the midday sun." At that very moment,
+the sound of the great bell of the cathedral, never rung but at certain
+great holidays, was suddenly heard. Instead, however, of ringing slowly
+and in measured ryhthm, as usual, its clang now was alternately rapid
+and then again at long intervals. The tolling lasted only a short time;
+soon the bell was silent. "To arms!" Fergan cried out in a thundering
+voice. "This must be a signal agreed upon between the knights of the
+city and the episcopal palace. While waiting for the re-inforcements
+that, undoubtedly, the King is gone after, the episcopals deem
+themselves able to overcome us. To arms! Cover the ramparts! Death to
+the episcopals!"
+
+At the call of Fergan and his son, the latter of whom ran to rally the
+insurgents, the communiers hastened near, some armed with bows, others
+with pikes, hatchets and swords--all ready to repel an attack. Others
+again lighted fires under caldrons full of pitch, while their companions
+rolled with great effort towards the ramparts certain engines of war,
+which, by means of turning pallets, fastened in the middle of a twisted
+rope, hurled enormous stones more than a hundred paces off. Suddenly a
+great noise, in which shouts were mixed with the clatter of arms,
+sounded from afar in the center of the city. As Fergan had forseen, the
+episcopals sallying forth from their fortified dwellings at the signal
+given by the great bell of the cathedral, had fallen upon the bourgeois
+in the city at the same time that, as agreed upon, the serfs of the
+episcopal palace, led by several knights, were to begin the siege of the
+ramparts. The communiers were, accordingly, to find themselves between
+two enemies, one within, the other without. In fact, Fergan saw the gate
+of the episcopal palace swing open once more, and there issued forth
+from it a huge four-wheeled wagon, pushed from behind with feet and
+hands. The wagon was filled with straw and faggots, heaped so high, that
+the mass of combustibles, raised twelve or fifteen feet above the rails
+of the wagon, completely hid and covered those who shoved it, serving
+them as a shelter against the projectiles that might be hurled at them
+from the walls. The assailants figured upon setting fire to the
+combustibles in the wagon, with the object of pushing it near enough to
+the gate so as to communicate its fire to the latter. The move, although
+skilfully planned, was baffled by the quick wit of Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, the blacksmith's apprentice. Armed with his pike, he was
+one of the first at the ramparts, and had noticed the chariot advancing
+slowly and always pushed from behind. Several insurgents, armed with
+bows, yielded to a thoughtless impulse, and hastened to shoot their
+arrows at the wagon. These, however, fastened themselves uselessly in
+the straw or the wood. Robin pulled off his shirt, tore it in shreds,
+and sighting a tall militiaman, who, seduced by the example of his
+fellows was also about to shoot uselessly upon the straw, the
+blacksmith's apprentice brusquely disarmed the townsman, seized the
+arrow, wrapped it in one of the shreds of his shirt, ran and plunged it
+into a caldron of pitch, already liquid, lighted it at the fire, and
+quickly placing it on the cord of the bow, fired the flaming arrow into
+the middle of the chariot filled with combustibles, and then but a short
+distance from the walls. Overjoyed at his own inspiration, Robin clapped
+his hands, turned somersaults, and while returning the bow to the
+astonished militiaman, set up the shout: "Commune! Commune! The
+episcopals prepare the bonfires, the communiers light them!" And the
+blacksmith's apprentice ran to pick up his pike.
+
+Hardly had the firebrand dropped upon that load of straw and fagots than
+it took fire, and offered to the eyes one mass of flames, overtopped by
+a dense cloud of smoke that the wind drove towards the episcopal palace.
+Noticing the circumstance, Fergan hastened to profit by it. "My
+friends!" cried he, "let's finish the work begun by little
+Crumb-cracker! That cloud of smoke will mask our movements from the
+episcopals. Let's make a sortie. Form into a column of armed men, and
+let's take the episcopal palace by storm. Death to the episcopals!"
+
+"Fall to!" was the insurgents' response. "To the assault! Commune!
+Commune!"
+
+"One-half of our troops will remain here with Colombaik to guard the
+walls," Fergan proceeded. "They are fighting in the village. The
+episcopals might try to attack the ramparts from behind. Let those
+follow me who are ready to storm the episcopal palace. Forward, march!"
+
+A large number of communiers hastened upon the heels of Fergan. Among
+them was Bertrand, the son of Bernard des Bruyeres, the ill-starred
+victim of Gaudry's murderous nature. Bertrand was silent, almost
+impassible in the midst of the seething effervescence of the people. His
+only thought was to avoid dropping his heavy axe that weighed down his
+shoulder. Fergan had cleverly led the sortie of the insurgents. Masked
+for a sufficient space of time to the eyes of the enemy by the flames
+and smoke of the burning wagon and its load, they soon reached the walls
+of the episcopal palace, found the gate open, and a crowd of armed serfs
+standing under the arch. Under the lead of several knights, they were
+preparing to march on the assault of the postern, their chief, as well
+as Fergan, having relied upon masking their attack behind the burning
+chariot. At the unexpected sight of the insurgents, the episcopals only
+thought of barring the entrance to the palace. It was too late. A bloody
+hand-to-hand encounter took place under the arch that joined the two
+towers on either side of the gate. The communiers, warming to the
+conflict, fought with fury. Many were killed, others wounded. Fergan
+received from a knight a blow with an axe that broke his casque and
+struck his forehead. After a stubborn struggle, the inhabitants of Laon
+threw the episcopals back and entered the vast yard where the combat
+proceeded with redoubled fury. Fergan, still in the hottest of the
+fight, despite his wound, for a moment thought himself and his men lost.
+Just as the fight was at its hottest, Thiegaud came in from the green of
+the bishopric at the head of a large body of woodmen serfs, armed with
+stout hatchets, and threw himself into the fray. The re-inforcement was
+intended to crush the insurgents. What was not the surprise of these,
+when they heard the serf of St. Vincent and his men set up the cry:
+"Death to the bishop! To the sack of the palace! To the sack! Commune!"
+
+The combat changed its aspect on the spot. The larger number of the
+bishop's serfs who had taken part in the struggle, hearing the woodmen
+cry: "Commune! Death to the bishop! To the sack of the palace!" dropped
+their arms. Deserted by a part of their men, the knights redoubled their
+efforts of valor, but in vain; they were all killed or disabled. Soon
+masters of the palace, the insurgents spread in all directions, yelling:
+"Death to the bishop!"
+
+Thiegaud approached Fergan with a mien of triumphant hatred brandishing
+his cutlass. "I answered Gaudry for the faithfulness of the woodmen of
+the abbey," cried the serf of St. Vincent, "but in order to revenge
+myself upon the wretch for having debauched my daughter, I caused our
+men to mutiny against him and his tonsured fellow devils!"
+
+"Where is the bishop?" the insurgents shouted, brandishing their
+weapons. "To death with him!"
+
+"Friends, your vengeance shall be satisfied, and mine also. Gaudry will
+not escape us," replied Thiegaud. "I know where the holy man lies in
+hiding. The moment you forced the gate of the palace, and fearing the
+issue of the fight, Gaudry put on the coat of one of the servants, in
+the hope of fleeing under cover of the disguise. But I advised him to
+lock himself up in his storeroom, and to crawl into the bottom of one of
+the empty hogsheads. Come, come!" he proceeded with savage laughter, "We
+shall stave in the head and draw red wine." Saying which, the serf of
+St. Vincent, followed by the mob of the insurgents who were exasperated
+at the bishop, wended his way to the storeroom. Among the furious crowd
+was the son of Bernard des Bruyeres. Having by the merest chance escaped
+unscathed from the melée, the frail youth marched close behind Thiegaud,
+endeavoring, despite the smallness of his stature and his feebleness,
+not to lose the post he had taken. His pale and sickly features were
+rapidly regaining their color; a feverish ardor illumined his eyes and
+imparted to him fictitious strength. No longer did his heavy battle axe
+seem to weigh on his puny arm. From time to time he lovingly
+contemplated the weapon, while he passed his finger along its sharp
+edge. At such times he would emit a sigh of repressed joy, while he
+raised his flashing eyes to heaven. Guiding the communiers, the serf of
+St. Vincent, threaded his way to the storeroom, a spacious chamber
+located at one of the corners of the first yard. Before reaching it, the
+inhabitants of Laon, having stumbled against the corpse of Black John
+that lay riddled with wounds, they threw themselves in a paroxysm of
+fury upon the lifeless body of the savage executor of Gaudry's
+cruelties. In the tumult that ensued upon these acts of reprisal, the
+son of Bernard des Bruyeres was, despite all stubborn resistance on his
+part, separated from Thiegaud, at the moment when the latter, helped by
+several of the insurgents, broke down and forced the door of the
+storeroom, that, for greater precaution, the prelate had bolted and
+barred from within. The mass emptied itself into the vast chamber that
+was barely lighted by narrow skylights and crowded with full and empty
+vats. A kind of alley wound its way between the numerous hogsheads.
+Thiegaud made a sign to the insurgents to halt and stay at a distance.
+Wishing to prolong the bishop's agony, he struck with the flat of his
+cutlass the head of several vats, calling out each time: "Anyone
+inside?" Of course he received no answer. Arriving finally near a huge
+hogshead that stood on end he turned his head to the communiers with the
+slyness of a wolf, and removing and throwing down the cover that had
+been lightly placed upon it, asked again: "Any one inside?"
+
+"There is here an unhappy prisoner," came from the trembling voice of
+the bishop. "Have mercy upon him in the name of Christ!"
+
+"Oho! my friend Ysengrin!" said Thiegaud, now taking his turn in giving
+the nickname to his master. "Is it you who are cowering down in that
+barrel? Come out! Come out! I want to see whether, perhaps, my daughter
+is there in hiding with you." Saying which, the serf of St. Vincent
+seized the prelate by his long hair with a vigorous clutch, and forced
+him, despite his resistance, to rise by little and little from the
+bottom of the ton into which he had crawled. It was a frightful
+spectacle. For a moment, always holding the bishop by the hair as the
+latter rose on his feet in the barrel, Thiegaud seemed to hold in his
+hand the head of a corpse, so livid was Gaudry's face. For a moment
+Gaudry stood upon his legs inside of the barrel, with his head and
+shoulders above the edge. But his limbs shook so that, wishing to
+support himself inside of the barrel, it tumbled over and the Bishop of
+Laon rolled at the feet of the serf. Stooping down, while the prelate
+was painfully trying to rise, Thiegaud affected to look into the bottom
+of the barrel, and cried out: "No, friend Ysengrin, my daughter is not
+there. The jade must have stayed in your bed."
+
+"Beloved sons in Jesus Christ!" stammered Gaudry, who, upon his knees,
+extended his hands towards the communiers. "I swear to you upon the
+gospels and upon my eternal salvation, I shall uphold your Commune! Have
+pity upon me!"
+
+"Liar, renegade!" yelled back the enraged communiers. "We know what your
+oath is worth. Swindler and hypocrite!"
+
+"You shall pay with your life for the blood of our people that has
+flowed to-day! Justice! Justice!"
+
+"Yes, justice and vengeance in the name of the women, who this morning
+had husbands, and this evening are widows!"
+
+"Justice and vengeance in the name of the children, who this morning had
+fathers, and this evening are orphans!"
+
+"Oh, Gaudry, you and yours have by dint of perjuries and untold outrages
+tired the patience of the people! Your hour has sounded!"
+
+"Which of us is it that wanted war, you or we? Did you listen to our
+prayers? Did you have pity for the peace of our city? No! Well, then,
+neither shall there be pity for you! Death to the bishop!"
+
+"My good friends ... grant me my life," repeated the bishop, whose teeth
+chattered with terror. "Oh! I pray you!... Grant me my life! I ... I
+shall renounce the bishopric.... I shall leave this city.... You shall
+never see my face again.... Only leave me my life!"
+
+"Did you show mercy to my brother Gerhard, whose eyes were put out by
+your orders?" cried a communier, seizing the prelate by the collar and
+shaking him with fury. "Infamous criminal! Did you have pity for him?"
+
+"Did you have mercy for my friend Robert of the Mill, who was stabbed to
+death by Black John?" added another insurgent. And the two accusers
+seized the prelate, who quietly allowed himself to be dragged upon his
+knees, "You shall die in the face of the sun that has witnessed your
+crimes!"
+
+Overwhelmed with blows and insults, Gaudry was pushed out of the
+storeroom. In vain did he cry: "Have pity upon me!... I shall restore
+your Commune!... I swear to you!... I swear!--"
+
+"Will you restore their husbands to the widows, their fathers to the
+orphans you have made?"
+
+"After having lived the life of a traitor and a homicide; after
+exasperating an inoffensive people that only asked to be allowed to
+live in peace in accordance with the pledge that was sworn, it is not
+enough to cry 'Pity!' in order to be absolved."
+
+"Clemency is holy, but impunity is impious! Death to the bishop!"
+
+"Heaven and earth!" cried Fergan. "The justice of the people is the
+justice of God! Death to the bishop! Death!"
+
+"Yes, yes! To death with the bishop!"
+
+The prelate was dragged in the midst of these furious cries outside of
+the storeroom. Suddenly a tremulous voice dominated the uproar: "What,
+shall not the son of Bernard des Bruyeres be allowed to avenge his
+father!" Immediately, by a simultaneous movement, the insurgents opened
+a path to the son of the victim. His face radiant, his eyes flashing,
+Bertrand rushed upon the prostrate bishop, and raising his heavy axe
+with his weak hands, cleaved the skull of Gaudry; then, casting off the
+blood-stained weapon, he cried: "You are avenged, my father!"
+
+"Well done, my lad! The death of your father and the dishonor of my
+daughter are avenged at one blow!" cried Thiegaud; and seeing the
+episcopal ring on the bishop's finger, he added: "I take my daughter's
+token of marriage!" Unable, however, to tear the ring off the prelate's
+finger, the serf of St. Vincent cut it off with a blow of his cutlass
+and stuck both finger and ring in his pocket.
+
+So legitimate was the hatred that Gaudry inspired the communiers, that
+it survived even the man's death. His corpse was riddled with wounds and
+covered with curses. The insurgents were in the act of throwing his
+lifeless body into a sewer close to the storeroom, when from another
+side the cry fell upon their ears: "Commune! Commune! Death to the
+episcopals!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+RESTING ON THEIR ARMS.
+
+
+While this tragic scene was enacting, another body of the people of
+Laon, led by Ancel Quatre-Mains and his sprightly wife, invaded the
+episcopal palace from another side. Fergan was running to meet them the
+moment he saw them enter the green, when he caught sight of Archdeacon
+Anselm, who, having so far kept aloof from the theater of the conflict,
+was now hastening to the spot, informed of the bishop's fate by one of
+his domestics. The archdeacon succeeded in inducing the communiers to
+refrain from submitting the remains of their enemy to the idle and last
+disgrace contemplated by them. Helped by two servants, the worthy priest
+of Christ was carrying the corpse of the bishop, when he noticed Fergan,
+and said to him in a voice deeply moved, with the tears running down his
+cheeks: "I wish to bury the body of this unfortunate man, and to pray
+for him. My sad forecasts have been verified. Only yesterday, warning
+him in the midst of his braggart and fatal illusion of security, I
+expressed the hope that I may not soon have to pray over his grave. Oh,
+Fergan, civil war is a terrible scourge!"
+
+"A curse upon those who provoke these execrable strifes, that carry
+mourning into the camp of both the vanquishers and the vanquished!"
+answered the quarryman, and leaving the archdeacon to fulfil his pious
+office, he proceeded to join Quatre-Mains, who commanded the other troop
+of the invaders.
+
+The worthy Councilman, ever hampered and incommoded by his military
+equipment, had rid himself of it in the moment of battle. Replacing his
+iron casque with a woolen cap and keeping on his leather jerkin only,
+with his coat sleeves rolled back, as he was wont when kneading his
+dough, he had armed himself with the poker of his oven, a long and heavy
+iron implement, bent at one end. His stout-hearted little wife Simonne,
+her cheeks in a glow and her eyes aflame, carried in her skirt a bundle
+of lint and bandages ready for use, together with a wicker-covered
+flask, containing a decoction, pronounced marvelous by her for checking
+the flow of blood. Joy and the excitement of triumph radiated from the
+charming features of the baker's wife. At the sight of Fergan, however,
+whose face was clotted with the blood of the wound he had received on
+his head, she cried out sadly: "Neighbor Fergan, you are wounded! Let me
+tend you, the fight is over; be not alarmed about your son; we have just
+seen him at his post on the ramparts; he is safe and sound, although
+there was a sharp encounter at that spot; sit down on this bench, I
+shall nurse you the same as I would have done Ancel, had he been
+wounded. Upon the faith of a Picardian woman, if he escaped being hurt,
+it was not his fault; he merited anew his surname of Quatre-Mains, the
+way he belabored the heads and backs of the episcopals."
+
+Fergan accepted Simonne's offer and sat down upon a bench, while the
+young woman looked for the lint in her pockets. The baker himself
+stopped a few steps behind to gather the details of the capture of the
+bishop. He then approached his wife, and seeing her engaged upon Fergan,
+hastened his steps, asking with deep interest: "What, neighbor, wounded?
+Nothing serious?"
+
+"I was struck with an axe on my casque," and raising his head which he
+had inclined to facilitate the nursing of Simonne, Fergan noticed the
+rather unmilitary accoutrement of his friend: "Why did you take off your
+armor in the middle of the fight?"
+
+"Upon my faith, the casque kept dropping on my nose, the corselet took
+the breath from me, the sword encumbered my legs. Accordingly, when the
+fight started, I made myself comfortable, just as I do when I am
+kneading dough. I rolled up my sleeves, and instead of that devil of a
+sword, which I cannot handle, I armed myself with my iron poker, the
+use of which is familiar to me."
+
+"But what could you do with a poker? It is a rather singular implement
+of war."
+
+"What could he do with it?" put in Simonne, saturating a bandage with
+the contents of the wicker-covered flask, and applying the same to the
+quarryman's wound. "Oh, Ancel is quick with his hands. If a nobleman on
+horseback came near, armed to the teeth, my husband grappled his throat
+with the hook of his long poker and then pulled with all his might; I
+helped when necessary. In almost every instance we unhorsed the knight,
+and throwing him to the ground he was at our mercy."
+
+"After which," added the baker calmly, "and after beating my man with
+the hook of my poker, I dispatched him with the handle. I settled more
+than one of them. One does what he can!"
+
+"Oh, neighbor!" Simonne proceeded with enthusiasm; "it was especially at
+the siege of the house of the knight of Haut-Pourcin that Ancel made a
+famous use of his poker. Several episcopals and their servants,
+entrenched upon a crenelated terrace, fired down upon us with
+cross-bows. They had killed or wounded so many communiers, that none
+dared come near the accursed house, and our people had retired to the
+end of the street. Presently, we saw the wicked knight of Haut-Pourcin,
+cross-bow in hand, leaning half over the battlement of the terrace, to
+see if there was any of ours that he could hit. At that instant--," but
+interrupting herself, Simonne said to her husband: "Tell your own story,
+Ancel; while I speak I cannot pay proper attention to the bandage of our
+neighbor."
+
+While Simonne finished attending to Fergan, the baker continued the
+narrative that his wife had commenced: "Noticing that the knight of
+Haut-Pourcin leaned over the terrace several times, I profited by a
+moment when he had withdrawn; I slided along the wall to the foot of the
+house; as the projection of the balcony prevented him from seeing me, I
+watched for my man; the instant he again put out his head I snatched
+him up with the hook of my poker exactly at the jointure of his casque
+and his cuirass with might and main; Simonne came and helped; and we had
+the satisfaction of making that noble personage turn a somersault from
+the height of the terrace down to the street; our communiers ran by; the
+episcopals rushed out of the knight's house to deliver him; they were
+driven back and we stormed the building!"
+
+"And lo!" cried Simonne heroically, "I, who did not leave the heels of
+Ancel, find myself face to face with that old hag of the dame of
+Haut-Pourcin, who was yelling like a fury: 'Kill! Kill! No quarter for
+those vile clowns! Exterminate them!' I was seized with rage, and
+recalling the insults that the harpy had poured upon me shortly before I
+threw her down, grabbed her by the throat, and, as true as Ancel is
+called Quatre-Mains, I slapped her face as thoroughly as if I was
+endowed with six hands, all the while saying to her: 'Take this! and
+that! you proud dame of Haut-Pourcin. Take this, and that, and still
+another, you wicked old hag! Oh, my gallants pay for my skirts, do they!
+Very well, I pay cash, and in round sums for the insults I receive!'
+Upon the faith of a Picardian woman, had her hair not been gray, like my
+mother's, I would have strangled the she-devil!"
+
+Fergan could not help smiling at the exaltation of Simonne. He then said
+to Ancel: "When I heard the large bell of the cathedral ringing in a
+peculiar way, I concluded it was the signal agreed upon between the
+bishop and his partisans to attack our people simultaneously from within
+and from without the city."
+
+"You were not mistaken, neighbor. At that signal, the episcopals, who
+had laid their plans and gathered their forces over night, sallied forth
+from their houses crying: 'Kill, kill the communiers!' Other noblemen
+also were besieged in their houses. The fight was going on with the same
+vigor on the streets and squares, while a troop of episcopals betook
+itself to the ramparts on the side of the bishop's gate."
+
+"Expecting to fall from the rear upon our people who they thought were
+being attacked in front," said Fergan. "For that reason I ordered my son
+to be on his guard. You assure me he is not wounded? God be praised!"
+
+"If he is wounded, neighbor Fergan," replied Simonne, "it can only be
+slightly. He called out to us from the top of the ramparts: 'Victory!
+Victory! Our people are masters of the bishop's palace!'"
+
+"And now," said Quatre-Mains, "meseems the Mayor and Councilmen should
+meet at the Town Hall to consider what is to be done."
+
+"I think so, too, Ancel. We shall leave here a sufficient force to keep
+the palace. Watch shall continue to be held on the ramparts of the city,
+whose gates shall be closed and barricaded. Let's not deceive ourselves.
+However legitimate our insurrection, we must be prepared to see Louis
+the Lusty return to lay siege to the city at the head of the
+re-inforcements that he has gone to fetch. The Princes are on the side
+of the clergy."
+
+"I think so, too," replied the Councilman with resignation and
+fortitude: "John Molrain said to the royal messenger: 'The King of the
+French is all-powerful in Gaul; the Commune of Laon is strong only in
+its right and the courage of its inhabitants.' We shall fight as well as
+we may against Louis the Lusty and his army; and we shall, if need be,
+be killed to the last man."
+
+"Thank you for your kind nursing, good neighbor," Fergan said to
+Simonne; "I now feel in good trim. My poor Joan will be jealous."
+
+"It is rather I who should be jealous," retorted Simonne. "Crossing our
+street, we saw the basement room of your house full of wounded men, at
+whom your wife and Martine were busy. The good souls!"
+
+"Dear souls! How uneasy they must feel!" said Fergan. "I must hasten to
+ease their minds, and I shall return to superintend our defence."
+
+The conversation between Fergan and Ancel was here interrupted by cries
+and shouts mingled with cheers that went up from one of the yards of the
+palace, which was given up to pillage and devastation. The insurgents
+sought vengeance not only for the perjury of Gaudry, but also for the
+odious exactions and cruelties that they had suffered before the
+establishment of the Commune. Some, staving in the vats in the
+storeroom, were getting drunk on the bishop's precious wines, a rich
+tithe, once collected by him on the vineyards of the villeins; others,
+making a heap of the tapestry and furniture which they dragged from his
+rooms into the yard, set fire to the pile; finally, and it was the
+shouts of these last that reached the quarryman and the baker, yet
+others, seizing the sacerdotal robes and insignia of the prelate,
+organized themselves into a grotesque procession, of which little Robin
+the Crumb-cracker was the hero. The blacksmith's apprentice, carrying on
+his head the episcopal mitre that almost completely hid his face, and
+robed in a cape of gold cloth that trailed at his heels, held in his
+hands a vermillion cross studded with precious stones. He scattered to
+the right and left grotesque benedictions, while the communiers, now
+half drunk, as well as the bishop's serfs, who, after the fight had
+joined the vanquishers, sang at the top of their voices a parody of
+church hymns, interspersed ever and anon with cheers of "Long live Robin
+the Crumb-cracker!"
+
+Leaving these rolicking youngsters to amuse themselves at their pleasure
+on the bishop's premises, Fergan and his neighbors betook themselves to
+the city. Night was approaching. Bidding good-bye to the baker and his
+wife and requesting them to hasten ahead of him to his house and set
+Joan and Martine's minds at ease, Fergan mounted the rampart to meet his
+son. The latter, considering it prudent to keep watch, even after the
+victory of the day, was busy with the measures for the night. At sight
+of his father with his head bandaged, Colombaik uttered a cry of alarm,
+but soon was set at ease by Fergan. After providing for additional
+measures of security, both returned home.
+
+Night had set in. Everywhere the fight had long ended. The communiers
+were collecting their dead and wounded by the light of torches. Women,
+bathed in tears, ran to the places where the fight had been hottest, and
+looked for a father, a husband, a son, or a brother, in the midst of the
+corpses that the streets were strewn with. At other places, exasperated
+at the chiefs of the episcopal party, the communiers were demolishing
+their fortified houses. Finally, at a distance, a brilliant gleam
+crimsoned the sky, and cast its reflection hither and thither on the
+gables of the taller houses. It was the glare of a conflagration. The
+fire was devouring the dwelling of the bishop's treasurer, one of the
+most execrated of the episcopals. Neither did the cathedral of Laon
+escape the avenging torch of the insurgents.
+
+"Never, my child, blot this terrible spectacle from your memory. Such
+are the fruits of civil war," said Fergan to his son, stopping in the
+middle of the Exchange square, one of the most elevated spots of the
+city, and whence the burning cathedral could be seen at a distance.
+"Look at the flames of the conflagration that is devouring the
+cathedral; hark to the sound of the seigniorial towers crashing down
+under the hammer blows of the communiers; listen to the moaning of
+yonder children, now become orphans, of their mothers, now become
+widows; contemplate these wounded men, these bleeding corpses carried
+away by their relatives and by friends in tears; behold at this hour,
+everywhere in the city, mourning, consternation, vengeance, disaster,
+fire and death! Then recall the happy and peaceful aspect that this same
+city offered only yesterday, when the people, in the fullness of their
+joy, inaugurated the symbol of their enfranchisement, bought, agreed and
+sworn to by our oppressors! It was a beautiful day. How our hearts
+leaped at every peal from our belfry! How all eyes shone with pride at
+the sight of our communal banner! All of us, bourgeois and artisans,
+rejoicing in the present and confident of the future, wished to continue
+to live under a charter sworn to by the nobles, the bishop and the King.
+But it happened that nobles, bishop and King, having dissipated the
+money with which we paid for our franchises, said to themselves: 'What
+does a signature or an oath matter; we are powerful and numerous; we are
+used to wielding the lance and the sword; those artisans and bourgeois,
+vile clowns all, will flee before us. To horse, noble episcopals, to
+horse! High the sword! High the lance! Kill, massacre the communiers!'"
+
+"But the communiers made the King of the French take to his heels, and
+have exterminated the knights!" cried Colombaik with enthusiasm. "The
+son of one of the victims of that infamous bishop cleaved his skull in
+two with a blow of his axe! The cathedral is on fire, and the
+seigniorial towers are crumbling down! Such is the price of perjury!
+Such is the terrible and just chastisement of the people who unchained
+the furies of war against this city, so tranquil but yester night! Oh,
+let the blood that has been shed fall upon the criminals! Their turn has
+come to tremble! Old Gaul is waking up after six centuries of torpor!
+The day of the rule of might and clerical chicanery is over! The hour of
+deliverance has sounded!----"
+
+"Not yet, my son!"
+
+"What! The King is fleeing; the bishop killed; the episcopals
+exterminated or in hiding; the city ours!"
+
+"Have you given a thought to the morrow?"
+
+"The morrow? We shall preserve our conquest, or shall fight other
+battles, equally victorious!"
+
+"No illusions, dear boy! Louis the Lusty fled before an insurrection
+that he did not think himself equal to cope with. But ere long he will
+be back to the walls of Laon with considerable forces, and he will then
+dictate his will."
+
+"We shall resist unto death!"
+
+"I know, that despite all our heroism, we shall succumb in the fray."
+
+"What! These franchises, paid for with our good money and now sealed
+with our blood,--shall they be torn from us? Are our children to fall
+back under the abhorred yoke of the lay and ecclesiastical seigneurs?
+Oh, father, are we to despair of the future?"
+
+"To despair? Never! Thanks to the communal insurrections, that were
+provoked by the feudal atrocities, our worst days are over. The
+legitimate and terrible reprisals of Noyon, Cambrai, Amiens and
+Beauvais, just as these fresh ones of Laon, will inspire the seigneurs
+with a wholesome fear. These holy insurrections have proved to our
+masters that the 'clowns, artisans and bourgeois' will no longer allow
+themselves to be taxed at mercy, robbed, tortured and killed with
+impunity. Our darkest days are over. But our descendants will still have
+bloody battles to fight before the arrival of the radiant day predicted
+by Victoria the Great!"
+
+"And yet all has gone our way on this day."
+
+"Rely upon my experience and foresight. Louis the Lusty will presently
+return at the head of redoubtable forces. The death of this infamous
+Gaudry, just though it was, will unchain against our city the fury of
+the clericals. The bolts of excommunication will second the royal arms.
+We are bound to go down--not before the excommunication; people laugh at
+that--but under the blows of the soldiers of Louis the Lusty. Our
+bravest men will be killed in battle, banished or executed after the
+King's victory. Another bishop will be imposed upon the city of Laon.
+Our belfry will be torn down, our seal will be broken, our banner torn
+and our treasury pilfered. The episcopals, supported by the King, will
+take vengeance for their defeat. Torrents of blood will flow in the
+city. That's what's before us."
+
+"Then all is lost!"
+
+"Child," proceeded Fergan with a melancholy smile, "men are killed; the
+principle of freedom never, after it has once penetrated the popular
+heart. Will Louis the Lusty, the new bishop, the nobles, however cruel
+their vengeance may be, massacre all the inhabitants of Laon? No. They
+are bound to leave alive the larger part of the communiers, if for no
+other purpose than to have whom to levy taxes on. The mothers, sisters,
+wives, the children of those who will have died for liberty, will
+continue to live. Oh, no doubt, for a while, the terror will be intense;
+the recollection of the disasters, of the massacres, of the banishments,
+and of the executions that will have followed upon the struggle, will at
+first paralyze all thought of insurrection. But none of that will last."
+
+"Accordingly, the new bishop and the nobles will redouble their
+audacity? Their oppression will become more frightful than before?"
+
+"No, the new bishop, however insensate he may be, will never forget the
+terrible fate of Gaudry; the nobles will not forget the death of so many
+of their people, who fell under the blows of the people's justice. That
+valuable example will be useful to us. The first thirst for vengeance on
+the part of the episcopals, once slaked, they will ease the yoke out of
+fear for new revolts. Nor is that all. Those of us who will have
+survived the struggle, will gradually forget those evil days and recall
+the happy ones when the Commune, free, peaceful, flourishing, exempt
+from all crushing imposts, and wisely governed by a magistracy of its
+own choice, was the pride and bulwark of its inhabitants. Those who will
+have witnessed those happy days will speak of them to their children
+with enthusiasm. They will tell their little ones how one day the King
+and the bishop having leagued themselves against the Commune, the latter
+valiantly rose in arms, forced Louis the Lusty to flee, and exterminated
+the bishop and his episcopals. The glory of the triumph will cause the
+disaster of the subsequent defeat to be forgotten. The feeling will take
+hold of revenging the overthrow of the Commune by restoring it. By
+little and little the enthusiasm will gain ground, and, when the moment
+shall have come, the insurrection will break out anew. Just reprisals
+will once more be exercised against our enemies, and our franchises will
+be proclaimed again. Mayhaps that again that second step towards freedom
+is followed by a savage re-action. But the step will have been taken.
+Some franchises will continue in force. And thus, step by step,
+painfully, by dint of struggles, of courage, of perseverance, our
+descendants, alternately vanquishers and vanquished, halting at times
+after battle to tend their wounded and recover breath, but never
+retreating an inch, will in the course of time arrive at the goal of
+that laborious and bloody journey. Then will the radiant sun of the day
+of Gaul's enfranchisement rise in all its glory!"
+
+"Oh, father," said Colombaik, overpowered with sorrow, "woe is us, if
+Victoria's prediction is not to be verified, according to her prophetic
+visions, but across heaps of ruins and torrents of blood!"
+
+"Do you imagine freedom is gained without struggle? We are the
+vanquishers. Our cause is holy like justice, sacred like right. And yet,
+look around!" answered the quarryman, pointing his son to the dismal
+spectacle presented by Exchange square, encumbered with the dead and
+dying, and lighted by the glamor of the torches and the lingering gleams
+of the fire of the Cathedral. "Look around, what streams of blood, what
+heaps of ruins!"
+
+"Oh, why this terrible fatality!" resumed Colombaik in tones almost of
+despair. "Why must the conquest of such legitimate rights cost so dear!"
+
+"The insurrection of the communal bourgeois is but the symptom of an
+enfranchisement, universal, but still far away. That day of deliverance
+will arrive, but it will arrive only when all the oppressed in city and
+field will rise in a body against their masters. Yes, that great day
+will come ... it may take centuries ... but I shall at least have caught
+the glamour of its dawn ... and I shall die happy!"
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+Two months after the victory of the Commune of Laon over its seigniorial
+suzerain, the Bishop of Laon, and its episcopals, Fergan the Quarryman
+died on the ramparts of the city, defending them against the troops of
+Louis the Lusty. The quarryman's apprehensions had been verified, fully
+and promptly.
+
+The day after the victory the Mayor, Councilmen and several other
+leading citizens, convened to consider the dangers of the situation. An
+attack by Louis the Lusty was expected any moment, nor did any give
+themselves up to illusions concerning the issue. Left to fight the King
+single-handed, the citizens of Laon realized that they would be crushed.
+They decided to seek an ally. One of the most powerful seigneurs of
+Picardy, Thomas, seigneur of the castle of Marle, known for his bravery,
+as well as for his ferocity, in which he equalled Neroweg VI., was a
+personal enemy of the King. Shortly before, in 1108, he had leagued
+himself with Guy, seigneur of Rochefort, and several other knights, to
+prevent the King's being consecrated at Rheims. Despite the iniquitous
+character of Thomas de Marle, and against the advice of Fergan, the
+Commune of Laon, pressed by danger, made propositions to that seigneur,
+who was known to have a large force at his command, for an alliance
+against the King. Thomas de Marle, unwilling to affront the royal power,
+refused to declare war against the King, but consented, in consideration
+of a money payment, to receive on his lands all the communiers who stood
+in fear of the royal vengeance.
+
+A considerable number of insurgents, foreseeing the consequences of a
+struggle with the King, accepted the offer of Thomas de Marle, and,
+carrying their valuables with them, left Laon with wife and children.
+Others, Fergan among them, preferred staying in the city and defending
+themselves against the King unto death. Although the number of the
+communiers was reduced by the migrations to the surrounding regions,
+nevertheless, generous and credulous, the remaining inhabitants of Laon
+had entered into the pacific overtures of the surviving episcopals, who
+were laboring under the demoralizing effect of their recent defeat.
+Soon, however, as the latter realized how greatly the ranks of the
+communiers were thinned by death, and, above all, by the migrations,
+they picked up courage. They ordered the serfs of the abbey to meet in
+the market-place on a given day, and, taking them in command, fell upon
+the communiers in their own houses. Whoever fell into their hands was
+put to the sword. Thus, civil war broke out afresh. The serfs pillaged
+and set on fire all the houses of the bourgeois that they succeeded in
+capturing. Fergan and Joan, Colombaik and Martine, together with the
+apprentices of the tanner, entrenched themselves in their house, which,
+happily fortified, enabled them to sustain victoriously more than one
+siege to which they were subjected.
+
+During these internal disturbances that decimated still further the
+ranks of the remaining communiers, Louis the Lusty was busily engaged
+gathering his forces. Learning that Thomas de Marle was giving asylum on
+his domains to the inhabitants of Laon, the King first marched against
+him, ravaged his lands, besieged him in his fortress of Couchy, took him
+prisoner, and mulcted him with a heavy ransom. As to the people of Laon,
+found within the territory of Thomas de Marle, the King had them all
+sabred or hanged, and their bodies long served as pasture to the birds
+of prey. A rich butcher of Laon, Robert the Eater, was tied to the tail
+of a fiery horse, and died the frightful death of the Queen Brunhild,
+five hundred years before. Through with these bloody executions, Louis
+the Lusty marched upon Laon. The Mayor and Councilmen, faithful to their
+oaths of defending the Commune with their lives, ran to the ramparts,
+together with Fergan, Colombaik and several others of the citizens, to
+oppose the entrance of the King. At the last battle a large number of
+the communiers fell on the field, dead or wounded. Fergan was killed,
+Colombaik was wounded in two places. The defeat of the communiers was
+inevitable.
+
+The King took the city and placed a new bishop in the seigniory. But
+here also the forecast of Fergan proved correct. Thanks to the
+remembrance of the insurrection and of the just reprisals of the
+insurgents, the exorbitant privileges of the bishop and noblemen were
+modified.
+
+Colombaik was not allowed to taste these limited sweets of the heroic
+defence of Laon. Himself and others, among whom were the Mayor and the
+Councilmen, too deeply compromised in the insurrection, were banished
+from the place, and all their property confiscated. But young and full
+of life as well as of hope for the future and of pride at the past,
+though ruined, the quarryman's son settled down with his mother and
+wife, and resumed his trade as a tanner at Toulouse in Languedoc, where,
+thanks to the local advantages of industry and intelligence, commerce
+then flourished and, at that season, thought enjoyed freedom.
+
+(The End.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] A Gallic heroine of the second century.
+
+[B] A Norse chieftain who led a piratical invasion of France in the
+eighth century, and was pacified with the fief of Normandy where he and
+his followers in arms settled.
+
+[C] William, Archbishop of Tyre, reports this frightful address in his
+history of the Crusaders.
+
+[D] Baudry, Archbishop of Dole, says: "It was not imputed a crime to eat
+up the Saracens; it was considered to be a waging of war against them
+with the teeth."
+
+[E] Four-handed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the
+Quarryman, by Eugène Sue
+
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+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
+  <head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+  The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Pilgrim's Shell, by Eugene Sue.
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+ p {margin-top:.75em;text-align:justify;margin-bottom:.75em;text-indent:2%;}
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+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the Quarryman, by 
+Eugène Sue
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the Quarryman
+       A Tale from the Feudal Times
+
+Author: Eugène Sue
+
+Translator: Daniel De Leon
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34531]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PILGRIM'S SHELL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif, Michigan University Libraries and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 368px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="368" height="550" alt="image of the book&#39;s cover" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="box">
+<div class="box2">
+<h1>THE PILGRIM'S SHELL<br  />
+<small><small>: : &nbsp; : : &nbsp;OR&nbsp; : : &nbsp; : :</small></small><br />
+<small><small>FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN</small></small></h1>
+
+<table summary="name" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"
+style="border-bottom:6px double black;
+letter-spacing:8px;font-size:125%;">
+<tr><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="c"><b>A Tale from the Feudal Times</b></p>
+
+<table summary="name" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"
+style="border-top:4px double black;
+border-bottom:6px double black;">
+<tr><td style="letter-spacing:3px;"><b>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&mdash;By EUGENE SUE&mdash;&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</b></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<table summary="name" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"
+style="border-bottom:6px double black;
+letter-spacing:8px;font-size:125%;">
+<tr><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
+&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="c"><small><span style="letter-spacing:3px;"><b>TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH BY</b></span></small></p>
+
+<p class="c"><b>DANIEL DE LEON</b></p>
+
+<p class="c"><small><span style="letter-spacing:3px;"><b>&mdash;NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY, 1904&mdash;</b></span></small></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="page_ii" id="page_ii"></a></p>
+
+<p class="c"><small><small>
+Copyright, 1904, by the<br />
+NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.</small></small><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_iii" id="page_iii"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="TRANSLATORS_PREFACE" id="TRANSLATORS_PREFACE"></a>TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.</h3>
+
+<p class="c">&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>In my introduction to "The Silver Cross; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth,"
+I said:</p>
+
+<p>"Eugene Sue wrote in French a monumental work&mdash;the <i>Mysteries of the
+People; or, History of a Proletarian Family</i>. It is a 'work of fiction';
+yet it is the best universal history extant. Better than any work,
+avowedly on history, it graphically traces the special features of the
+several systems of class-rule as they succeeded each other from epoch to
+epoch, together with the nature of the struggle between the contending
+classes. The 'Law,' 'Order,' 'Patriotism,' 'Religion,' etc., etc., that
+each successive tyrant class, despite its change of form, hysterically
+has sought refuge in in order to justify its criminal existence whenever
+threatened; the varying economic causes of the oppression of the
+toilers; the mistakes incurred by these in their struggles for redress;
+the varying fortunes of the conflict;&mdash;all these social dramas are
+therein reproduced in a majestic series of 'historic novels,' that cover
+leading and successive episodes in the history of the race."</p>
+
+<p>The present story&mdash;<i>The Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman</i>&mdash;is
+one of that majestic series, among the most majestic of the set, and,
+with regard to the social period that it describes&mdash;its institutions,
+its classes, its manners, its virtues and its crimes, and the characters
+that it builds&mdash;the most instructive treatise on feudalism, at the very
+time when the bourgeois or capitalist class was struggling for a
+foot-hold, and beginning to break through the thick feudal incrustation
+above. More fully than Molière's plays, and strangely supplemental of<a name="page_iv" id="page_iv"></a>
+the best passages on the subject in the novels of George Eliot, <i>The
+Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman</i> chisels the struggling
+bourgeois on the feudal groundwork and background, in lines so sharp and
+true that both the present fully developed and ruling capitalist,
+inheritor of the feudal attribute of plundering, is seen in the historic
+ancestor of his class, and his class' refuse, the modern middle class
+man, is foreshadowed, now also struggling like his prototype of feudal
+days, to keep his head above water, but, differently from his prototype,
+who had his future before him, now with his future behind. This double
+development, inestimable in the comprehension of the tactical laws that
+the Labor or Socialist Movement demands, stands out clear with the aid
+of this work.</p>
+
+<p>Eugene Sue has been termed a colorist, the Titian of French literature.
+It does not detract from his merits, it rather adds thereto, that his
+brush was also photographic. The leading characters in the
+story&mdash;Fergan, the type of the physically and mentally clean workingman;
+Bezenecq the Rich, the type of the embryonic bourgeois, visionary,
+craven and grasping; Martin the Prudent, the type of the "conservative
+workingman"; the Bishop of Laon, the type of usurping power in the
+mantle of religion; the seigneur of Plouernel, the type of the ingrain
+stupidity and prejudices that characterize the class grounded on might;
+a dazzling procession of women&mdash;Joan the Hunchback and Azenor the Pale,
+Perrette the Ribald and the dame of Haut-Pourcin, Yolande and Simonne,
+etc.&mdash;types of the variations in the form of woman's crucifixion under
+social systems grounded on class rule; Walter the Pennyless, the type of
+dispositions too indolent to oppose the wrongs they perceive, and crafty
+enough to dupe both dupers and duped; Garin, the type of the master's
+human sleuth&mdash;are figures, clad in historic garb, that either hurry or
+stalk imposingly over the boards, followed by mobs of their respective
+classes, and presenting a picture that thrills the heart from stage to
+stage, and leaves upon the mind rich deposits of solid information and
+crystalline thought.</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_v" id="page_v"></a></p>
+
+<p>As a novel, <i>The Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman</i> pleases,
+entertains and elevates; as an imparter of historic information and
+knowledge, it incites to thought and intelligent action. Whether as
+literature of pleasure or of study, the work deserves the broader field
+of the Socialist or Labor Movements of the English-speaking world,
+hereby afforded to it; and inversely, the Socialist or Labor Movements
+of the English-speaking world, entitled to the best, and none too good,
+that the Movements in other languages produce, can not but profit by the
+work, hereby rendered accessible to them.</p>
+
+<p class="r">DANIEL DE LEON.</p>
+
+<p>New York, January 1, 1904.</p>
+
+<h3><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h3>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary=""
+style="font-family:courier new, serif;font-weight:bold;">
+
+<tr><td colspan="3"><a href="#TRANSLATORS_PREFACE">Translator's Preface</a></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_iii">iii</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="4"><a href="#PART_I">Part I.   The Feudal Castle.</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_I-a">Chapter 1.</a></td><td>The Serfs of Plouernel </td><td align="right"><a href="#page_003">3</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_II-a">Chapter 2.</a></td><td>Fergan the Quarryman</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_013">13</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_III-a">Chapter 3.</a></td><td>At the Cross-road</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_022">22</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-a">Chapter 4.</a></td><td>The Manor of Plouernel</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_032">32</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_V-a">Chapter 5.</a></td><td>Azenor the Pale</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_036">36</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-a">Chapter 6.</a></td><td>Feudal Justice</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_044">44</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-a">Chapter 7.</a></td><td>Abbot and Monk</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_055">55</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-a">Chapter 8.</a></td><td>The Chamber of Torture</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_066">66</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX-a">Chapter 9.</a></td><td>The Rescue</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_082">82</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_X-a">Chapter 10.</a></td><td>Cuckoo Peter</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_090">90</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="4"><a href="#PART_II">Part II.   The Crusade.</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_I-b">Chapter 1.</a></td><td>The Syrian Desert</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_109">109</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_II-b">Chapter 2.</a></td><td>Serf and Seigneur</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_118">118</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_III-b">Chapter 3.</a></td><td>The Emir's Palace</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_132">132</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-b">Chapter 4.</a></td><td>Orgies of the Crusaders</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_141">141</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_V-b">Chapter 5.</a></td><td>The King of the Vagabonds</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-b">Chapter 6.</a></td><td>The Market Place of Marhala</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_156">156</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-b">Chapter 7.</a></td><td>The Fall of Jerusalem</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="4"><a href="#PART_III">Part III.   The Commune of Laon.</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_I-c">Chapter 1.</a></td><td>The Rise of the Communes</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_185">185</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_II-c">Chapter 2.</a></td><td>The Charter of Laon</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_189">189</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_III-c">Chapter 3.</a></td><td>Episcopals and Communiers</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_206">206</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV-c">Chapter 4.</a></td><td>The Ecclesiastical Seigniory of Gaudry &nbsp; &nbsp;</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_214">214</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_V-c">Chapter 5.</a></td><td>Bourgeois and Ecclesiastical Seigneur</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_227">227</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI-c">Chapter 6.</a></td><td>The Gathering Storm</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_239">239</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII-c">Chapter 7.</a></td><td>"To Arms, Communiers!"</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII-c">Chapter 8.</a></td><td>Retribution</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_258">258</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX-c">Chapter 9.</a></td><td>Resting on Their Arms</td><td align="right"><a href="#page_267">267</a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="3"><a href="#EPILOGUE">Epilogue</a></td><td align="right"><a href="#page_278">278</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I.<br /><br />
+THE FEUDAL CASTLE.</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-a" id="CHAPTER_I-a"></a>CHAPTER I.<br /><br />
+THE SERFS OF PLOUERNEL.</h3>
+
+<p>The day touched its close. The autumn sun cast its last rays upon one of
+the villages of the seigniory of Plouernel. A large number of partly
+demolished houses bore testimony to having been recently set on fire
+during one of the wars, frequent during the eleventh century, between
+the feudal lords of France. The walls of the huts of the village, built
+in pisé, or of stones held together with clayish earth, were cracked or
+blackened by the flames. There were still in sight, half burnt out, the
+rafters of the roofings, replaced by a few poles wrapped in bundles of
+furze or reed-grass.</p>
+
+<p>The aspect of the serfs, just returned from the fields, was no less
+wretched than that of their hovels. Wan, emaciated, barely dressed in
+rags, they huddled together, trembling and uneasy. The bailiff,
+justiciary of the seigniory, had just arrived at the village,
+accompanied with five or six armed men. Presently, to the number of
+about three hundred, the serfs gathered around him, a fellow so ill
+disposed towards the poor, that, to his name of Garin, the nick-name
+"Serf-eater" had been attached. This dreaded man wore a leather casque
+furnished with ribs of iron, and a coat of goatskin like his shoes. A
+long sword hung by his side. He was astride a reddish-brown horse, that
+looked as savage as its master. Men on foot, variously armed, who made
+up the escort of Garin the Serf-eater, kept watch over several serfs,
+bound hands and feet, who were brought in prisoners from other
+localities. Not far from them lay stretched on the ground a wretched
+fellow, fearfully mutilated, hideous and horrible to behold. His eyes
+were knocked in, his<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> feet and hands cut off&mdash;a common punishment for
+rebels. This unfortunate being, hardly covered in rags, the stumps of
+his arms and legs wrapped in dirty bandages, was waiting for some of his
+companions in misery, back from the fields, to find time to transport
+him upon the litter which he shared with the beasts of burden. Blind,
+and without hands or feet, he found himself thrown upon the charity of
+his fellows, who now ten years helped him to eat and drink. Other serfs
+of Normandy and Brittany, had, at the time of the revolt against their
+lords, been blinded, mutilated like this wretched fellow, and left upon
+the spot of their punishment to perish in the tortures of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>When the people of the village were gathered on the place, Garin the
+Serf-eater pulled a parchment out of his pocket and read as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"Witness the order of the very high and very mighty Neroweg VI, lord of
+the county of Plouernel, by the grace of god. All his serfs and
+bondsmen, subject to mortmain and taille at his pleasure and mercy, are
+taxed by the will of the said lord count to pay into his treasury four
+copper sous per head before the last day of this month at the latest."
+The serfs, threatened with this fresh exaction, could not restrain their
+lamentations. Garin the Serf-eater rolled over the assemblage a wrathful
+eye and proceeded: "If the said sum of four copper pieces per head is
+not paid before the expiration of the time fixed, it will please the
+said high and mighty lord Neroweg VI, Count of Plouernel, to cause
+certain serfs to be seized, and they will be punished, or hanged by his
+prevost from his seigniorial gibbets. Neither the annual tax, nor the
+regular dues, is to be lowered in the least by this extraordinary levy
+of four sous of copper, which is intended to indemnify our said lord for
+the losses caused by the recent war which his neighbor, the Sire of
+Castel-Redon, declared against him."</p>
+
+<p>The bailiff descended from his horse to speak to one of the men in his
+escort. Several serfs muttered to one another: "Where is Fergan? He
+alone would have the courage to humbly<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> remonstrate with the bailiff
+that we are wretched, that the taxes, the services, the regular and the
+extraordinary dues are crushing us, and that it will be impossible for
+us to pay this tax."</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan must have remained behind in the quarry where he cuts stone,"
+remarked another serf.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, the bailiff continued to read as follows: "Lord Gonthram,
+eldest son of the very noble, very high and very mighty Neroweg VI,
+Count of Plouernel, having attained his eighteenth year, and being of
+knight's age, there shall be paid to him, according to the custom of
+Plouernel, one denier by each serf and villein of the domain, in honor
+and to the glory of the knighthood of the said Lord Gonthram. Payment to
+be made this month."</p>
+
+<p>"Still more!" murmured several of the serfs with bitterness; "it is
+fortunate that our lord has no daughter, we would some day have to pay
+taxes in honor of her marriage, as we shall have to pay them in honor of
+the knighthood of the sons of Neroweg VI. May God have mercy upon us."</p>
+
+<p>"Pay, my God! but wherewith?" interjected another serf in a low voice.
+"Oh, it is a great pity that Fergan is not around to speak for us."</p>
+
+<p>The bailiff having finished his reading, beckoned to a serf named Peter
+the Lame. Peter was not lame; but his father, by reason of that
+infirmity had received the nick-name which his son preserved. He
+advanced trembling before Garin the Serf-eater. "This is the third
+Sunday that you have not brought your bread to be baked at the
+seigniorial oven," said the bailiff; "nevertheless you have eaten bread
+these three weeks, seeing you are alive."</p>
+
+<p>"Master Garin ... my misery is such...."</p>
+
+<p>"You have had the impudence to have your bread baked under the ashes,
+you scurvy beggar!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, good Master Garin, our village was set on fire and sacked by the
+men of the Sire of Castel-Redon; the little clothing<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> that we had has
+been burnt or pillaged; our cattle stolen or driven off; our crops
+devastated during the war. Have mercy upon us!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am talking to you about oven and not about war! You owe three deniers
+oven-dues; you shall pay three more as a fine."</p>
+
+<p>"Six deniers! Poor me! Six deniers! And where do you expect me to find
+so much money?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know your tricks, knaves that you are! You have hiding places, where
+you bury your deniers. Will you pay, yes or no, you earth-worm? Answer
+immediately!"</p>
+
+<p>"We have not one obole ... the people of the Sire of Castel-Redon have
+left us only our eyes to weep over our disaster!"</p>
+
+<p>Garin raised his shoulders and made a sign to one of the men in his
+suite. This one then took from his belt a coil of rope, and approached
+Peter the Lame. The serf stretched out his hands to the man-at-arms:
+"Take me prisoner, if it pleases you to, I do not own a single denier.
+It will be impossible for me to satisfy you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what we are about to ascertain," replied the bailiff; and,
+while one of his men bound the hands of Peter the Lame without his
+offering the slightest resistance, another took from a pouch suspended
+from his belt some touch-wood, a tinderbox and a sulphurated wick, which
+he lighted. Garin the Serf-eater, turning to Peter the Lame, who, at the
+sight of these preparations began to grow pale, said: "They will place
+this lighted wick between your two thumbs; if you have a hiding place
+where you bury your deniers, your pain will make you speak. Go ahead."</p>
+
+<p>The serf answered not a word. His teeth chattered with fear. He fell
+upon his knees before the bailiff, stretching out to him his two bound
+hands in supplication. Suddenly a young girl jumped out of the group of
+the villagers. Her feet were bare, and for only cover she had a coarse
+skirt on. She was called Pierrine the Goat because, like her sheep, she
+was savage and<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> fond of rugged solitudes. Her thick black hair half hid
+her savage face, burnt by the sun. Approaching the bailiff without
+lowering her eyes, she said bluntly to him: "I am the daughter of Peter
+the Lame; if you want to torture someone, leave my father and take me."</p>
+
+<p>"The wick!" impatiently called out Garin the Serf-eater to his men,
+without either looking at or listening to Pierrine the Goat. "The wick!
+And hurry up! Night approaches." Peter the Lame, despite his cries,
+despite the heart-rending entreaties of his daughter, was thrown upon
+the ground and held down by the men of the bailiff. The torture of the
+serf was conducted in sight of his companions in misery, who were
+brutified with terror, and by the habit of serfdom. Peter uttered
+fearful imprecations; Pierrine the Goat no longer screamed, no longer
+implored the tormentors of her father. Motionless, pale, sombre, her
+eyes fixed and drowned with tears, she alternately bit her fists in mute
+rage, and murmured: "If I only knew where his hiding-place was, I would
+tell it."</p>
+
+<p>At last, Peter the Lame, vanquished by pain, said to his daughter in a
+broken voice: "Take the hoe, run to our field; rake up the earth at the
+foot of the large elm; you will there find nine deniers in a piece of
+hollow wood." Then, casting upon the bailiff a look of despair, the serf
+added: "That's my whole treasure, Sire Garin; I'm now ruined!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I was certain that you had a hiding place"; and turning to his men:
+"Stop the torture; one of you follow this girl and bring back the money.
+Let her not be lost sight of."</p>
+
+<p>Pierrine the Goat went off quickly, followed by one of the men-at-arms,
+after having cast upon Garin a furtive and ferocious look. The serfs,
+terrified, silent, hardly dared to look at one another, while Peter,
+uttering plaintive moans, despite his punishment having ceased, murmured
+while he wept hot tears: "Oh, how shall I be able to till the ground
+with my poor hands wounded and sore!"<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a></p>
+
+<p>Accidentally the bailiff caught sight of the blind serf, mutilated of
+his four limbs. Pointing at the unhappy being, he cried out in a
+threatening voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Profit by that example, ye people of the glebe! Behold how they are
+treated who dare rebel against their lords. Are you, or are you not
+subject to taille at the pleasure and mercy of your lord?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, we are serfs, Master Garin," replied the wretches, "we are
+serfs at the mercy of our master!"</p>
+
+<p>"Seeing you are serfs, you and your race, why always stingying, cheating
+and pilfering on the taxes? How often have I not caught you in fraud and
+at fault. The one sharpens his plow-share without notifying me, that he
+may purloin the denier due to the seigniory every time he sharpens his
+sock; the other pretends he is free from the horn-dues under the false
+claim that he owns no horned cattle; others carry their audacity to the
+point of marrying in a neighboring seigniory; and so on, any number of
+enormities! Must you, then, miserable fellows, be reminded that you
+belong to your lord in life and death, body and goods? Must it be
+repeated to you that all there is of you belongs to him&mdash;the hair on
+your heads, the nails on your fingers, the skin on your vile carcasses,
+everything, including the virginity of your daughters?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, good Master Garin," an old serf, named by reason of his subtlety,
+Martin the Prudent, ventured without daring to raise his eyes, "oh, we
+know it; the priests repeat to us incessantly that we belong, soul, body
+and goods, to the lords whom the will of God sets over us. But there are
+those who say ... oh, it is not we who dare to say aught ... things
+contrary to these declarations."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is it dares contradict our holy priests? Give me the name of
+the infidel, the rashling."</p>
+
+<p>"It is Fergan the Quarryman."</p>
+
+<p>"Where is that knave, that miscreant? Why is he not here among you?"<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a></p>
+
+<p>"He must have remained cutting stone at his quarry," put in a timid
+voice; "he never quits work until dark."</p>
+
+<p>"And what is it that Fergan the Quarryman says? Let's see how far his
+audacity goes," replied the bailiff.</p>
+
+<p>"Master Garin," the old serf went on to say, "Fergan recognizes that we
+are serfs of our lord, that we are compelled to cultivate for his
+benefit the fields where it has pleased him to settle us forever, us and
+our children. Fergan says that we are bound to labor, to plant, to
+gather in the harvests on the lands of the castle, to mount guard at the
+strongholds of the seigniory and to defend it."</p>
+
+<p>"We know the rights of the seigniory. But what else does Fergan say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan pretends that the taxes imposed upon us increase unceasingly,
+and that, after having paid our dues in products, the little we can draw
+from our harvests is insufficient to satisfy the ever new demands of our
+lord. Oh, dear Master Garin, we drink water, we are clad in rags, for
+only nourishment we have chestnuts, berries, and, when in luck, a little
+bread of barley or oats."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed the bailiff in a threatening voice, "you have all the
+good things, and yet you dare complain!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Master Garin," replied the frightened serfs; "no, we do not
+complain! We are on the road to Paradise!"</p>
+
+<p>"If, occasionally, we suffer a little, it is all the better for our
+salvation, as the parish priest tells us. We shall enjoy the pleasures
+of the next world."</p>
+
+<p>"We do not complain. It is only Fergan who spoke that way the other day.
+We listened to him, but without approving his words."</p>
+
+<p>"And we even found great fault with him for holding such language,"
+added old Martin the Prudent, all in a tremble. "We are satisfied with
+our lot. We venerate, we love our lord, Neroweg VI, and also his helpful
+bailiff, Garin. May God preserve them long."<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," exclaimed the serfs in chorus, "that's the truth, the pure
+truth!"</p>
+
+<p>"Vile slaves!" roared the bailiff in a rage mixed with disdain,
+"cowardly knaves! You basely lick the hand that scourges you. Don't I
+know that, among yourselves, you call the noble Lord Neroweg VI 'Worse
+than a Wolf,' and me, his helpful bailiff, 'Serf-eater!' These are our
+nick-names."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon our eternal salvation, Master Garin, it is not we who have given
+you that nick-name, Master Garin."</p>
+
+<p>"By my beard! We propose to deserve our surnames. Yes, Neroweg VI will
+be 'worse than a wolf' to you, you pack of idlers, thieves and traitors!
+And, as for me, I will eat you to the bone, villeins or serfs, if you
+try to cheat your lord of his rights. As to Fergan, that smooth talker,
+I'll come across him some other day, and I feel it in my bones that he
+will yet make acquaintance with the gibbet of the seigniory of
+Plouernel. He will be hanged high and dry!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we will not pity him, dear and good Master Garin. Let Fergan be
+accursed, if he has dared to speak ill of you and of our venerated
+lord!" answered the frightened serfs.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, Pierrine the Goat returned, accompanied by the
+man-at-arms, who had been charged by the bailiff to disinter the
+treasure of Peter the Lame. The young serf had a somberer and wilder
+look, her tears had dried, but her eyes shot lightning. Twice she threw
+her thick black hair back from her forehead with her left hand, as she
+held her right hand behind her. She drew nearer to the bailiff step by
+step, while the man-at-arms, delivering to Garin a round piece of hollow
+wood, said: "It contains nine copper deniers, but four of them are not
+of the mintage of our Lord Neroweg VI."</p>
+
+<p>"Foreign coin in the seigniory! And yet I have forbidden you to accept
+any under penalty of the whip!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Master Garin," explained Peter the Lame, still lying on the ground,
+and crying at the sight of his lacerated hands, "the foreign merchants
+who pass, and who occasionally buy a<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> pig, a calf or a sheep, frequently
+have none but coin minted in other seigniories. What are we to do? If we
+refuse to sell the little we have, where are we to find the money to pay
+the taxes with?"</p>
+
+<p>The bailiff placed the deniers of Peter the Lame in a large leather
+pouch, and answered the serf: "You owe six deniers; among these nine
+pieces there are four of foreign coinage; I confiscate them. There
+remain five deniers of this seigniory. I take them on account. You will
+give me the sixth when you pay the next taxes. If you don't, look out!"</p>
+
+<p>"I propose to pay now!" shrieked Pierrine the Goat, striking the bailiff
+full in the face with a large stone that she had picked up on the road.
+Garin lost his balance with the violence of the blow, and the blood ran
+down his face; but he promptly recovered from the shock, and, rushing
+furiously upon the young serf, threw her down, trampled her under foot,
+and, half drawing his sword, was on the point of dispatching her, when,
+recollecting himself, he said to his men: "Bind her fast; take her to
+the castle; her eyes will be put out to-night; and, at dawn to-morrow,
+she shall be hanged from the patibulary forks."</p>
+
+<p>"The punishment of Pierrine the Goat will be well merited," exclaimed
+the serfs, hoping to turn away from themselves the wrath of Garin the
+Serf-eater. "Bad luck to the accursed girl! She has spilled the blood of
+the good bailiff of our glorious seigneur! Let her be punished as she
+deserves!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are a set of cowards!" cried Pierrine the Goat, her face and breast
+bruised and bleeding from the blows that Garin had given her while
+trampling on her. Then, turning to Peter the Lame, who was sobbing but
+dared not defend his daughter, or raise his voice to implore mercy for
+her, she said: "Adieu; to-morrow you will see ravens circling on the
+side of the seigniorial gibbet; they will be the living shroud of your
+daughter"; and showing her fists to the dismayed serfs, she went on:
+"Cowards! you are three hundred, and you are afraid of six men-at-arms!
+There is among you all but one man truly brave; that's Fergan!"<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" yelled the bailiff, exasperated by the bold words of Pierrine the
+Goat, and staunching the blood that flowed from his face, "if I meet
+that Fergan on my route, he shall be your gibbet mate, the infamous
+blasphemer!" With that, Garin the Serf-eater remounted, and followed by
+his men, together with the serfs whom he had arrested, Pierrine the Goat
+among them, was soon lost to sight, leaving the inhabitants of the
+village struck with such terror, that on that evening they forgot to
+carry away the poor blind and mutilated old man, who was left to spend
+the night in the open.<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-a" id="CHAPTER_II-a"></a>CHAPTER II.<br /><br />
+FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN.</h3>
+
+<p>It was long after the bailiff had led away his prisoners. The night grew
+rapidly darker. A young woman, pale, lean and deformed, clad in a
+tattered smock, her feet bare, her head half covered with a hood from
+which her hair escaped, held her face hidden in her hands, as she sat on
+a stone near the hearth of the hut which Fergan inhabited at the
+extremity of the village. A few chips of brush-wood were burning in the
+fire-place. Above rose the blackened walls, cracked by the recent
+conflagration; bunches of brush fastened on poles replaced the roof,
+through which here and there some brilliant star could be seen. A litter
+of straw in the best protected corner of the hovel, a trunk, a few
+wooden vessels&mdash;such was the furnishing of the home of a serf. The young
+woman, seated near the fire-place, was the wife of Fergan, Joan the
+Hunchback. Her forehead in her hands, crouching upon the stone which
+served her as a seat, Joan remained motionless. Only at intervals a
+slight tremor of the shoulders announced that she wept. A man entered
+the hut. It was Fergan the Quarryman. Thirty years of age, robust and
+large of frame, his dress consisted of a goat-skin kilt, of which the
+hair was almost worn off; his shabby hose left his legs and feet bare;
+on his shoulder he carried an iron pick and the heavy hammer which he
+used to break and extract the stones from the quarry. Joan the Hunchback
+raised her head at the sight of her husband. Although homely, her
+suffering and timid figure breathed an angelic kindness. Advancing
+quickly towards Fergan, her face bathed in tears, Joan said to him with
+an<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a> inexpressible mixture of hope and anxiety, while she interrogated
+him with her eyes: "Have you learned anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," answered the serf in despair, throwing down his pick and
+hammer; "nothing, nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan fell back upon the stone sobbing. She raised her hands to heaven
+and murmured: "I shall never again see Colombaik! My poor child is lost
+for ever!"</p>
+
+<p>Fergan, no less distressed than his wife, sat down on another stone
+placed near the fire-place, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his
+hands. Thus he remained for a long spell, gloomy, silent. Suddenly
+rising, he started to walk uneasily, muttering in a muffled voice: "That
+cannot remain so&mdash;I shall go&mdash;Yes, I shall! I must find him!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan, hearing the serf repeat: "I shall go! I shall go!" raised her
+head, wiped her tears with the back of her hand and asked: "Where is it
+you want to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"To the castle!" roared the serf, continuing his agitated walk, his arms
+crossed over his chest. Trembling from head to foot, Joan clasped her
+hands, and tried to speak. In her terror, she could not at first utter a
+word; her teeth chattered. At last she said in a faint voice:
+"Fergan&mdash;you must have lost your wits when you say you will go to the
+castle."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go after the moon has set."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I have lost my poor child," rejoined Joan moaning, "I am going to
+lose my husband also." She moaned again. The imprecations and the
+foot-falls of the serf alone interrupted the silence of the night. The
+fire went out in the fire-place, but the moon, just risen, threw her
+pale rays into the interior of the hut through the open spaces left by
+the pole and bunches of brush that took the place of the burnt-out roof.
+The silence lasted long. Joan the Hunchback taking courage anew, resumed
+in an accent that was almost confident: "You propose to go to-night&mdash;to
+the castle&mdash;fortunately that's impossible." And seeing that the serf did
+not intermit his silent walk, Joan took his hand as he moved toward her:
+"Why do you not answer? That frightens<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> me." He roughly withdrew his
+hand, and thrusting his wife back, exclaimed in an irritated voice:
+"Leave me alone, woman, leave me alone."</p>
+
+<p>The feeble creature fell down a few steps beyond among some rubbish, and
+her head having struck against a piece of wood, she could not hold back
+a cry of pain. Fergan walked back, and by the light of the moon he saw
+Joan rising painfully. He ran to her, helped her to sit down on one of
+the stones of the fire-place, and asked anxiously: "Did you hurt
+yourself falling?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, my dear husband."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor Joan!" exclaimed the serf alarmed, having placed one of his
+hands on the forehead of his wife, "you bleed!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been weeping," she replied sweetly, staunching her wound with a
+lock of her long disheveled hair.</p>
+
+<p>"You suffer? Answer me, dear wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I fell because I am feeble," answered Joan with her angelic
+mildness; "let's not think about that," and she added, smiling sadly and
+alluding to her deformity, "I need not fear being made ugly by a scar."</p>
+
+<p>Fergan imagined that Joan the Hunchback meant he would have treated her
+with less rudeness if she had been handsome, and he felt deeply grieved.
+In a tone of kind reproach he replied: "Apart from the hastiness of my
+temper, have I not always treated you as the best of wives?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's true, my dear Fergan, and my gratitude is great."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I not freely taken you for wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, notwithstanding you could have chosen from the serfs of the
+seigniory a companion who would not have been deformed."</p>
+
+<p>"Joan," replied the quarryman with sad bitterness, "if your countenance
+had been as beautiful as your heart is good, whose would have been the
+first night of our wedding? Would it not have belonged to Neroweg 'Worse
+than a Wolf,' or to one of his whelps?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Fergan, my ugliness saved us this supreme shame."<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a></p>
+
+<p>"The wife of Sylvest, one of my ancestors, a poor slave of the Romans,
+also escaped dishonor by disfiguring herself," was the thought that
+flashed through the quarryman's mind while he sighed, and pondered: "Oh,
+slavery and serfdom weigh upon our race for centuries. Will the day of
+deliverance, predicted by Victoria the Great,<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> ever come."</p>
+
+<p>Joan, seeing her husband plunged in meditation, said to him: "Fergan, do
+you remember what Pierrine the Goat told us three days ago on the
+subject of our son? She had, as was her custom, led her sheep to the
+steepest heights of the great ravine, whence she saw one of the knights
+of the Count of Plouernel rush on a gallop out of a copse where our
+little Colombaik had gone to gather some dead wood. Pierrine was of the
+opinion that that knight carried off our child under his cloak."</p>
+
+<p>"The suspicions of Pierrine were well founded."</p>
+
+<p>"Good God! What is it you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"A few hours ago, while I was at the quarry, several serfs, engaged in
+repairing the road of the castle which was partly destroyed during the
+last war, came for stone. For the last three days I have been like
+crazy. I have been telling everybody of the disappearance of Colombaik.
+I spoke about it to these serfs. One of them claimed to have seen the
+other evening, shortly before nightfall, a knight holding on his horse a
+child about seven or eight years, with blonde hair&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Unhappy we! That was Colombaik."</p>
+
+<p>"The knight then climbed the hill that leads to the manor of Plouernel,
+and went in."</p>
+
+<p>"But what can they do to our child?"</p>
+
+<p>"What will they do!" exclaimed the serf shivering, "they'll strangle
+him, and use his blood for some infernal philter. There is a sorceress
+stopping at the castle."</p>
+
+<p>Joan uttered a cry of fright, but rage swiftly followed upon her fright.
+Delirious and running to the door she cried out:<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> "Fergan, let's go to
+the manor&mdash;we shall enter even if we have to tear up the stones with our
+nails&mdash;I shall have my child&mdash;the sorceress shall not throttle him&mdash;no!
+no!" The serf, holding her by the arm, drew her back. Almost immediately
+she fainted away in his arms. Still, in a muffled voice, the poor woman
+muttered: "It seems to me I see him die&mdash;if my heart were torn in a vice
+I could not suffer more&mdash;it is too late&mdash;the sorceress will have
+strangled the child&mdash;no&mdash;who knows!" Presently seizing her husband by
+the hand, "You meant to go to the castle&mdash;come&mdash;come!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall go alone when the moon is down."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we are crazy, my poor man! Pain leads us astray. How can one
+penetrate into the lair of the count?"</p>
+
+<p>"By a secret entrance."</p>
+
+<p>"And who has informed you of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"My grandfather Den-Brao accompanied his father Yvon the Forester in
+Anjou during the great famine in 1033. Den-Brao, a skillful mason, after
+having worked for more than a year in the castle of a lord of Anjou
+became his serf, and was exchanged by his master for an armorer of
+Neroweg IV, an ancestor of the present lord. My grandfather, now a serf
+of the lord of Plouernel, was engaged in the construction of a donjon
+which was attached to the castle. The work lasted many a year. My
+father, Nominoe, almost a child at the commencement of the structure,
+had grown to manhood when it was finished. He helped his father in his
+work, and became a mason himself. After his day's work, my grandfather
+used to trace upon a parchment the plan of the several parts of the
+donjon which he was to execute. One day my father asked him the
+explanation of certain structures, the purpose of which he could not
+understand. 'These separate stone works, connected by the work of the
+carpenter and the blacksmith,' answered my grandfather, 'will constitute
+a secret staircase made through the thick of the wall of the donjon, and
+it will ascend from the lowest depth of this edifice to the top, while
+it furnishes access to several<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> reducts otherwise invisible. Thanks to
+this secret issue, the Lord of Plouernel, if besieged in his castle, and
+unable to resist his enemies, will be able to escape, and reach a long
+subterraneous gallery which comes out at the rocks that stretch to the
+north, at the foot of the mountain, where the seigniorial manor-house
+rises.' Indeed, Joan, during those days of continual wars, similar works
+were executed in all the strongholds: their owners always looked to
+preserving the means of escape from their enemies. About six months
+before the completion of the donjon, and when all that was left to do
+was the construction of the staircase and the secret issue, traced upon
+the plan of my grandfather, my father broke both of his legs by the fall
+of an enormous stone. That grave accident became the cause of a great
+piece of good fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"What say you, Fergan!"</p>
+
+<p>"My father remained here, at this hovel, unable to work by reason of his
+wounds. During that interval the donjon was finished. But the artisan
+serfs, instead of returning every evening to their respective villages,
+no longer left the castle. The seigneur of Plouernel wished, so it was
+said, to hasten the completion of the works and to save the time lost in
+the morning and evening by the traveling of the serfs. For about six
+months the people of the plain saw the movement of the workingmen
+gathered upon the last courses of the donjon, which rose ever higher.
+After that, when the platform and the turrets which crown it were
+finished, nothing more was seen. The serfs never re-appeared in their
+villages, and their bereaved families are still awaiting them."</p>
+
+<p>"What became of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neroweg IV, fearing they might reveal the secret issue constructed by
+themselves, had them locked up in the subterraneous place, that I stated
+to you. It is there that my grandfather, together with his fellow
+workingmen, twenty-seven in number, perished, a prey to the tortures of
+hunger."</p>
+
+<p>"That's horrible! What barbarity!"<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is horrible! My father, kept at home by his injuries, alone
+escaped this fearful death, overlooked, no doubt, by the seigneur of
+Plouernel. Trying to fathom the mystery of my grandfather's
+disappearance, my father recalled the information he had received from
+his father on the plan of the donjon and its secret issue. One night,
+accordingly, my father betook himself to that secluded spot, and
+succeeded in discovering an airhole concealed amid brushwood. He slid
+down this opening, and after walking long in a narrow gallery, he was
+arrested by an enormous iron grating. Seeking to break it, he passed his
+arm through the bars. His hand touched a mass of bones&mdash;human bones and
+skulls&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good God! Poor victims!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was the bones of the serfs, who, locked up in this subterraneous
+passage with my grandfather, had died of hunger. My father did not try
+to penetrate further. Certain of the fate of my grandfather, but lacking
+the energy to avenge him, he made to me this revelation on his
+death-bed. I went&mdash;it is a long time ago&mdash;to inspect the rocks. I
+discovered the subterraneous issue. Through it, to-night, will I enter
+the donjon and look for our child."</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan, I shall not try to oppose your plan," observed Joan after a
+moment of silence and suppressing her apprehensions; "but how will you
+clear that grating which prevented your father from entering the
+underground passage? Is it not above your strength?"</p>
+
+<p>"That grating has been fastened in the rock, it can be unfastened with
+my iron pick and hammer. I have the requisite strength for that job."</p>
+
+<p>"Once in the passage, what will you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last evening I took from the wooden casket, hidden yonder under the
+rubbish, a few strips of the parchment where Den-Brao had traced the
+plan of the buildings; I have posted myself on the localities. The
+secret gallery, in its ascent towards the castle, comes out, on the
+other side of the donjon, upon a secret staircase<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a> built in the thick of
+the wall. That leads, from the lowest of the three rows of subterranean
+dungeons, up to the turret that rises to the north of the platform."</p>
+
+<p>"The turret," queried Joan, growing pale, "the turret, whence
+occasionally strange lights issue at night?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is there that Azenor the Pale, the sorceress of Neroweg, carries on
+her witchcraft," answered the quarryman in a hollow voice. "It is in
+that turret that Colombaik must be, provided he still lives. It is there
+I shall go in search of our child."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my poor man," murmured Joan, "I faint at the thought of the perils
+you are about to face!"</p>
+
+<p>"Joan," suddenly interjected the serf, raising his hands towards the
+starry sky, visible through rifts in the roof, "before an hour the moon
+will have set; I must go now."</p>
+
+<p>The quarryman's wife, after making a superhuman effort to overcome her
+terror, said in a voice that was almost firm: "I do not ask to accompany
+you, Fergan; I might be an encumbrance in this enterprise. But I
+believe, as you do, that at all costs we must try to save our child. If
+in three days you are not back&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It will mean that I have encountered death in the castle of Plouernel."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not be behind you a day, my dear husband. Have you weapons to
+defend yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have my iron pick and my hammer."</p>
+
+<p>"And bread? You must have some provisions."</p>
+
+<p>"I have still a big piece of bread in my wallet; you will fill my gourd
+with water; that will suffice me."</p>
+
+<p>While his wife was attending to these charges, the serf provided himself
+with a long rope which he wound around him; he also placed a tinder-box
+in his wallet, a piece of punk, and a wick, steeped in resin, of the
+kind that quarrymen use to light their underground passages. These
+preparations being ended, Fergan silently stretched his arms towards his
+wife. The brave and sweet creature threw herself into them. The couple
+prolonged<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> this painful embrace a few moments, as if it were a last
+adieu. The serf then, swinging his heavy hammer on his shoulder and
+taking up his iron pick, started towards the rocks where the secret
+issue of the seigniorial manor ran out.<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-a" id="CHAPTER_III-a"></a>CHAPTER III.<br /><br />
+AT THE CROSS-ROAD.</h3>
+
+<p>The day after Fergan the Quarryman decided to penetrate into the castle
+of Plouernel, a considerable troop of travelers, men of all conditions,
+who had left Nantes the day before, were journeying towards the frontier
+of Anjou. Among them were found pilgrims, distinguishable by the
+cockle-shell attached to their clothes, vagabonds, beggars, peddlers
+loaded with their bundles of goods. Among the latter a man of tall
+stature, with light blonde hair and beard, carried on his back a bundle
+surmounted with a cross and covered with coarse pictures representing
+human bones, such as skulls, thighs, arms, and fingers. This man, named
+Harold the Norman, devoted himself, like many other descendants of the
+pirates of old Rolf,<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> to the trade of relics, selling to the faithful
+the bones which they stole at night from the seigniorial gibbets. By the
+sides of Harold marched two monks, who called each other Simon and
+Jeronimo. The cowl of the frock of Simon was pulled over his head and
+completely concealed his face; but that of Jeronimo, thrown back over
+his shoulder, exposed the monk's dark and lean visage, whose thick
+eye-brows, as black as his beard, imparted to it a savage hardness.</p>
+
+<p>A few steps behind these priests, mounted on a fine white mule, of
+well-fed form and skin sleek and shining like silver, came a merchant of
+Nantes, named from his great wealth, Bezenecq the Rich. Still in the
+vigor of years, of open, intelligent and affable mien, he wore a hood of
+black felt, a robe of fine blue cloth, gathered around his waist by a
+leathern belt, from which hung an embroidered purse. Behind him, and on<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a>
+a part of the saddle contrived for such service, rode his daughter
+Isoline, a lass of about eighteen years, with blue eyes, brown hair,
+white teeth and a face like a rose of May, as pretty as she was
+attractive. Isoline's long pearl-grey robe hid her little feet; her
+traveling cloak, made of a soft green fabric, enveloped her elegant and
+supple waist; under the hood of the mantle, lined in red, her fresh
+visage was partially seen. The feelings of tender solicitude between
+father and daughter could be divined by the looks and smiles of
+affection that they often exchanged, as well as by the little attentions
+that they frequently bestowed upon each other. The serenity of unalloyed
+happiness, the sweet pleasures of the heart, could be read upon their
+visages, which bore the impress of radiant bliss. A well-clad servant,
+alert and vigorous, led on foot a second mule, loaded with the baggage
+of the merchant. On either side of the saddle hung a sword in its
+scabbard. In those days, one never traveled unarmed. Bezenecq the Rich
+had conformed to the usage, although that good and worthy townsman was
+of a nature little given to strife.</p>
+
+<p>The travelers had arrived at a cross-road where the highway of Nantes to
+Angers forked off. At the juncture of the two roads there rose a
+seigniorial gibbet, symbol and speaking proof of the supreme
+jurisdiction exercised by the lords in their domains. That massive pile
+of stones bore at its top four iron forks fastened at right angles,
+gibbet-shaped. From the gibbet that rose over the western branch of the
+road three corpses hung by the neck. The first was reduced to the
+condition of a skeleton; the second was half putrified. The crows,
+disturbed in their bloody quarry by the approach of the travelers, still
+circled in the air over the third corpse, that of a young girl,
+completely stripped, without even the shred of a rag. It was the body of
+Pierrine the Goat, tortured and executed in the early morning of that
+day, as threatened by Garin the Serf-eater. The thick black hair of the
+victim fell over her face, pinched with agony and furrowed with long
+traces of clotted blood that had flowed<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> from her eyeless sockets. Her
+teeth still held a little wax figure, two or three inches long, clad in
+a bishop's gown with a miniature mitre on its head, made out of a bit of
+gold foil. The witches, to carry out their diabolical incantations,
+often had several of these little figures placed between the teeth of
+the hanged at the moment when they expired. They called this magic
+"spell throwing." Beside this gibbet rose the seigniorial post of
+Neroweg VI, lord and count of the lands of Plouernel. The post indicated
+the boundaries of the domain traversed by the western road, and was
+surmounted by a red escutcheon, in the middle of which were seen three
+eagle's talons painted in yellow&mdash;the device of the Nerowegs. Another
+post, bearing for emblem a dragon-serpent of green color painted on a
+white background, marked the eastern route which traversed the domains
+of Draco, Lord of Castel-Redon, and flanked another gibbet with four
+patibulary forks. Of these only two were furnished; from one hanged the
+corpse of a child of fourteen years at the most, from the other the
+corpse of an old man, both half pecked away by the crows. Isoline, the
+daughter of Bezenecq the Rich, uttered a cry of horror at the sight of
+these bodies, and huddling close to the merchant, behind whom she was on
+horseback, whispered in a low voice: "Father! oh, father! Look at those
+bodies. It's a horrible spectacle!"</p>
+
+<p>"Look not in that direction, my child," answered sadly the townsman of
+Nantes, turning around to his daughter. "More than once on our road
+shall we make these mournful encounters. The patibulary forks are found
+on the confines of every seigniorial estate. Often even the trees are
+decked out with hanging bodies!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father," replied Isoline, whose face, so full of smiles a minute
+before, had painfully saddened, "I fear this encounter may be of sad
+omen to our voyage!"</p>
+
+<p>"Beloved daughter," the merchant put in with suppressed agony, "be not
+so quick to take alarm. No doubt we live in days when it is impossible
+to leave the city and undertake a<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> long trip with safety. It is that
+that kept me from paying a visit in the city of Laon to my good brother
+Gildas, whom I have not seen for many years. It is unfortunately a long
+way to Picardy, and I have not dared to venture on such a ride. But our
+trip will hardly take two days. We should not apprehend a sad issue to
+this visit to your grandmother, who wishes to see and embrace you before
+she dies. Your presence will sweeten her sorrow at the loss of your
+mother, whom she mourns as grieviously to-day as when my beloved wife
+was taken from me. Pick up courage and calm your mind, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall pick up courage, father, as you wish. I shall surmount my idle
+terrors and my childish fears."</p>
+
+<p>"Were it not for the imperious duty that made us undertake this journey,
+I would say to you: 'Let's return to our peaceful home in Nantes, where
+you are happy and gay from morning to evening.' If your smile cheers my
+soul," Bezenecq added in a voice deeply moved, "every tear you drop
+falls upon my heart!"</p>
+
+<p>"Behold me," said Isoline. "Would you say I look apprehensive, alarmed?"
+And saying this she pressed against the merchant her charming face, that
+had recovered its serenity and confidence. The townsman contemplated for
+a moment in silence the beloved features of his daughter. A tear of joy
+then gathered in his eye, and endeavoring to subdue his emotion, he
+cried out: "The devil take these crupper saddles! They prevent one even
+from embracing his own child with ease!" Whereupon the young girl, with
+a movement full of gracefulness, threw her arms on her father's
+shoulders, and drew her rosy face so close to Bezenecq's that he had but
+to turn his head to kiss the lassie on her forehead and cheeks, which he
+did repeatedly with ineffable happiness.</p>
+
+<p>During this tender exchange of words and carresses between the merchant
+and his daughter, the other travelers, before proceeding upon either of
+the two routes that opened before them, had gathered in the middle of
+the crossing to consider which to take. Both roads led to Angers. One of
+them, that marked<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> by the post surmounted with a serpent-dragon, after
+making a wide circuit, traversed a sombre forest; it was twice as long
+as the other. Each of the two roads having its own advantages and
+disadvantages, several of the travelers insisted upon the road of the
+post with the three eagle's talons. Simon, the monk whose face was
+almost wholly concealed under his cowl, strove, on the contrary, to
+induce his companions to take the other road. "Dear brothers! I conjure
+you;" cried Simon, "believe me ... do not cross the territory of the
+seigneur of Plouernel.... He has been nick-named 'Worse than a Wolf' and
+the reprobate but too well justifies the name.... Every day stories are
+heard of travelers whom he arrests and plunders while crossing his
+grounds."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear brother," put in a townsman, "I can testify, like you, that the
+keeper of Plouernel is a wicked man, and his donjon a terrible donjon.
+More than once from the ramparts of our city of Nantes have we seen the
+men of the Count of Plouernel, bandits of the worst stripe, pillage,
+burn, and ravage the territory of our bishop, with whom Neroweg was at
+war over the possession of the ancient abbey of Meriadek."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the abbey where the prodigious miracle of about four hundred
+years ago happened?" inquired another bourgeois. "Saint Meroflede,
+abbess of the monastery, summoned by the soldiers of Charles Martel to
+surrender the place, invoked heaven, and the miscreants, overwhelmed by
+a shower of stones and fire, were asphyxiated in the fumes of burning
+sulphur and pitch, whither they were dragged by horned, clawed and hairy
+demons, frightful to behold. And so it happened that the venerable
+abbess died in the odor of sanctity."</p>
+
+<p>"An ineffable odor that has lasted down to our own days. The common
+people entertain a particular devotion for the chapel of Saint
+Meroflede, which has been raised on the borders of a large lake, close
+by the very place where the miracle was accomplished."</p>
+
+<p>"The chapel is never empty of the faithful. The offerings<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a> furnish a
+large revenue to the incumbent. As the abbess was of the house of the
+Nerowegs, the seigneur of Plouernel laid claim to, and sought to
+reacquire the property of the chapel. Hence the wars between the count
+and the Bishop of Nantes. Those were fearful wars, my friends. They
+happened at the season when the bishop was marrying his last daughter,
+whom he gave for a dower the benefice of Saint Paterne. It was a
+beautiful wedding. The wife and the daughter of his grace the bishop
+were beautifully ornamented. The young bride wore a necklace of
+inestimable value."</p>
+
+<p>The moment the name of the Bishop of Nantes was mentioned, Simon the
+monk pulled down the cowl of his cloak, trying to hide his face
+completely.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure enough, my beloved companions," interjected another townsman, "we
+know that the Sieur 'Worse than a Wolf' is a brigand. But do you imagine
+that the Sieur Draco, seigneur of Castel-Redon, is a lamb? It is as
+perilous to cross the territory of the one as of the other, and yet
+there is no other way out. The road to the east, barred by a river, runs
+out upon a bridge that is guarded by the men of the seigneur of
+Castel-Redon; the road to the west, bordered by vast swamps, runs out
+upon a path guarded by the men of the seigneur of Plouernel. By taking
+the shorter of the two routes we reduce by one-half the chances of
+danger."</p>
+
+<p>"This worthy man is right," said several voices. "Let's follow his
+advice."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear brothers, look out what you do!" cried Simon the monk. "The
+seigneur of Plouernel is a monster of ferocity. He is given up to
+sorcery with a female magician, his concubine ... a Jewess! He stands
+excommunicated; he is a pagan."</p>
+
+<p>"To the devil with the Jews!" exclaimed Harold the Norman, merchant of
+relics. "The Jews have all been hanged, burned, drowned, strangled,
+quartered, when they were hunted down in all the provinces, like wild
+beasts. There can not be one of them left alive in our land of Gaul."<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Since the execution of the Orleans heretics, who perished by fire,"
+resumed the monk Jeronimo, "never was an extermination of unclean
+animals more meritorious than that of those accursed Jews, who
+instigated the Saracens of Palestine to destroy the Temple of Solomon at
+Jerusalem. Death to the Jews!"</p>
+
+<p>"What say you, dear brother?" inquired a townsman. "Did the Jews of this
+land of Gaul instigate the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my brother. The abominable mischiefs of those Jews defy time and
+space. But patience! Soon will the day come when, by divine will, no
+longer will it be isolated pilgrims that will travel to Jerusalem to
+there mourn and pray at the tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will be
+Christianity in mass that will march under arms to the Holy Land, in
+order to exterminate the infidels and deliver the sepulchre of the
+Saviour of the world from their sacrilegious presence. Death to all
+miscreants!"</p>
+
+<p>Bezenecq the Rich, who had just approached the group of debating
+travelers, and ascertained the subject of their discussion, apprehensive
+lest his daughter take new alarm, suggested: "Meseems we had better take
+the shorter route. As to your fears, they are exaggerated. When we shall
+have paid the toll-collectors of the seigneur of Plouernel for the right
+to travel over his roads and cross his burgs and villages, what else can
+he demand of us? We are neither his serfs nor his villeins.'</p>
+
+<p>"Can you, a grey beard, talk like that?" interjected Simon the monk. "Do
+you imagine these devilish seigneurs care aught for justice or
+injustice?"</p>
+
+<p>"But I do care a deal about that!" replied Bezenecq the Rich. "If the
+seigneur of Plouernel should do me violence, me a bourgeois of Nantes, I
+would appeal to William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, of whom the seigneur of
+Plouernel stands seized, the same as William IX holds of Philip I, King
+of the Franks. Each of these seigneurs has his suzerain."<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Which would be like appealing from the wolf to the tiger," replied
+Simon, shrugging his shoulders. "You can not know William, Duke of
+Aquitaine. That sacrilegious criminal sought to force Peter, the Bishop
+of Poitiers, to give him absolution for his crimes by putting a dagger
+to his throat. William abducted Malborgiane, the wife of the Viscount of
+Castellerault, a shameless creature, whose picture he dares to carry
+painted on his shield. William had the effrontery to answer Gerard, the
+Bishop of Angouleme, who reproached him with this new act of adultery:
+'Bishop, I shall return Malborgiane when you frizzle your hair!' The
+prelate was bald. Such is the man to whom you would appeal from the
+violent acts of the seigneur of Plouernel."</p>
+
+<p>"That William is certainly a deep-dyed criminal;" put in Jeronimo, "but
+that much justice must be done him that he approved himself the most
+implacable exterminator of the Jews. Not one of those who lived on his
+domains escaped death!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is said that the mere sight of a Jew makes him pale with horror; and
+that, libertine though he is, a Jewess, be she never such a beauty, be
+she a maid like the Virgin Mary, would make him run away from her."</p>
+
+<p>"But that does not prevent," insisted Simon the monk, "that if you rely
+upon the Duke of Aquitaine for redress against the seigneur of
+Plouernel, you will be acting like a lunatic. On that subject your
+judgment is at fault."</p>
+
+<p>"If William IX does not do us justice," rejoined Bezenecq the Rich, "we
+shall appeal to King Philip. Oh! oh! we townsmen do not allow ourselves
+to be tyrannized without protest! We know how to draw up a petition!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what will King Philip care for your petition? That Sardanapalus!
+that glutton! that idler! that double adulterer! and what's worse, that
+dullard, whom the seigneurs, his large vassals, laugh at openly! It is
+to him you will go for justice, if refused by the Duke of Aquitaine?
+Moreover, even if the latter were so inclined, as the suzerain of the
+seigneur of Plouernel, to<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> punish him for wrongs done to you, would he
+have the power?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly!" exclaimed Bezenecq. "He would enter the domain of the
+seigneur of Plouernel and besiege him in his castle."</p>
+
+<p>Simon the monk shook his head sadly. "The seigneurs reserve their forces
+to round up their domains and to revenge their own wrongs. Never do they
+protect the cause of small folks, however just it be."</p>
+
+<p>"We live, I know, in sad times; nor were the previous centuries much
+better," observed the townsman with a sigh, casting an uneasy look upon
+his daughter, who seemed again alarmed. "All the same, we should not
+exaggerate to ourselves the dangers of the situation. We have to choose
+between the two routes. Let's suppose the dangers of crossing them are
+equal. Common sense bids us to take the shorter, and that we hurry our
+steps."</p>
+
+<p>"The shorter route is the more perilous," repeated Simon the monk, who,
+more than anyone else, seemed to dread crossing the territory of the
+seigneur of Plouernel.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! father," asked Isoline of the merchant, "have we really so many
+dangers to fear?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, my dear child. That poor monk's mind is upset with fear."</p>
+
+<p>The Norman dealer in relics, having overheard the last words of Isoline,
+approached her and said with much unction: "Pretty lassie, I have here
+in my box of relics a superb tooth, that comes from the blessed jaw of a
+holy man, who died in Jerusalem, a martyr to the Saracens. I shall let
+you have that tooth for three silver deniers. This sacred relic will
+protect you from all perils of the road." Saying which, Harold the
+Norman was about to exhibit the marvellous tooth, when Bezenecq said
+smiling to him, so as to reassure his daughter; "Not now, my friend; we
+shall look at your relic later on. Do you claim that it protects one
+against all the dangers of the road?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, worshipful townsman. I swear it upon my eternal salvation; upon my
+share of Paradise."<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Seeing that you carry about you that holy relic, you will not be
+exposed to any accident; and seeing that we go with you, and are of your
+company, we shall profit by the miraculous protection. All of which
+should not hinder us, if you follow my advice, dear companions, to take
+the shorter route. Let those who share my views follow me," he added
+giving the spurs to his mule so as to put an end to the discussion, and
+with that he took the road that led over the territory of the seigneur
+of Plouernel. The majority of the travelers followed the example of
+Bezenecq, because, for one thing, he spoke wisely; then also, he was
+known to be rich, his daughter accompanied him, and he had too much at
+stake to take an imprudent resolution. Those who shared the
+apprehensions of the monk Simon, being reduced to a small number, dared
+not separate from the bulk of the troop, and joined it after a moment's
+hesitation. Likewise Simon the monk and Jeronimo, who feared risking
+themselves alone on the other road. Harold the Norman remained behind an
+instant, drew near one of the gibbets, pulled off the two legs and hands
+of a corpse, that was reduced to a mere skeleton, and placed them in his
+bag, counting upon selling them to the faithful for holy relics. He then
+rejoined the travelers, who were proceeding along the road of the
+seigniory of Plouernel.<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-a" id="CHAPTER_IV-a"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br /><br />
+THE MANOR OF PLOUERNEL.</h3>
+
+<p>The castle of Neroweg VI&mdash;a somber retreat, situated, like the eyrie of
+a bird of prey, on the brow of a steep mountain&mdash;dominated the country
+for many miles around. The moment the watchman, posted on the platform
+of the donjon, espied from afar a troop of travelers, he sounded his
+horn. Immediately the band of the count, thievish and ferocious, would
+sally from the manor. These bandits, not satisfied with demanding the
+dues of passage and traffic, habitually pillaged the travelers, often
+even massacred them, or took them to the castle to be tortured and
+compelled to pay ransom. The face of Gaul bristled with similar haunts,
+raised by the Frankish seigneurs under the reign of Charles the Great.
+They were impregnable fortresses, from the heights of which barons,
+counts, marquises and dukes defied the royal authority, and desolated
+the country. The history of the Count of Plouernel is that of all these
+seigneurs who issued from the race of the first conquerors of Gaul. In
+the year 818, a Neroweg, second son of the head of this Frankish family
+that had been richly endowed in Auvergne since Clovis, was one of the
+chieftains in the army of Louis the Pious, when he ravaged Brittany,
+then in revolt at the call of Morvan and Vortigern. That Neroweg, in
+reward for his services during that war, received from the King a fief
+of the lands and county of Plouernel, which had reverted to the crown by
+the death of its last beneficiary, who left no heirs. Neroweg, in return
+for the cession of the county of Plouernel, was to own himself a vassal
+of Louis the Pious, render him fealty and homage as to his king and
+suzerain seigneur, pay him tribute, and support him in his wars by
+marching at the head of the men of his seigniory. In the country of
+Plouernel, as in the other provinces<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> of Gaul, certain colonists named
+villeins had succeeded in emancipating themselves and again became
+owners of parcels of land. Neroweg I. (the first of the name of this
+second branch of the family) did not revolt against the authority of the
+King. His son, however, Neroweg II., had a strong castle built on the
+summit of the mountain of Plouernel, assembled there a numerous band of
+determined men, and then, with most of the other seigneurs, he said to
+the King of the Franks: "I do not recognize your sovereignty; I will no
+longer be your vassal; I declare myself sovereign on my domain, like you
+are on yours. The serfs, villeins and townsmen of my county become my
+men; they, their lands, their property belong to me only; I shall tax
+them at my will and impose upon them tributes, rent and taille which
+they shall pay to me only; they will go to war for me alone, and against
+you, should you dare come and besiege me in my fortress of Plouernel."
+The King did not go, seeing that most of the seigneurs held the same
+language to the descendants of Charles the Great or of Hugh le Capet,
+whose kingdom was gradually reduced to the possession of the bare
+provinces that he was able to defend and preserve, arms in hand. Neroweg
+III. and Neroweg IV. did as their ancestor and remained independent,
+masters, absolute and hereditary, of the country of Plouernel. A large
+number of Frankish seigneurs seized in the same way other parts of the
+territory of Gaul. Robert thus became Count of (the country of) Paris;
+Milo, Count of (the country of) Tonnerre; Hugh, Count of (the country
+of) Maine; Burcharth, Sire of (the country of) Montmorency; Landry, Duke
+of (the country of) Nevers; Radulf, Count of (the country of) Beaugency;
+Enghilbert, Count of (the country of) Ponthieu; etc. These and a number
+of other seigneurs, descendants of the leudes of Clovis or of the
+chieftains of the bands of Charles Martel, dropping their Frankish
+names, or joining to them the Gaulish names of the regions that they
+took possession of, had themselves called "seigneurs," "sires," "dukes"
+or "counts," of Paris, of Plouernel,<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> of Montmorency, of Nevers, of
+Tonnerre, of Ponthieu, etc., etc. During those centuries of wars and
+brigandage the Nerowegs had fortified their castle, while they lived on
+rapine and on the extortion of their villeins and their serfs. Neroweg
+V., surnamed "Towhead," from the color of his hair, and Neroweg VI.,
+surnamed "Worse Than a Wolf" by the wretched people of his domains on
+account of his cruelty, proved themselves worthy of their ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>The manor of Plouernel raises its front on the summit of a rocky and
+arid mountain, washed on its western slope by a swift running stream,
+while on the east it beetles over a narrow path constructed over immense
+marshes, drained by a canal that feeds the vast ponds of the abbey of
+Meriadek, located several leagues off, and one time part of the large
+holdings of the diocese of Nantes. If a traveler follows the overland
+route he is compelled to cross this jetty on his way from Angers to
+Nantes, unless he be willing to make a wide detour by journeying over
+the domains of the seigneur of Castel-Redon. The vessels that sail into
+the Loire through the river of Plouernel, whose waters bathe the foot of
+the hills, pass close under the castle. The location of the lair is
+skilfully chosen. It dominates the two only routes of communication
+between the most important towns of the region. A stockade half bars the
+river of Plouernel, and serves as a shelter for the barges of the
+seigneur. Merchant vessels being signaled from the top of the donjon,
+men in arms immediately embark, board the trader, collect navigation
+dues, and not infrequently pillage the cargo. No less dangerous is the
+overland route. A palisade, into which a gate is cut, bars the passage.
+It can be crossed only upon paying a toll, arbitrarily imposed upon the
+travelers by the count's men, who, moreover, sack the baggages at their
+ease. If they suspect a traveler of being able to pay ransom they drag
+him to prison and there torture him until he consents to ransom himself.
+The ill-starred ones who may be too poor to pay the toll demanded are,
+both men and women,<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> forced to submit to obscene affronts, ridiculous or
+cruel, to the great amusement of the men of the seigneur. On one of the
+gentler slopes of the mountain, towards the north, the little city of
+Plouernel rises in tiers, built in a semi-circle and equidistant from
+the manor and the valley, where lie scattered the villages that the
+villeins and serfs inhabit. A narrow path, winding and steep, and
+bordered here and yonder by precipices, leads up to the first fortified
+enclosure, whose ramparts, thirty feet high by two feet thick and
+flanked with large towers of brick, constitute one mass with the rock
+that serves as their foundation, a rock hewn with the pick and
+surrounded by abysses. The dizzy path that winds above the precipices
+ends in a massive door covered with iron sheets and enormous nails. It
+is the only access to the interior of the first enclosure, a somber
+court, where the sun penetrates only at noon, being otherwise kept out
+by the height of the numerous structures that lean from within upon the
+ramparts. These structures are intended for the lodgement of the
+men-at-arms, for the masons, the chapel, the bakery, the forge and
+several other workshops&mdash;a mint among them. The Count of Plouernel
+coined money like the other feudal seigneurs, and, like them, he minted
+it to his liking. In the center of the court rises the principal donjon.
+That building, square, over a hundred feet high, crowned with a platform
+from which the country is far away disclosed, rests upon three tiers of
+subterraneous cells, surrounded by a ditch full of water furnished from
+springs that also serve as cisterns. The donjon seems to rise from the
+midst of a deep pit, in which half of this massive structure appears
+hidden, its upper part rising merely above the skirt of the ditch, over
+which falls a draw bridge. Few and narrow windows, irregularly cut into
+the four sides, and almost as narrow as mere loop-holes, yielded a
+gloomy light to the several stories and to the ground floor. The
+stonework of all these buildings, blackened by the inclemencies of the
+weather and by age, rendered still more dismal the aspect of this
+fortress.<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-a" id="CHAPTER_V-a"></a>CHAPTER V.<br /><br />
+AZENOR THE PALE.</h3>
+
+<p>A narrow spiral staircase, built of stone, led from the bottom of the
+basement to the platform that surmounted the donjon of the manor of
+Plouernel. The men at arms, charged with the lookout on the platform,
+never failed to cross themselves when passing the door of an alcove,
+situated on the last story of the donjon, that had for its annex one of
+the turrets that rose from the four corners of the platform. It was
+whispered that the narrow window of that turret seemed internally
+illuminated at night by a glow of the color of blood, and these sinister
+lights were attributed to the sorceries of Azenor the Pale, the
+concubine of Neroweg VI. The seigneur of Plouernel had gathered in the
+chamber of his mistress a mass of precious objects, the fruits of his
+raids. A passage, concealed by a purple curtain, fringed with gold, gave
+admission to another turret, whose upper part, roofed on a level with
+the platform, served as the post for the lookout. Azenor the Pale, about
+twenty-five years of age, was of a perfect beauty. Her face was pale and
+her sensuous lips were the color of her skin, whence her surname. A
+turban of rich purple silk fabric in the shape of a chin-cloth, served
+as a frame for the visage of the sorceress, while it left exposed the
+strands of her hair, black like her eyebrows and her large eyes. Her
+tunic of silver cloth was negligently thrown over her shoulders. Her
+bosom and arms were worthy of figuring beside that beautiful Greek
+statue that has survived the centuries, and which, rumor has it, is
+still admired in the palace of the Dukes of Aquitaine. The tunic of
+Azenor, reaching only to her knees, left exposed below its silver folds
+the skirt of her dress, purple like her turban.<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> The woman was at this
+moment engaged in molding a bit of pliable wax into two little figures
+similar to the one inserted that very morning between the teeth of
+Pierrine the Goat at the moment of her death agony. One of the puppets
+wore a bishop's robe, the other a species of armor represented by a
+dull-colored bit of cloth resembling iron. Azenor the Pale was inserting
+a certain number of needles, disposed in cabalistic order, on the left
+side of the breast of the two puppets, when the door of the alcove
+opened behind her. Neroweg VI. entered his mistress' retreat, carefully
+closing the door after him.</p>
+
+<p>The Count of Plouernel, surnamed "Worse than a Wolf," and at that time
+about fifty years of age, was of athletic frame. His hair no longer was
+dressed after the fashion of his ancestor, the Neroweg, leude of Clovis,
+nor after that of Neroweg, the "Terrible Eagle," savage chief of a
+savage tribe. The red hair of Neroweg VI., already grizzled, was shaven
+smooth to the middle of the temples and the skull, and then fell square
+down his neck and behind his ears. The men of war had themselves thus
+shaven in front to prevent their hair from interfering with their casque
+and standing in the way of the visor. Instead of cultivating long
+moustaches, like his ancestors, Neroweg VI. allowed to grow at full
+length only his thick and coarse beard, which thus framed in his savage
+countenance and his hooked nose. His heavy eyebrows met over his falcon
+eyes, round and piercing. Always ready for war upon his neighbors, or
+upon those troops of travelers that, at times, attempted to offer
+forcible resistance to the brigandage of the seigneurs, Neroweg VI. wore
+a casque, which he laid by on entering. His jacket and buff hose
+disappeared under a hauberk or iron coat of mail, held to his waist by a
+leathern belt, from which hung two swords, the shorter one at his right,
+the longer at his left. The hauberk guarded his arms down to the
+gauntlets, and fell slightly below his knees, which, like his legs, were
+protected by iron greaves, held together with leathern thongs. The face
+of Neroweg VI. betrayed a<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> gloomy and troubled mind. Azenor the Pale,
+still engaged in inserting the needles into the left sides of the wax
+figures, was murmuring certain words in a strange tongue, and seemed not
+to notice the arrival of the Count. He drew slowly near, and said in a
+hollow voice: "Well, now, Azenor, is the philter ready?"</p>
+
+<p>Without answering, the sorceress continued her magic incantations, at
+the conclusion of which, holding up to Neroweg VI. the two puppets,
+representing a bishop and a warrior, she said: "Tell me again, which are
+the enemies whom you dread and hate the most?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Bishop of Nantes and Draco, Sire of Castel-Redon. These are my
+worst enemies."</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday I shaped a figure like this. Has it been placed as I ordered,
+between the teeth of one about to expire on the gallows?"</p>
+
+<p>"One of my serfs struck my bailiff. She was hanged this morning from my
+seigniorial forks. At the moment when she gave up the ghost, the
+executioner placed the wax puppet between her teeth. Your orders have
+been carried out."</p>
+
+<p>"In keeping with my promise, your enemies will soon be in your power.
+Nevertheless, in order to complete the charm, these other two little
+figures will have to be buried under the root of a tree, that grows at
+the bank of a river, in which some man or woman was drowned."</p>
+
+<p>"That's easily done. There are large old willows growing on the banks of
+my river, and often do my men drown in it the stubborn sailors, or the
+men or women who refuse to pay the toll for my rights of navigation."</p>
+
+<p>"That magic spell must be cast by yourself. You will have to place these
+little figures in the designated place to-night, when the moon goes
+down, and you will pronounce three times the names of Jesus, of Astaroth
+and of Judas. The charm will then be at its full."<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I do not like to see the name of Christ mixed up in all this. Are you,
+perchance, seeking to lead me into some sacrilege?"</p>
+
+<p>A sardonic smile played over the white lips of Azenor the Pale. "So far
+from that, I have placed the magic charm under the invocation of Christ;
+I pronounced a verse from the gospels with each needle that I buried in
+these puppets. The Lord will thus be our protector."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you not driven me to kill my chaplain, I might have been able to
+consult him and learn from him whether I would be committing sacrilege."</p>
+
+<p>"You killed the tonsured fellow because you suspected that holy man of
+improper relations with your wife, and of probably being the father of
+Guy&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your tongue!" cried Neroweg, with a voice full of anger. "Hold
+your tongue, accursed woman! Since that murder I have had no chaplain.
+No priest, consents to dwell here. Enough of that. Is the philter
+ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. Have patience, seigneur Count."</p>
+
+<p>"What else do you want to concoct it? You wanted the blood of a young
+child; the young son of one of my serfs has been delivered to you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The child must be prepared for the sacrifice by magic formulas."</p>
+
+<p>"In a word, can you tell me when will that marvelous philter, that you
+have promised me, be ready?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall work upon it this very night, during the hours between the
+rising and the going down of the moon; that's to say, for several
+hours."</p>
+
+<p>"That's another delay! My ailment grows apace! I suspect you of having
+cast upon me the evil spell under which I struggle, and which drives me
+to deeds of furious folly."</p>
+
+<p>"You are wrong in attributing to me such an influence over your fate."<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Was it not you who incited me to kill my eldest son Gonthram?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your son tried to violate me. Of course I had to appeal to your
+intervention for protection against fresh outrages."</p>
+
+<p>"Had not my equerry Eberhard the Tricky thrown himself between me and
+Gonthram, I would have killed my son on his return from the hunt. He has
+insisted that you offered to yield yourself to him if he consented to
+stab me to death."</p>
+
+<p>"That was a dastardly calumny!"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I should have plunged my dagger in your heart and be done with
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"And why did you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because you read in the stars that our lives were bound together, and
+that your death would precede mine by only three days. But if I am to
+die of the distemper that oppresses me, a curse upon you, sorceress! You
+shall not survive me. Garin the Serf-eater is charged with my vengeance.
+Oh, you will not leave this castle alive!" Neroweg pressed his forehead
+with both hands and proceeded in a spirit more and more dejected as he
+spoke: "The philter&mdash;Will it heal me? Since you cast your diabolical
+spell upon me, the days seem endless. I am indifferent to everything.
+After I make the rounds of my domains, shut in among the seigniories of
+my neighbors, all of them my enemies; after I have ravaged their lands,
+burned their houses, killed their serfs; after I have levied ransom on
+the travelers, had justice executed by my bailiff, my provost and my
+hangman; after all that I feel sadder, wearier, more than ever tired of
+life. I have even surprised myself wishing for death!"</p>
+
+<p>"You wage war, you eat, you drink, you hunt, you sleep and you take your
+female serfs to your bed when they marry. What is it you lack?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am tired, cloyed with gross enjoyments. Wine tastes sour to me. I
+feel uneasy when I hunt in my forests, fearful of some ambush prepared
+by my neighbors. I find my donjon sepulchral<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> like a tomb. I choke under
+its stone vaults. If I leave the manor, I have ever under my eyes the
+same saddening landscape."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the country, you stupid and savage wolf!"</p>
+
+<p>"Whither shall I go and be happier? Here I am master. What would my fate
+be elsewhere? During my absence, my neighbors would descend upon my
+domains like a flock of vultures. The devil! I am bound to my seigniory
+like my serfs to the glebe!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your fate is that of all the nobles, your peers."</p>
+
+<p>"But they are not weighed down by their existence like I. Only a few
+years ago, during the life of my wife Hermengarde, I attacked my
+neighbors as much for the pleasure of it as to appropriate their lands
+and to sack their castles. I went on the hunt for caravans of merchants
+with joy and spirit. I put the prisoners to the torture and delighted at
+their grimaces. In short, I felt that I lived; I was happy; I ate and
+drank enormously, and then fell asleep in the arms of one of my female
+serfs. The next morning I attended mass and departed for the chase, to
+battle or on a pillaging expedition; that is, on a new round of
+pleasures." After a moment's silence the seigneur of Plouernel added,
+with a sigh: "Those days I was a good Catholic! I practiced the faith of
+my fathers, and every morning, after mass, the chaplain gave me
+absolution for the deeds of the previous day! To-day, thanks to your
+wicked contrivances, all my beliefs are overthrown. I have become a
+pagan!&mdash;Aye, a pagan!"</p>
+
+<p>"You, poor imbecile, who carry under your hauberk four relics blessed by
+the Pope!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you dare to mock me for my faith in relics?" bellowed Neroweg in a
+towering rage. "Without the relics that I carry about me you might by
+this time have dragged me to the bottom of hell, you worthy wife of
+Satan!"</p>
+
+<p>"Maychance you speak truth, seigneur Count!"<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a></p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing human about you! Your lips are cold as marble; your
+kisses are frozen!"</p>
+
+<p>"When a reciprocal love shall inflame my veins, then my lips will grow
+purple, and my kisses will be of fire!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know it; you never loved me!"</p>
+
+<p>"As well love a wolf of the forest as a Neroweg. You carried me off by
+force, and I have had to submit to your lust. The man whom I adore, whom
+I have long loved, even without seeing him, is William the Ninth, the
+handsome Duke of Aquitaine."</p>
+
+<p>"William!" exclaimed Neroweg in an accent of ferocious jealousy. "That
+sacrilegious wretch, who carries on his shield the portrait of
+Malborgiane, his mistress!"</p>
+
+<p>"William is a poet; he is young, handsome, bold, bright and gay. All
+women dream of, and all men dread him. You are his vassal. Woe unto you
+should you dare cross him! He would leave not one stone on the other in
+your castle. He would make you grovel on the ground on hands and knees;
+he would clap a saddle on you and ride on your back a hundred steps at a
+stretch, agreeable to the right of a sovereign over his revolted vassal.
+You are as far removed from the handsome Duke of Aquitaine as the dull
+buzzard is from the noble falcon that darts towards the sun making its
+golden bells tinkle!"</p>
+
+<p>Neroweg uttered a cry of rage, and, drawing his dagger, rushed upon
+Azenor. But her marble figure remained impassive, her white lips curled
+in disdainful smile. "Kill me, coward knight, assassin!"</p>
+
+<p>After a moment of savage irresolution, Neroweg returned his dagger to
+the scabbard: "Oh, damned be the day I captured you on the road to
+Angers. It is you who brought down the curse that rests upon this
+castle. But will ye, nill ye, you shall yourself break the spell you
+have thrown upon me and my children, who, like their father, are
+becoming somber and silent."</p>
+
+<p>"That's the business of the philter, which I am preparing."<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a></p>
+
+<p>The conversation was at this point interrupted by two raps on the door
+from without. Neroweg asked roughly: "Who's that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur Count," a voice answered, "you are waited to open the session
+of the court in the stone hall!"</p>
+
+<p>Neroweg made a gesture of impatience, and, donning the iron casque which
+he had laid on a settee, replied: "Once the homage of my vassals pleased
+my vanity. To-day everything annoys, everything is irksome to me. Oh,
+sad is my life!"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow, thanks to my philter, nothing more will weigh upon you&mdash;nor
+upon yours," observed Azenor, and, placing in the Count's hands the two
+little wax images, she added: "Your two enemies&mdash;the Sire of
+Castel-Redon and the Bishop of Nantes&mdash;will soon fall into your hands,
+provided you yourself place these magic figures where I have told you,
+while you pronounce three times the names of Judas, of Astaroth and of
+Jesus."</p>
+
+<p>"It is hard for me to pronounce the name of Jesus in connection with
+this sorcery," remarked Neroweg, raising his head and receiving almost
+fearfully the two little figures. "To-night the philter; if not, you die
+to-morrow!" Then, bethinking himself, "Where is the child?"</p>
+
+<p>"In that alcove," answered Azenor.</p>
+
+<p>Neroweg walked towards the turret, raised the curtain and saw little
+Colombaik, the son of Fergan the Quarryman, lying on the floor. The
+innocent creature was sound asleep at the foot of a stand loaded with
+vases of bizarre form. The walls of the turret, paneled with marble
+slabs, rose bare to the ceiling, the floor of whose upper story was on a
+level with the platform of the donjon. Neroweg, after contemplating the
+child for an instant, stepped out of the donjon, double-locking the door
+after him, and taking care to withdraw the key and place it in his
+jerkin.<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-a" id="CHAPTER_VI-a"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br /><br />
+FEUDAL JUSTICE.</h3>
+
+<p>Eberhard the Tricky, one of the equerries of the seigneur of Plouernel,
+awaited his master outside of the retreat of Azenor, in company with
+Thiebold, justiciary provost of the seigniory. The latter addressed
+Neroweg, who was slowly descending the stone staircase.</p>
+
+<p>"The chatelain of the fort of Ferte-Mehan signed the relinquishment of
+his fief of Haut-Menil at the third wedge struck into his knee by the
+gaoler. The Sire of Breuil-le-Haudoin died of the results of the
+torture. The Abbot Guilbert offers three hundred silver sous for his
+ransom. But he has not yet been put to the torture, and such offers mean
+nothing. We shall proceed in order."</p>
+
+<p>"And then? What other cases are there?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all. There is to-day nothing else on hand."</p>
+
+<p>While carrying on this conversation the Seigneur of Plouernel, his
+provost and his equerry, descended to the basement of the donjon-keep,
+at the corner where the staircase landed. A narrow window, guarded with
+enormous iron bars, alone lighted this vast hall, bare, somber and
+vaulted. In the inside yard several men-at-arms held themselves ready to
+mount their horses. Near the center of the hall, which served as a court
+of pleas, stood, according to custom, a large stone table, behind which
+ranged themselves the officers of the house of the Count&mdash;the master of
+the horse, the master of the chamber, the master of the dogs, of the
+falcons, of the table, and several other dignitaries. These people,
+instead of being paid by the seigneurs, bought from them these
+hereditary offices in their families, an inheritance that at<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> times
+became odd by the contrast it presented between the function and the
+incumbent. It happened that a post of runner, sold in fief to an agile
+and vigorous man, often descended as the inheritance of a son, as unfit
+for the post as a broken-winded ox. The seigneurs, with an eye to
+revenue, multiplied these offices all they could, and the purchasers
+yielded, not so much to the pride of belonging to the seigniorial
+households as to the desire of sheltering themselves from the master's
+lawlessness, and of sharing the fruits of his brigandage. In those dark
+days, the choice was between oppressing or being oppressed; submitting
+to the horrors of serfdom, or becoming the instruments of the feudal
+tyrants; joining them in doing violence, robbing and torturing one's
+fellows, or resigning oneself to undergo all these sufferings himself.
+Such were the sad results of the Frankish conquest. The seigneurs
+imposed servitude, the friars preached resignation, and the people of
+Gaul became cowardly, selfish and cruel. They rent themselves with their
+own hands by turning accomplices to their gaoler.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the head domestics of Neroweg, present at these law
+courts,&mdash;which took the place of the Germanic "malhs" of the reign of
+Clovis&mdash;there was also the provost, the bailiff and the scribe of the
+seigniory. The latter, seated on a stool, his parchment rolls on his
+knees, his desk beside him, his pen between his teeth, awaited the
+opening of the session. The first domestics of the Count, respectful and
+timid, remained standing in a semi-circle behind their master. Since
+four of five centuries back, the class of the leudes, who, in the early
+days of the Frankish conquest, lived in common with and as equals of
+their chiefs, had ceased to exist. In the measure that the conquest
+became more firmly fixed, the titulary and beneficiary seigneurs of the
+soil of Gaul, shocked at the idea of equality contracted by their old
+companions in arms, evicted them little by little from the domains where
+chiefs and leudes had lived in common. The descendants of these obscure
+Frankish warriors, sacrificed to the<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> pride and cupidity of the
+beneficiaries, soon fell into misery, and from misery into a servitude
+equal to that of the Gauls. Since then, Franks and Gauls&mdash;the former
+disinherited by ingratitude, the latter by conquest, and now joined in
+misery and servitude&mdash;felt a common hatred towards the church and the
+seigneurs. There were then but two classes&mdash;the <i>common people</i>, serfs,
+peasants and bourgeois or townsmen; and <i>nobles</i>, knights and seigneurs.
+The latter, isolating themselves ever more, lived like absolute
+sovereigns in their strongholds, having no equals, but only menials, the
+accomplices of their acts of brigandage; or serfs, stupefied by terror
+or besotted by the friars.</p>
+
+<p>Gonthram and Guy, the two sons of Neroweg, the younger at the left, the
+elder at the right of their father, attended the court. The latter had
+just reached the age of knighthood, a glorious event, so dearly paid for
+by the serfs of the seigniory. Gonthram resembled his father greatly. A
+look at the whelp told what he would be when age would have made of him
+a wolf. Guy, the younger, seventeen years of age, recalled the sardonic
+and vindictive features of his mother, Hermangarde. These two youths,
+brought up in the midst of this life of strife, of rapine and of
+debauchery, left to the violence of their passions, disposing as masters
+over an abject population, had none of the charms that are the attribute
+of adolescence. Away in a corner of the hall stood several bourgeois of
+the little town of Plouernel, who had come to complain of the exactions
+of the Count's men; or to excuse themselves for failure to pay the
+imposts in money and goods that it had pleased their seigneur to lay
+upon them; or to plead that the dues credited to the seigneur had long
+been met or exceeded; or yet to announce that they had removed from
+their roofs the weather-vanes, placed there in ignorance of the
+seigniorial rights, and taken down the pigeon houses they had started to
+raise in violation of the prescriptions of the feudal law.</p>
+
+<p>The court was also attended by noble vassals of Neroweg, owners of
+smaller fortified places or of manors, held under the<a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a> Count of
+Plouernel, the suzerain of these fiefs, the same as Neroweg, a vassal of
+William IX., Duke of Aquitaine, held under that suzerain, who, as vassal
+of Philip I., in turn held of that French King, the supreme sovereign.
+This hierarchy of all feudal seigniories existed in name only, never in
+fact. The great vassals, veritable sovereigns, entrenched in their
+duchies, laughed at the impotent authority of the King. In turn, the
+sovereignty of the dukes was almost despised, contested or attacked by
+their vassals, who were absolute masters in their seigniories, as the
+dukes in their duchies. The immediate vassalage, however, such as rested
+on the vassals of the seigniory of Plouernel, was ever enforced in all
+its fullness and tyrannic severity. There, at any time, the implacable
+vengeance of the suzerain could reach directly the goods and chattels of
+the recalcitrant vassal. Among the people who had come from the city,
+from the fortified cities or from their manors, was a handsome young
+girl, accompanied by her mother. Sad and uneasy, the two exchanged
+alarmed looks when the seigneur of Plouernel, entering the law court
+with a somber mien, sat down on a throne, one son at his right, the
+other at his left, and ordered Garin the Serf-eater to call the roll of
+cases entered for the session.</p>
+
+<p>The bailiff bore no further mark of the wound he had received from
+Pierrine the Goat than a plaster on his forehead. He took up a scroll
+and commenced calling up the list of cases:</p>
+
+<p>"Gerhard, son of Hugh, who died last month, succeeds his father in the
+fief of Heute-Mont, held under the Count of Plouernel. He comes to
+acquit the right of relief, and to pledge fealty and homage to his
+suzerain."</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon, a man still young, covered with a leather casque and carrying
+at his side a long sword, stepped forth from the group of persons who
+had come to the session of the court. He came forward holding in his
+hand a large purse filled with money, and placed it on the stone table,
+thus acquitting the right of relief due the seigneur by all vassals who
+take possession<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> of their inheritance. Then, upon a sign of the bailiff,
+the new castellan of Heute-Mont, taking off his casque and unbuckling
+the belt of his sword, placed himself humbly on both knees before the
+seigneur of Plouernel. The bailiff, however, noticing that the country
+squire, having come on horseback, retained his spurs, addressed him in
+an angry tone: "Vassal, dare you take the pledge of fealty and homage to
+your seigneur with the spurs at your heels?"</p>
+
+<p>The young castellan repaired the incongruity by removing his spurs and
+dropping back upon his knees at the feet of Neroweg, with hands joined
+and head lowered, he humbly waited for his seigneur to pronounce the
+consecrated formula: "You acknowledge yourself my liege as the holder of
+a fief in my seigniory?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my seigneur."</p>
+
+<p>"You swear upon your soul never to carry arms against me, and to serve
+and defend me against my enemies?"</p>
+
+<p>"I swear it, my seigneur."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep thy oath. At the first felonious infraction thy fief reverts to
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>Gerhard rose, replaced his spurs and buckled on the belt of his sword,
+while casting a sad look upon the purse of money with which he had paid
+his right of relief.</p>
+
+<p>After the lord of Heute-Mont, a richly dressed young girl stepped
+forward, uneasy, trembling and her eyes full of tears. Her mother, not
+less moved than herself, accompanied her. When both were a few steps
+from the stone table, the seigneur of Plouernel said to the damsel:
+"Have you decided to obey the orders of your suzerain?"</p>
+
+<p>"Monseigneur," answered the young girl, in a feeble and suppliant voice,
+"it is impossible for me to resign myself to&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She could not finish. Sobs smothered her words, and, breaking out in
+tears, she dropped her head upon the shoulder of her mother, who said to
+the Count: "My good seigneur, my daughter loves Eucher, one of your own
+vassals. Eucher loves my<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> daughter Yolande no less tenderly. The union
+of these two children would make the happiness of my life&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No! no!" interrupted the seigneur of Plouernel, in a towering rage. "By
+the death of her father Yolande holds a fief under my seigniory. Mine
+alone is the right to dispose of her in marriage. She must choose a
+husband from among the three men whom, according to our usage, I have
+designated. They are three Franks, that is, nobles&mdash;Richard, Enquerrand
+and Conrad. The eldest of them not being yet sixty years old, the age
+limit is observed. Does Yolande accept one of my three lieges for her
+husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, seigneur," replied the mother imploringly, while the young girl
+sobbed aloud, "Richard is mean looking and blind of one eye; Conrad is a
+murderer; he killed his first wife in a fit of passion; Enquerrand is
+lame, wicked and feared by all who come near him, moreover, he is too
+old for my daughter, he will be sixty years within two months. None of
+them is fit for Yolande."</p>
+
+<p>"Your daughter, accordingly, refuses to wed one of the three men
+presented by me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur, she wishes no other husband than Eucher; and I may assure you
+the lad is worthy of the love of my daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"The devil! We have had words enough. If your daughter insists upon
+refusing to select from among my men, and marries Eucher, the fief
+reverts to me. It is my right. I shall enforce it."</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of heaven, monseigneur, if you appropriate our lands what
+shall we live on? Are we to beg our bread? Have pity upon us!"</p>
+
+<p>Yolande raised her beautiful face, pale and wet with tears, took a step
+towards Neroweg, and said, with dignity: "Keep the heritage of my
+father. I prefer to live in poverty with him whom I love than to wed any
+of these men of yours who inspire me with horror."<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a></p>
+
+<p>"My daughter!" exclaimed the distracted mother, "disobedience to the
+seigneur of Plouernel means misery for us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Marriage with one of the three men proposed, means death to me,"
+answered the poor child.</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur, good seigneur!" resumed the stricken mother, "deign to allow
+Yolande to remain a spinster. You would not force her to the choice
+between our ruin and a marriage that horrifies her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No fief can remain in the possession of a woman," was the sententious
+utterance of the bailiff. "Usage is opposed to it."</p>
+
+<p>"We have had enough of words!" cried out Neroweg, stamping the ground
+with rage. "This young woman refuses to wed one of my men. The fief is
+now mine. Bailiff, you will this evening send a force to take possession
+of the house and all its contents. You will eject the two women."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, let's depart," said Yolande, proudly. "We once were free and
+happy; now we are no better than serfs. But I prefer their sad lot to
+that reserved for me by Count Neroweg in delivering me to one of his
+bandits."</p>
+
+<p>Undoubtedly the seigneur of Plouernel would have revenged himself for
+the bitter reproaches of Yolande had he not been prevented by the sudden
+arrival of one of his men, who, running in all out of breath, brought
+news of the arrest of the Bishop of Nantes, who had appeared at the toll
+gate disguised as a mendicant friar, and was recognized by one of the
+guards.</p>
+
+<p>"The Bishop of Nantes in my power!" exclaimed Neroweg. "Azenor predicted
+it. Her magic charm begins to operate!" He rose precipitately from his
+throne, and, followed by his sons and several of his equerries, ran to
+meet the bishop, his enemy, who was being led a prisoner, together with
+the other travelers captured by the armed guards posted at the toll
+gate. Bezenecq the Rich and his daughter Isoline accompanied Simon, the
+Bishop of Nantes, and the monk Jeronimo, clad like a prelate. After his
+vain efforts to induce the travelers not to cross the<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> seigniory of
+Plouernel, the bishop had, nevertheless, joined them, not venturing to
+enter alone with Jeronimo upon the territory of the seigneur of
+Castel-Redon, and hoping he would pass unperceived amidst a numerous
+troop. Unhappily for him, among the guards at the gate was a soldier
+named Robin the Nantesian, who had lived in the city of Nantes, and
+where he had opportunity to see the leading personages among the
+inhabitants. He quickly pointed out Bezenecq the Rich as a townsman from
+whom it would be easy to extract a big ransom. Noticing, thereupon, a
+monk, who seemed anxious to keep his cowl over his head, he pulled the
+frock off the monk and recognized the Bishop of Nantes, a personal enemy
+of the Count. The men of Neroweg then seized the two friars, pinioned
+them, as well as Bezenecq and his daughter, and accepted the toll from
+the other passengers, whom they allowed to pursue their journey. The
+bourgeois of Nantes, bound upon his mule, with his daughter bathed in
+tears at the crupper, was carried to the castle, with the bishop and
+Jeronimo, their hands tied behind their backs, following on foot. When
+the captives arrived at the first court-yard of the castle, Bezenecq
+alighted from the saddle, and, freed from his bandages, he held up his
+daughter, ready to faint. The bishop, pale as death, leaned upon the arm
+of Jeronimo, whose resolute carriage betrayed no fears. Neroweg,
+accompanied by his sons, arrested his hurrying steps when he came close
+to the prisoners, and, addressing them, said, sardonically: "I greet
+you, Simon! I greet you, holy man, my father in Christ! I hardly looked
+for this joyful meeting!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am at your mercy," answered the prelate; "the will of God be done. Do
+with me as you will."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall avail myself of your leave," replied the seigneur of Plouernel.
+"Oh, this is a happy day to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I ask only one favor," rejoined the bishop, "the favor of keeping near
+me this poor monk until the moment of my death, that he may help me to
+die like a Christian."<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I do not mean to send you quite so soon to Paradise. I have other
+designs upon you," and beckoning to Garin the Serf-eater to draw near,
+the seigneur of Plouernel whispered a few words in his ear. The bailiff
+nodded affirmatively, crossed the drawbridge and entered the donjon.</p>
+
+<p>During their father's brief dialogue with the bishop, Guy and Gonthram
+had not ceased to pursue Isoline with their lascivious looks, and the
+frightened young girl had hidden her face on the breast of her father.
+Robin the Nantesian, raising his voice, said to Neroweg, while placing
+his hand on the shoulder of the townsman: "This is one of the richest
+merchants of the city of Nantes. He is called Bezenecq the Rich. Forget
+not that he is worth his weight in gold."</p>
+
+<p>The Count fastened his falcon eyes upon the captive, and, taking two
+steps toward him, said: "Your name is Bezenecq the Rich?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am so called, noble seigneur," humbly answered the bourgeois. "If
+your men have arrested me in order to make me pay ransom, I only request
+not to be separated from my daughter. Hand me a parchment. I shall write
+to the depositary of my money to deliver a hundred gold sous to whomever
+of your men shall deliver my letter to him. You will have the sum upon
+the return of your messenger, and you will then return our liberty to
+myself and my daughter." Seeing that the Count shrugged his shoulders
+with a sardonic smile, the merchant added: "Illustrious seigneur,
+instead of one hundred gold sous I will give you two hundred. But, I
+pray you, for mercy's sake, have me taken with my daughter to some
+apartment where the poor child may recover from her fright and the
+fatigues of the journey." Isoline, more and more alarmed at the ardent
+looks of the two whelps, trembled convulsively. Neroweg, silent as
+before, looked from time to time towards the donjon as if awaiting the
+return of the bailiff. Bezenecq resumed with an effort: "Seigneur, if
+two hundred pieces of gold do not yet suffice you, I shall go as<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> far as
+three hundred. It means my ruin. But I resign myself to that, provided
+you set my daughter and myself free."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment Garin the Serf-eater came out of the donjon, recrossed
+the draw bridge and spoke in an undertone to Neroweg, who, turning to
+the prisoners, said: "Come along, my guests! You will learn what I am to
+do with you. You are to have a chat with a certain dame of great powers
+of persuasion."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you butcher! You mean to put me to the torture!" cried the bishop,
+horror stricken. "Jesus, my God, have pity upon me! Mercy! Mercy!"</p>
+
+<p>"No weakness, Simon," whispered Jeronimo to him; "we must submit to the
+will of God. His ways are inscrutable."</p>
+
+<p>"Let the bishop be taken to his lodging; the monk shall keep him
+company." The bishop emitted lamentable cries and essayed to resist the
+men who were dragging him into the donjon. "It is now your turn to step
+in, Bezenecq the Rich. Come, brother, resistance is useless."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I not offered you three hundred gold sous for my ransom, Count of
+Plouernel?" asked the merchant. "If you do not find that sum enough I
+shall add another hundred gold pieces. I shall have given you my whole
+fortune!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, worthy brother, in honor to the commerce of Nantes, I cannot admit
+that one of its wealthiest merchants is worth only four hundred gold
+sous!" Then, turning to his men: "Conduct my guest and his daughter to
+their quarters."</p>
+
+<p>At the moment when the men of Neroweg were about to take hold of
+Bezenecq the Rich, Gonthram, brutally seizing the hand of Isoline, whom
+the merchant held fainting in his embrace, said: "I take this girl! She
+is my share of the ransom!"</p>
+
+<p>"I also want her," cried out Guy, his eyes all aflame and advancing
+toward his brother with a menacing look. But Gonthram, little caring for
+the words and threats of his brother, made ready to seize the maid and
+carry her off. Guy then drew his sword. Gonthram in turn drew his, while
+the daughter of<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a> the townsman, distracted with terror, shrank within
+herself, inert, in a swoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Guy! Gonthram! Put up your swords! This maid shall be none of yours,"
+ordered Neroweg. "She shall not leave her father. In the presence of his
+daughter the bourgeois will prove more accommodating. Put back your
+swords! You, Garin," he went on, turning to the bailiff, "take this
+beauty in your arms, if she cannot walk, and carry her in with the old
+man."</p>
+
+<p>Isoline, catching, despite her terror, the last words of Neroweg, rose
+to her feet with an effort and said to Garin in a suppliant voice: "For
+mercy's sake, my good seigneur, take me along with my father. I shall
+have strength to walk."</p>
+
+<p>"Come," answered the bailiff, leading her to the draw bridge, while Guy
+and Gonthram, slowly returning their swords to their scabbards,
+exchanged such vindictive looks that the Count considered it necessary
+to remain near them in order to prevent a fresh outbreak.</p>
+
+<p>Isoline, following Garin with unsteady step, crossed the draw bridge and
+entered the hall of the stone table, where still several vassals of the
+seigneur awaited the close of the session that had been interrupted by
+the arrival of the prisoners. At one of the corners of this hall was the
+stone staircase that led down in a spiral from the platform of the
+donjon to its lowest cells. Near the steps was a trap door. Two men of
+sinister figure, clad in goat skins and carrying lanterns in their
+hands, stood near the gaping opening. Bezenecq was loudly calling for
+his daughter, and resisting with all his force the men who were dragging
+him in. Seeing, however, his daughter advancing towards him, he ceased
+to offer resistance, but broke down, weeping.</p>
+
+<p>"Hurry up, my rich townsman!" said Garin the Serf-eater to him; "my
+seigneur wishes that you and your daughter remain together." Then,
+turning to the gaolers who carried the lanterns: "Go down first and
+light our way." The gaolers obeyed, and soon the merchant and Isoline
+disappeared with them in the depths of the subterranean donjon.<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-a" id="CHAPTER_VII-a"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br /><br />
+ABBOT AND MONK.</h3>
+
+<p>The donjon cells of the manor of Plouernel consisted of three vaulted
+stories, the only daylight into which penetrated through three narrow
+slits opening upon the gigantic ditch, out of which rose the donjon
+itself. Within, apart from a massive door studded with iron, these cells
+consisted of stone only&mdash;they were roofed with stone, floored with
+stone, and the walls were of stone, ten feet thick. The cell, whither
+the Bishop of Nantes and the monk Jeronimo were taken, was at the very
+bottom of this subterraneous structure. A narrow loophole barely
+filtered through a pale ray of light into that semi-Stygian darkness.
+The walls sweated a greenish moisture. In the center of the dungeon
+stood a stone bed, intended for torture or death. Chains and heavy iron
+rings fastened to the headpiece, to the sides and the feet of the long
+stone slab, that rose three feet above the floor, announced the purpose
+of that funereal couch, on which were now seated the monk and the Bishop
+of Nantes. The latter, a prey at first to agonizing despair, had by
+degrees recovered his composure. His face, now almost serene with a
+melancholic good nature, contrasted with the somber severity of his
+companion. "I am now resigned to death," the prelate was saying to
+Jeronimo, "yet I confess, I feel my heart fail me at the thought of
+leaving my wife and children without protection in days as dark as these
+are."</p>
+
+<p>"There you have one of the consequences of the marriage of priests," the
+monk answered. "How justly did Gregory VII. reason when he forced the
+councils to interdict marriage to the clergy!"<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a></p>
+
+<p>After a moment's silence the Bishop of Nantes resumed with a melancholy
+smile: "Stoics, like the philosophers of antiquity, let's consider at
+this very moment of imminent torture and death the dogmas that bear upon
+our present situation."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's commence with the great question of the spiritual and temporal
+dominion of the church."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a grand subject. I listen."</p>
+
+<p>"In our days, for every twenty abbots or bishops who are sovereign in
+their abbeys or bishoprics, are there not a hundred dukes, counts,
+marquises or seigneurs, sovereign masters in their dukedoms, counties or
+seigniories?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sad to say, 'tis so!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did not a large portion of the estates, that proceeded from the gifts
+of Charles Martel, return to the hands of the clergy at the time of the
+terror the people were seized with at the thought of the end of the
+world,&mdash;a terror ably fomented by the church down to the year 1000, and
+prolonged to 1033 by dint of able maneuvers?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's true, too. The terrified seigneurs abandoned to the church a
+large part of their goods, thinking the day of judgment was at hand.
+Since then, however, the same seigneurs, or their descendants, retook
+their rich donations from the clergy. The hatred that the Count Neroweg
+pursues me with has no other cause than the recovery of the lands that
+his grandfather bequeathed to my predecessor, at the time when those
+brutes expected to see the end of the world. The Count wages war against
+me to re-enter upon domains that once belonged to his family. The lance
+is rising against the holy water sprinkler."</p>
+
+<p>"It has been so in all the other provinces. One of the causes of the
+wars of the seigneurs against the bishops and abbots has, for the last
+fifty years, been the recovery of the goods given to the Church on the
+occasion of the end of the world. In these impious strifes the seigneurs
+have almost always come out on top. The church was vanquished."<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It is a sad fact."</p>
+
+<p>"In order to recover its omnipotence, the Church must again become
+richer than the seigneurs. She must, above all, rid herself forever of
+those brigands who dare reach out a sacrilegious hand towards the goods
+of the Church, and assault the priests of our Lord, the ministers of
+God."</p>
+
+<p>"Alack, Jeronimo, it is a far way from the wish to the fact! The sword
+gets the best of the bishop's crook!"</p>
+
+<p>"The distance is simply the journey from here to Jerusalem. That's all!"</p>
+
+<p>The bishop regarded the monk with amazement, repeating without
+understanding the words: "The journey from here to Jerusalem!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am a legate of Pope Urban II." proceeded Jeronimo. "As such, I am
+initiated in the policies of Rome. The French Pope Gerbert, and, after
+him, Gregory VII., conceived a great idea&mdash;to submit the peoples of
+Europe to the papal will. In order, however, to habituate them to a
+passive obedience, an ostensible purpose had to be held out. Gerbert
+conceived the thought of the deliverance of the tomb of Christ, which
+had fallen into the hands of the Saracens, the masters of Syria and
+Jerusalem. This pregnant thought, conceived in the head of Gerbert and
+hatched out by Gregory VII., was the subject of long cogitations on the
+part of their successors. The Popes recommended to the faithful the
+pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to which they attached special indulgences and
+privileges. The people of Germany, of Spain, of Gaul, of England,
+gradually began to hear Jerusalem, the Holy City, talked about. The
+pilgrimages multiplied. Long though the voyage was, it did not seem
+impossible; moreover, it insured indulgences for all crimes, and, above
+all, it was a pleasure trip for the mendicants, the vagabonds, the
+runaway serfs from the domains of their masters. The pilgrims found good
+lodgings in the abbeys; they picked up some little money in the cities,
+and obtained free passage on the Genoese or Venetian<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> vessels as far as
+Constantinople, where they then departed for Jerusalem, traversing Syria
+and lodging over night from convent to convent. Arrived at the Holy
+City, they paid their devotions."</p>
+
+<p>"And all that without any interference on the part of the Saracens. We
+must admit it among ourselves, Jeronimo, those miscreants showed
+themselves quite tolerant! The churches rose in peace beside the
+mosques; the Christians lived in tranquility, and the pilgrims were
+never incommoded."</p>
+
+<p>"And it remained so," continued Jeronimo, "until the Saracens,
+exasperated by the anathemas hurled at the sectarians of Mahomet by the
+Catholic priests of Jerusalem, brought their hammer down upon the holy
+Temple of Solomon and demolished it&mdash;a demolition, however, that we
+avenged upon Jews by massacring them in the several countries of Europe.
+But after all, we cared little about the destruction of the Temple, or
+the safety of the Sepulchre. Our end was attained. The people had
+learned to know the road to Jerusalem. The sandals of the pilgrims had
+smoothed the road to the Holy Land to the Catholic peoples. The number
+of pilgrims increased from year to year. Often seigneurs, certain to
+obtain by means of that pious voyage the absolution of their crimes,
+joined the pilgrim vagabonds and beggars. That perpetual flux and reflux
+of peoples of all stations drew ever more the eyes of Europe to the
+Orient. The marvels narrated by the pilgrims upon the return from their
+long voyage, the relics that they brought back, the respect with which
+the Church surrounded them,&mdash;everything affected more and more the
+spirit of credulity and the vulgar imagination of the masses. Gregory
+VII. foresaw these results. He considered it opportune to preach the
+Holy War. The Church raised her voice: 'Shame and sorrow upon the
+Catholic world! The Sepulchre of the Saviour of man is in the power of
+the Saracens! Kings and seigneurs, march at the head of your peoples to
+the deliverance of the Sepulchre of Christ and the extermination of the
+infidels.'<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a> To that premature appeal Europe remained indifferent. The
+hour of the Crusades had not yet sounded. Since then, however, the idea
+has made progress, and to-day we are certain to find the minds disposed
+to second the Pope in his projects. Accordingly, Urban II. has not
+hesitated to leave Rome and come to preach the Crusade in Gaul, the
+Catholic country <i>par excellence!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"What say you? The Pope himself is coming to preach the Crusade! Can
+that be true, oh, my God!"</p>
+
+<p>"His Holiness is bound for Auvergne, and he sends his emissaries into
+the other provinces."</p>
+
+<p>"And who are the men invested with the confidence of the Pope, and
+charged with leading such an undertaking to a successful end?"</p>
+
+<p>"One of them, Peter the Hermit, vulgarly called 'Cuckoo Peter,' is a
+monk who has twice accomplished the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He is an
+ardent man, gifted with a savage eloquence that exercises upon the
+multitudes a powerful effect. Another emissary is Walter the Pennyless,
+a knight of adventure, bold Gascon, charged to seduce with the
+cheerfulness of his words and the exaggeration of his descriptions all
+those who might remain indifferent to the savage eloquence of Peter the
+Hermit."</p>
+
+<p>"But what arguments will these emissaries advance in order to rouse the
+masses to these insensate migrations?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall answer that question presently. But let me remind you of the
+principal motives of the church to drive the people to the Crusades; to
+habituate Catholic Europe to rise at the voice of the Pope for the
+extermination of heretics; to switch off to Palestine a large number of
+the seigneurs who are contending with the Church for the goods of the
+earth and the dominion of the people,&mdash;to get rid of one's enemies."</p>
+
+<p>"The idea is good, profound, politic. I can well see the object that the
+Pope has in view."<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Let me, furthermore, call your attention to a fact that renders
+necessary a large migration of the common people to the Holy Land. In
+Gaul, despite the private wars of the seigneurs and the sufferings of
+this century, the population of the serfs has multiplied to an
+extraordinary degree during the last fifty years."</p>
+
+<p>"That is so. The serf population, decimated by the famines that reigned
+from 1000 to 1034, immediately began to recover with the years of plenty
+that followed upon those of dearth."</p>
+
+<p>"Aided, above all, by the action of the Church when, desirous of
+repeopling her domains, stripped of its agricultural serfs, she caused
+the 'Armistice of God' to be proclaimed, interdicting the seigneurs and
+the bishops from levying war during three days of each week under
+penalty of excommunication."</p>
+
+<p>"That plebeian increase brought on the formidable revolts of the serfs
+of Normandy and Brittany, when doggerels were sung containing strophes
+of unheard-of audacity, as you may judge from this one:</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align="left">Why allow we ourselves to be oppressed?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Are we not human like the seigneurs?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Have we not, as they, body and limbs?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Is not our heart as large as theirs?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Are we not one hundred serfs to a single knight?</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">Let's then be up striking with our pitchforks and our scythes!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="left">For lack of arms, take the stones the roads are strewn with!</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">'Death to the friars!'</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>"And that's the truth, Jeronimo! Those songs of revolt gave the signal
+to terrible insurrections in Normandy and Brittany. But two or three
+millions of the rebels had their eyes put out, their feet and hands
+chopped off, and the revolt was stamped out. Those wicked people must be
+exterminated."</p>
+
+<p>"In order to conjure away the return of similar uprisings, it is
+necessary to lead abroad the plebeian increase. The plebs grows
+threatening by reason of its numbers and the force that<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a> numbers carry
+with them. In order to weaken it, it will be enough to make it depart on
+the Crusade across Europe."</p>
+
+<p>"Explain to me how the Crusades are expected to bring about the results
+that you consider needful, and that the exhortations of the papal
+emissaries are to invoke."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not evident that, for every thousand serfs who will leave Gaul to
+fight in Palestine, barely a hundred will arrive as far as Jerusalem?
+Those wretches, departing penniless, in rags, without provisions,
+carrying wife and children in their train, ravaging the regions they
+traverse&mdash;Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Bulgaria, the countries of the
+Danube&mdash;because, in the course of so long a voyage, such multitudes
+cannot live without pillage along the route, three-fourths of them will
+have been exterminated by the inhabitants of the countries that they
+must cross, or will die of hunger and fatigue before being able to reach
+Jerusalem. The small number of them that will arrive before the Holy
+City will be still further decimated by the Saracens. It is safe to say
+that hardly any of those who leave will return. Thus we shall be rid of
+this vile and dangerous populace that dares rise against its masters,
+especially against the Church."</p>
+
+<p>"It remains to be seen, Jeronimo, whether this plebs mass will be
+senseless enough to venture upon so distant and perilous a journey."</p>
+
+<p>The monk answered: "Is not the lot of the villeins and the serfs on the
+lay or ecclesiastical seigniories the most wretched? And, of all the
+yokes, is not that of the glebe the heaviest, which forbids them to
+cross the boundaries of their own seigniory. When the Church will say to
+those myriads of people, chained down to the glebe: 'Go! You are free!
+March off to fight the Saracens in Palestine, the country of miracles,
+where you will gather an immense booty! Take no heed of provisions for
+the journey, God will provide! Above all, you will accomplish your
+eternal salvation!' the serfs will depart in mass, drawn by the desire
+to be free, the thirst for booty, the spirit of adventure,<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> and by the
+pious ardor to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the defilement of the
+infidels!"</p>
+
+<p>"Jeronimo," rejoined the Bishop of Nantes, "the craving after freedom,
+the spirit of adventure, the hope of booty, may, perhaps, drive those
+wretches to Palestine. But desire to avenge the tomb of the Saviour from
+the pretended defilement of the infidels, is, meseems, too feeble a
+motive. We shall fail there."</p>
+
+<p>"When this holy cause, thrice holy and eloquently preached by the
+Church, is furthermore backed by the thirst for freedom, the hope of
+booty, the certainty of gaining Paradise, and curiosity regarding the
+future, that, though unknown, could not be worse than the present, the
+attraction of the populace for Palestine will become irresistible."</p>
+
+<p>"I grant it. But will the seigneurs consent to have their lands thus
+depopulated by allowing the serfs to depart for the Crusades?"</p>
+
+<p>"As much as ourselves do the seigneurs dread the revolt of the serfs. In
+that we two have a common interest. Moreover, that plebs overflow, which
+it is the part of wisdom to empty out abroad, constitutes, at the
+highest, only one-third of the serfs. Only that third will depart."</p>
+
+<p>"And who guarantees that many more will not yield to the attraction,
+that you consider irresistible, and will not go along?"</p>
+
+<p>"This plebs mass has become craven through the habit of slavery that
+weighs it down since the Frankish conquest. Only a part of the village
+and country populations is sufficiently disposed to revolt. It is those
+very ones who are most impatient of the yoke, the most intelligent, the
+most venturesome, the most daring, and, consequently, the most
+dangerous, who will be the first to start for Palestine. Thus shall we
+be rid of those inciters of rebellion."</p>
+
+<p>"That reasoning is correct."</p>
+
+<p>"Thus only one-third of the rustic plebs will emigrate. Those who remain
+behind will suffice to cultivate the land. Being fewer<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> to the task,
+their toil will increase. The ox that is heavily burdened, the ass that
+is heavily laden, does not kick. The danger of a new revolt will have
+been conjured off. The Church will resume her preponderance over both
+the plebs and the seigneurs."</p>
+
+<p>"I admire, Jeronimo, the powerful combinations of the politics of the
+papacy. But one of the most important results of this policy would be to
+deliver us from a large number of those accursed seigneurs, always at
+war against us. Oh, they will not, like the serfs, be driven by the
+desire to escape a fearful lot, or of enjoying freedom. They, I fear,
+will remain at home."</p>
+
+<p>"A large number of them are as anxious as their serfs to change their
+condition. After all, what is the life of these seigneurs? Is it not
+that of chiefs of brigands? Always at war; always on the watch, fearing
+to be attacked or surprised by their neighbors; unable but rarely to
+leave their seigniories except armed to the teeth; often not daring even
+to go on the hunt in their own domains; forced to entrench themselves in
+their lairs; these ferocious men are tired of such monotonous life. They
+will follow the stream."</p>
+
+<p>"I have, indeed, often been struck by the expression of mortal tiredness
+reflected upon the faces of the seigneurs."</p>
+
+<p>"This will be the language of the friars to these men steeped in crime,
+brutified almost as much as their own serfs, and all of them nursing at
+the bottom of their hearts a more or less profound fear of the devil:
+'You are smothering in your castles of stone; you here wrangle over the
+meager spoils of some traveler, or over the barren lands of the
+Occident&mdash;lands peopled with wretches resembling animals rather than
+human beings. Leave the ungrateful soil and somber sky of the Occident!
+Go to Palestine, go to the Orient, the land of azure and of sunshine,
+fertile, splendid, radiant, studded with magnificent cities, palaces of
+marble, gilded cupolas, delicious gardens! There you will find the
+treasures for centuries accumulated by the Saracens, treasures so
+prodigious that they suffice to pave with gold, rubies,<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> pearls and
+diamonds the whole road from Gaul to Jerusalem! God delivers into your
+hands that teeming soil, its palaces, its beautiful women, its
+treasures. Depart on the Holy War!' A large number of seigneurs will
+bite with all the snap of their heavy jaws at that bait glittering with
+all the fires of the sun of the Orient."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, Jeronimo," observed the Bishop of Nantes. "But do you
+not fear that the seigniorial station, thus stripped, shrunk and ruined,
+will leave the place open for the royalty, to-day without power, and
+that that royalty will not endeavor to share with us the dominion of the
+people, and will not even strive to dominate the Church?"</p>
+
+<p>"We need not fear the rivalry of the Kings. Even their private interests
+are to us a safe guarantee of their submission to the will of the Pope,
+the representative of God on earth, the dispenser of eternal rewards or
+punishments."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Jeronimo, your words have opened a new horizon before me. I see now
+the future of the Catholic Church in all her formidable majesty. I now
+cleave to life, and would wish to assist at that magnificent spectacle."</p>
+
+<p>"This topic has a close bearing upon our present position of prisoners
+of Neroweg VI, and you must inspire yourself with it, Simon, to the end
+that you may regulate your conduct accordingly."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what I am to do, Jeronimo. I can take no more precious a guide
+than you in all matters concerning our holy religion."</p>
+
+<p>"Neroweg relies upon your torture to extort from you the possession of
+the domains of your diocese, which he has long coveted. Accede to all
+that he may demand. Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless will not
+be long in arriving in this region to preach the Crusade. Neroweg will
+depart for Jerusalem, and will not be able to profit from the
+concessions you will have granted."<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a></p>
+
+<p>"But say he insists upon putting me to the torture to glut his thirst
+for revenge upon me! I shudder at the prospect."</p>
+
+<p>The conversation between the Bishop of Nantes and the monk was here
+interrupted by a rumbling and weird noise, that seemed to proceed from
+the interior of the thick wall. The two prelates trembled with affright,
+and looked at each other. Then, drawing near the wall in the direction
+from which the noise came, they applied their ears with bated breath.
+But the noise slowly receded, and a few minutes later died away
+completely.<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-a" id="CHAPTER_VIII-a"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br /><br />
+THE CHAMBER OF TORTURE.</h3>
+
+<p>The dungeon of Bezenecq the Rich and his daughter, vaulted and floored
+with stone slabs like the other subterranean cells, but located on the
+second story of that redoubtable structure, received a somewhat better
+light from its narrow loop-hole. In the center of the cell stood a
+gridiron, six feet long, three wide, raised a good deal above the floor,
+and constructed of iron bars placed slightly apart from each other.
+Chains and rings, fastened to the gridiron, served to keep the victim in
+position. Near this instrument of punishment rose two other engines of
+torture, devised with ingenious ferocity. The one consisted of a
+projecting iron bar, in the nature of a gibbet about seven or eight feet
+above the floor, and terminating in an iron carcan that opened and
+closed at will. A heavy stone, weighing about two tons, and furnished
+with a ring and a strap to hang it by, lay at the foot of the gibbet.
+The other engine had the appearance of a gigantic prong, sharp and
+turned back similar to those used by butchers to hang their quarters of
+beef on. The slabs of the flooring, covered everywhere else with
+greenish moisture, wore a blood-red tint under the prong. Opposite to
+this instrument of punishment, there was grossly sculptured on the wall,
+a sort of grinning mask, hideous, half beast, half human; its eyes and
+the cavity of its gaping mouth, resembled deep black holes. Finally,
+close to the door of the cell stood a wooden box full of straw, and
+there lay the daughter of the townsman of Nantes, colorless like a
+corpse, and frozen with terror. At times her body shook with convulsive
+shivers, other times she remained motionless, her eyes shut, without,
+therefore, however, her tears<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a> ceasing to stream down her cheeks.
+Bezenecq the Rich, seated on the edge of the straw bed, his elbows on
+his knees and his forehead hidden in his hands, was saying to himself:
+"The seigneur of Plouernel.... A descendant of Neroweg!... Strange,
+fatal encounter!... Woe is us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father," murmured the maid in a fainting voice, "this encounter is
+our sentence of death."</p>
+
+<p>"The sentence of our ruin, but not of our death. Calm yourself, poor
+child, the seigneur of Plouernel knows not that our obscure family,
+descended from the Gallic chieftain Joel, who made a head against Cæsar,
+has been at strife with his own all through the past ages, since the
+Frankish conquest. But when that bailiff pronounced the name of Neroweg
+VI, which I had not heard mention during this ill-starred journey, and
+when, questioned by me, that man answered his master belonged to the
+ancient Frankish family of Neroweg, established in Auvergne since the
+conquest of Gaul by Clovis, I no longer had any doubts, and, despite
+myself, I shuddered at the recollection of our family records, which our
+father once read to us at Laon, and that have remained in that country,
+in the hands of Gildas, my elder brother."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why did our grandfather leave Brittany. Our family lived there so
+happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear child, our grandfather, who lived near the sacred stones of
+Karnac, the cradle of our family, could no longer endure the oppression
+of the Breton seigneurs, who had grown to be as cruel as their Frankish
+fellows. He sold his little havings, and embarked with his wife at
+Vannes on a merchant vessel bound for Abbeville. He settled down in that
+city, where he set up a modest trade. Later, my father moved into the
+province of Picardy, and settled at Laon, where my elder brother Gildas
+still carries on the currier's trade. Coming by sea from Abbeville to
+Nantes to traffic in the articles of our trade, manufactured in Laon, I
+became acquainted with your mother, the<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> daughter of the merchant to
+whom I was directed. Her parents did not wish to part from her. They
+made me promise not to leave Nantes. I became the partner of my wife's
+father, and grew rich in the business. Your mother then died. You were
+still a child. Her death was the greatest sorrow of my life. But you
+were left to me. You grew in gracefulness and beauty. Everything smiled
+upon me again. I was happy. And behold us now, while yielding to the
+wishes of your grandmother&mdash;" and Bezenecq interrupted himself with a
+cry of despair: "Oh, it is frightful!"</p>
+
+<p>"But how could we have merited the terrible punishment that seems
+reserved to us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," replied the bourgeois of Nantes with a sigh, "my happiness
+rendered me forgetful of the misfortune of our brothers! I was selfish!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear father, you surely exaggerate the faults or errors of your life."</p>
+
+<p>"Millions of serfs and villeins people the lands of the seigneurs and
+the clergy. Among them, some drag along a painful existence, that ends
+in death from exhaustion and misery; others are hanged from the
+patibulary forks. Those unhappy people are Gauls like ourselves. If some
+townsmen live in tranquility in the cities, when they have for seigneur
+so gentle a master as Simon of Nantes, millions of serfs and villeins,
+on the other hand, are devoted to all the miseries of life, and victims
+to the seigniories and the Church."</p>
+
+<p>"But, father, it did not depend upon you to alleviate the ills of these
+wretched folks."</p>
+
+<p>"My father spoke like a brave and generous man when he said to the
+bourgeoisie of the city of Laon: 'We are subject to the exactions of the
+bishop, our seigneur. But, after all, we townsmen enjoy certain
+franchises. It, therefore, devolves upon us, being more intelligent and
+less miserable than the serfs of the fields, to aid these to their
+deliverance by ourselves rising<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> against the seigneurs, and thus setting
+the example of revolt against oppression. In the instances where, of
+their own accord, they rise as happened in Normandy, as happened in
+Picardy, as happened in Brittany, it is then our duty to place ourselves
+at their head, in order to insure the success of the insurrection. Is it
+not a shame; an unworthy timidity, to allow those unhappy men to be
+crushed and punished for a cause that is ours as much as theirs? Does
+not the tyranny of the nobles and the friars weigh upon us also. Are not
+we the prey of the feudal brigands the moment we leave the enclosure of
+the cities, where we suffer an amplitude of affronts?' But my father's
+words were not able to convince the townsmen to decide upon
+insurrection. They feared to risk their property and make their lot
+worse. Myself, having grown rich, sided with the self-seekers, and I
+echoed the views of the other merchants: 'No doubt, the condition of the
+serfs is horrible, but I can do nothing to improve it, and I dare not
+stake my life and fortune upon the result of an insurrection.' Our
+cowardly and selfish indifference increased the audacity of the
+seigneurs, until to-day we cannot set foot outside the cities without
+being exposed to the brigandage of the chatelains. Oh, my child, I am
+punished for having lacked energy and for disregarding the precepts of
+my father!"</p>
+
+<p>"We are lost; there is no hope left!" exclaimed the maid, no longer able
+to restrain her sobs. "Death, a shocking death awaits us!" And Isoline,
+whose teeth chattered with terror, directed her father's attention, with
+a gesture, to the instruments of torture that furnished the cell. Hiding
+her face in her hands, she moaned convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"Isoline," rejoined Bezenecq imploringly and overcome with grief, "my
+beloved child, listen to the word of reason. Terror exaggerates. The
+aspect of this subterranean dungeon frightens. Oh, I understand that.
+But let's not lose all hope. When I shall have subscribed to all that
+the seigneur of Plouernel can exact from me, when I shall have consented
+to strip myself for<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> his benefit of all that I possess, what do you
+imagine he could still do? Of what use to him would it be to have me
+tortured? He entertains against me no personal hatred. He is after my
+wealth. I shall give it all, absolutely all."</p>
+
+<p>"Good father, you are seeking to calm my spirit. I thank you a thousand
+times."</p>
+
+<p>"Is not our fate sufficiently sad? Why make the reality still darker? I
+had hoped to give you a rich dower, to bequeath to you later my
+property, that would have insured the happiness of your children. And
+now I am about to be stripped of all. Our descendants will be reduced to
+poverty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if only the seigneur of Plouernel grants us our lives, I would care
+little for that wealth that, for my sake, you bemoan."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor shall I be less courageous than you," said Bezenecq, tenderly
+clasping the hands of his daughter: "I shall imagine I placed all my
+money on board a ship that went down. Once out of this infernal castle,
+dear child, we shall return to Nantes. I shall see my friend Thibault
+the Silversmith. He knows my aptitude for commerce. He will employ me,
+and will pay me a salary that will suffice for our needs. But it will be
+necessary, my pretty Isoline," Bezenecq proceeded, forcing a smile to
+calm his daughter, "it will then be necessary for you to sew our clothes
+with your own little white hands, and prepare our frugal meals. Instead
+of inhabiting our beautiful house on the place of Marche-Neuf, we shall
+take humble lodgings in the quarter of the ramparts. But, what of it,
+provided the heart is joyful! Moreover, I shall always have in my pocket
+a few deniers wherewith occasionally, on my return home, to buy you a
+new ribbon for your neck, my dear, sweet child, or a bouquet of roses to
+cheer your little bedroom."</p>
+
+<p>Isoline felt hope rising within her at the words of her father, and shut
+her eyes not to be reminded of the horrible reality by the sight of the
+hideous stone mask and of the instruments of punishment. The maid hid
+her face on the breast of her father<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> and murmured with emotion: "Oh, if
+only your words would prove true! If we only could quit this castle! So
+far from regretting our lost riches, I would thank God for affording me
+the opportunity of working for my venerated father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Damosel Isoline, I shall know how to provide," gayly replied Bezenecq.
+"Moreover, who knows, but I may soon find an assistant. Who knows but
+that some worthy lad will demand you in marriage, falling in love with
+this charming face, when it shall have regained its rosy hue?," added
+the merchant, tenderly embracing his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Father!" screamed Isoline, pointing with a gesture of dread toward the
+wall where the hideous stone mask was sculptured, and whose eyes seemed
+lighted from within. "Look, look at those flashes of light that escape
+from it! Some one has been spying upon us!"</p>
+
+<p>The merchant quickly turned his head in the direction of the wall
+indicated by Isoline and to which he had given his back up to that
+instant. But the light had disappeared. Bezenecq took it for an
+illusion, proceeding from the wrought-up spirit of Isoline, and
+answered: "You must have deceived yourself. How do you expect the eyes
+of that rude figure to flash light? It would require a candle in the
+middle of the wall. Is that possible my child? Regain your senses!"</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the door of the cell opposite the mask was opened. Bezenecq the
+Rich and his daughter saw the bailiff, Garin the Serf-eater, enter with
+the scribe of the seigneur of Plouernel, and followed by several men of
+sinister mien. One of these carried a forge-bellows and a bag of coal;
+another bore several faggots. Isoline, for a moment reassured by her
+father, but now recalled to reality by the approach of the gaolers,
+uttered a scream of fright. In order to calm the agonies of his
+daughter, Bezenecq rose and said to the bailiff in a firm voice, while
+pointing to the scribe: "That, dear sir, is certainly the notary of the
+seigneur of Plouernel?" Garin the Serf-eater nodded in the<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a> affirmative.
+"This notary," continued the bourgeois of Nantes, "comes to obtain my
+signature to the document by which I consent to pay ransom?" The bailiff
+again nodded in the affirmative. Addressing himself then to his daughter
+and affecting absolute calmness, almost cheerfulness: "Fear nothing,
+dear child, I and these worthy men will soon agree, after which, I am
+certain, we shall have nothing to fear from them and they will set us
+free. Note, then, master scribe, I am ready, by means of an authentic
+deed in favor of the seigneur of Plouernel, to give and cede to him all
+my possessions, consisting of five thousand and three hundred silver
+pieces, deposited with my friend Thibault, the silversmith and minter of
+the Bishop of Nantes; secondly, eight hundred and sixty gold pieces and
+nine bars of silver, deposited in my house in a secret closet that I
+shall indicate to the person whom the seigneur count may commission to
+go to Nantes; thirdly, a large quantity of silver vessels, precious
+fabrics and furniture, which it will be easy to bring here by wagon,
+upon the written order that I shall issue to my confidential servant.
+There, finally, remains my house. Seeing it would not be quite
+practicable, worthy masters, to transport that also, I shall write and
+place in your hand a letter to my friend Thibault. Only two days before
+my departure from Nantes he promised to buy my house for two hundred
+pieces of gold. He will keep his promise, I am sure, especially when he
+learns of the tight place that I now find myself in. Accordingly, that's
+two hundred more gold pieces that, at my order, Thibault will have to
+deliver to the envoy of the seigneur of Plouernel. These assignments
+made, there remain to me and my daughter the clothes we have on. Now,
+worthy scribe, draw up the assignment, I shall sign it, and I shall join
+to it the letters to my servant and to my friend the silversmith. He
+knows too well the fashion of these times to fail to acquiesce in my
+wishes in the matter of the deposit that he has and of the purchase of
+the house. He will deliver the sum to the messenger whom the seigneur
+count<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a> is to dispatch to Nantes. As to the money in the secret closet of
+my house, it will be easy to find it with the help of this key and the
+directions that I shall dictate to the scribe&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The notary will first have to draw up the assignment, then, you shall
+write the letters to your friend," broke in Garin. "The directions for
+the secret closet will follow. Now hurry up."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, worthy bailiff," replied the bourgeois of Nantes with
+eagerness, fully at ease by the tone of Garin; and, leaning towards his
+daughter, who was seated on the edge of the bed, he said to her in an
+undertone: "Was I not right, my dear bundle of fears, in assuring you
+that, by a complete surrender of all my goods, these worthy masters
+would abstain from harming us?" Again embracing Isoline, whose fears
+began to make room for hope, and wiping with the back of his hand the
+tears that, despite himself, he was shedding, he turned to Garin:
+"Excuse me, bailiff, you would understand my emotion if you knew the
+foolish fears of this child. But what else can we expect! At her age,
+having until now lived happily at my side, she is easily alarmed&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"First item: Five thousand and three hundred silver pieces deposited
+with the silversmith Thibault," recited the scribe, interrupting
+Bezenecq with his harsh voice; and, taking his seat on the edge of the
+gridiron, he wrote, on his knees for a desk, by the light of one of the
+lanterns. "Next and secondly," he pursued, "how many pieces of gold are
+there in the secret treasure of the Nantes house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eight hundred and sixty pieces of gold," Bezenecq hastened to answer,
+as if in a hurry to disengage himself of his riches; "and also nine bars
+of silver of different thicknesses." And, thus proceeding to enumerate
+his goods to the scribe, who entered them apace, the merchant pressed
+the hands of his daughter in an intoxication of pleasure to add to her
+confidence and courage.</p>
+
+<p>"And now, Bezenecq the Rich," said Garin, "we shall want<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> the two
+letters to your confidential servant and your friend Thibault the
+Silversmith."</p>
+
+<p>"Kind scribe," answered the merchant, "lend me your tablet, give me two
+parchment sheets and a pen, I shall write yonder on my daughter's
+knees," and, suiting the act to the words, he placed himself at
+Isoline's knees, where he lay the notary's tablet, and wrote the
+letters, occasionally addressing the poor child with a smile: "Do not
+shake my table that way; you will have these worthy gentlemen form a
+poor opinion of my handwriting." The two letters finished, the merchant
+passed them over to Garin, who, after reading them, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, we want the directions for the secret treasure, without which the
+assignment may not be effective."</p>
+
+<p>"Here are two keys," said the merchant, drawing them from his pocket.
+"The one opens the door of a little vault which connects with the room
+that serves as my office&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In the room that serves as office," repeated the scribe, writing while
+he repeated the words of the merchant. The latter proceeded: "The other
+key opens an iron-bound box back of the vault. In that box will be found
+the bars of silver and a casket containing the eight hundred and sixty
+gold pieces. I own not another denier. And here, worthy masters, you
+have me and my daughter as poor as the poorest serf. I have not wronged
+the seigneur of Plouernel a single obole. But, for all that, we shall
+not lose courage!"</p>
+
+<p>While the scribe finished transcribing the directions of Bezenecq, the
+latter, occupied only with his daughter, did not notice, any more than
+she, what was going on a few steps off in that cell, so feebly lighted
+by the lanterns, seeing that night had already fallen. One of the
+gaolers commenced heaping the coals and fagots under the gridiron.</p>
+
+<p>"The seigneur of Plouernel may send his messenger to Nantes with an
+escort," Bezenecq observed to Garin the Serf-eater. "If the messenger is
+quick he can be back to-morrow night. We<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a> shall surely, my daughter and
+I, be set at liberty when the seigneur count will be in possession of my
+property. Only, while waiting for the hour of our departure from the
+castle, be generous enough, bailiff, to have us taken to some other
+place, whatever it be, only less depressing than this. My daughter is
+broken down with fatigue; moreover, she is very timid. She would spend a
+sad night in this cell, surrounded by instruments of torture."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that you mention these engines of punishment," said Garin the
+Serf-eater, with a strange smile, and taking the hand of the bourgeois,
+"come, Bezenecq the Rich, I wish to explain their use to you, especially
+their mechanism."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not inquisitive to learn the details."</p>
+
+<p>"Draw near to us, Bezenecq the Rich."</p>
+
+<p>"That surname of 'Rich' that you insist in applying to me, is no longer
+mine," said the merchant with a sad smile; "rather call me Bezenecq the
+Poor."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," exclaimed Garin, as if in doubt and shrugging his shoulders. He
+then added: "Come on, Bezenecq the Rich!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father!" cried out Isoline, uneasy, seeing her father stepping away
+from her. "Where are you going? Father, father, stay with me!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to fear, dear child. Stay where you are. I am to give
+the bailiff certain directions as to the route that the messenger of the
+seigneur count will have to take." And, fearing to displease Garin, he
+followed him, happy at the thought that Isoline could not hear the
+explanations he was to receive from the Serf-eater. The latter stopped
+first before the iron gibbet that terminated in a carcan. One of the
+gaolers having raised the lantern at the order of Garin, he said to the
+merchant: "As you see, that carcan opens at will. You may guess its
+object."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The neck of the patient being inserted in it, the poor fellow
+remains fast!"<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Just so. He is made to climb the ladder you see here. Then, as his neck
+is in the carcan, all you have to do is to close the collar with a latch
+and remove the ladder. The gibbet being raised nine or ten feet above
+the floor, you may imagine the rest."</p>
+
+<p>"The patient remains hanged and strangled?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all! He remains suspended, but not hanged. The carcan is too
+wide to strangle. Then, while our man is thus kicking in the air an
+equal distance between the ceiling and the floor, this large stone is
+fastened to his feet by means of these straps to moderate his kicking
+and induce him to keep quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"That strain must be terrible."</p>
+
+<p>"Terrible, Bezenecq the Rich, terrible! Just think of it! The jaws are
+dislocated, the neck is stretched, the jointures of the knees and hip
+crack fit to be heard ten paces off. And yet,&mdash;would you believe
+it?&mdash;there are people of such a stubborn make-up that they do not yield
+to this first trial?"</p>
+
+<p>"What I do not understand," answered the merchant, suppressing his
+horror, "is that, instead of exposing themselves to this torture, they
+do not forthwith and loyally surrender all they own, as I have done.
+One, at least, escapes physical suffering and regains his freedom. Not
+so, worthy bailiff?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bezenecq the Rich, you are the pearl of townsmen. It is evident that
+you are of extraordinary sagacity."</p>
+
+<p>"You flatter me. I merely put myself through a very simple process of
+reasoning," rejoined the merchant, endeavoring to capture the good will
+of Garin. "I reasoned thus with my daughter: Suppose my whole fortune
+were placed on board a vessel; it goes down; I lose all my wealth; I
+find myself in the same position that I am in to-day: but so far from
+allowing myself to be discouraged, I start to work anew with fresh vigor
+to sustain my child. Is not that the better choice, worthy bailiff?
+Would you not do likewise?"<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You never will be reduced to that, Bezenecq the Rich. You have
+inexhaustible resources."</p>
+
+<p>"You love to banter; you love to give me that surname of 'Rich,' to me,
+now no less poor than Job."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I do not banter. But let's return to the torture. I was saying
+that if the first trial failed to convince a stubborn fellow to give up
+his goods, he is then put through the second torture, which I shall now
+explain," and Garin, keeping the hand of the merchant, conducted him to
+the iron prong. "You see this prong? It is of well-beaten metal, strong
+enough to hold the weight of an ox."</p>
+
+<p>"I readily believe it. That hook is, indeed, of large dimensions&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Our stubborn guest having resisted the trial of the carcan, he is
+hooked naked on this prong, either by the flesh of the back, or by the
+skin of his bowels, or by any other and more sensitive part of the
+body."</p>
+
+<p>"Speak not so loud," implored the merchant, hardly able to restrain his
+indignation and horror, "my daughter might overhear you."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right," answered the bailiff, with a sardonic smile; "your
+daughter's blushes must be spared. Well, now Bezenecq the Rich, think of
+it. I have seen stubborn fellows remain suspended from that hook by the
+skin for a whole hour, bleeding like a cow in the shambles, and still
+refuse to relinquish their goods! But they never resist the third trial,
+with which I am now about to entertain you, Bezenecq the Rich. Give me
+your ear, the description will interest you."</p>
+
+<p>"Strange!" suddenly exclaimed the merchant, interrupting Garin the
+Serf-eater. "I smell smoke. Whence does the smell proceed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Father, there is a fire!" cried out Isoline, horrified. "They are
+making a fire under the iron bars!"<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a></p>
+
+<p>The bourgeois of Nantes turned around sharply and saw the heaped-up
+combustibles under the gridiron beginning to take fire. Several tongues
+of flame lighted with their ruddy glow the black walls of the cell,
+while forcing themselves through thick columns of smoke. A frightful
+suspicion flashed through the mind of the merchant, but he dared not
+even allow his thoughts to dwell upon them; and, wishing to comfort his
+daughter, said to her: "Be not afraid, you dear bundle of fears, that
+fire is built to drive off the chill in this cell; we may have to spend
+the night here. I was thanking the worthy bailiff for his
+thoughtfulness." But immediately upon this answer, uttered only in order
+to reassure his daughter, the merchant, shivering, despite himself with
+fear, turned to Garin: "Speaking truly, why is that fire made under the
+gridiron?"</p>
+
+<p>"Merely to give you an idea of the omnipotence of this last test,
+Bezenecq the Rich. I now commence the description."</p>
+
+<p>"It is superfluous. I take your word for it."</p>
+
+<p>"A fire is built under the gridiron, as they are doing now; when the
+fire has ceased to shoot up flames, a necessary precaution, and consists
+of a bed of live coals, the recalcitrant patient is stretched naked upon
+the gridiron, and he is kept there with the aid of those rings and iron
+chains. At the end of a few instants the skin of the patient, red and
+shriveling, rips up, bleeds, then turns black. I have seen the hot coals
+patter with fat that, clotted with blood, dripped from the body of men
+even less fat than you, Bezenecq the Rich."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on, bailiff! I must confess to you my heart fails me, my head
+reels at the mere thought of such infliction," said the bourgeois of
+Nantes, shivering from head to foot. "I am ready to faint. Let me out of
+this cell with my daughter. I have assigned to your master my whole
+fortune. You have taken everything&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, Bezenecq the Rich," broke in the bailiff, "a man who
+empties himself as easily as you did at the first word, and<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a> without
+having suffered the least tortures, must have reserved other riches.
+That's what we'll learn all about in a moment."</p>
+
+<p>"I? I have reserved part of my fortune!" exclaimed the merchant, struck
+almost speechless with amazement. "I have given you all, down to my last
+piece."</p>
+
+<p>"You observed, my wily friend, that despite the assignment of all the
+property that you were credited with having, I continued to call you
+Bezenecq the Rich. I feel certain you still merit the name. Come, now!
+You must disgorge. Come, let's have the rest of your fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon the salvation of my soul, I have nothing left! I have given you
+all I possess."</p>
+
+<p>"May not the three tests draw from you some admission to the contrary?"</p>
+
+<p>"What tests are you speaking of?"</p>
+
+<p>"The tests of the carcan, of the hook and of the gridiron. Yes, if you
+do not surrender to me the other property that you are hiding from us,
+you will undergo the three tests under the very eyes of your daughter,"
+and saying this, Garin the Serf-eater raised his voice in such a way
+that Isoline, hearing his threats, darted through the gaolers and threw
+herself distracted at the feet of the bailiff, crying: "Mercy! Mercy
+upon my father! Have pity upon us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy depends upon him," said Garin, imperturbably. "Let him surrender
+to our seigneur what he still holds in reserve."</p>
+
+<p>"Father!" cried out the young girl, "I know not what the extent of your
+wealth is. But if, in your tenderness for me, you sought to reserve
+aught to shelter me against poverty, I conjure you give it all! Oh, dear
+father, surrender everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"You hear!" resumed Garin the Serf-eater, smiling fiendishly upon the
+couple, and seeing the demoralizing effect upon the merchant of the
+imprudent words that terror had drawn from Isoline, "I am not the only
+one to suspect you of hiding from us a part of your treasures, Bezenecq
+the Rich. Like a good father<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a> you have sought to keep a fat dower for
+your daughter. Come, now, you must give us the dower!"</p>
+
+<p>"Garin," one of the gaolers approached to notify the bailiff, "the coals
+are red hot. They may go out if you put the man through the trials of
+the carcan and the hook."</p>
+
+<p>"As a favor to this young girl I shall be generous," said Garin. "The
+gridiron test will be enough, but stir the coals. And now answer,
+Bezenecq the Rich. I ask you for the last time, yes or no, will you give
+all you possess to my seigneur, the Count of Plouernel, including your
+daughter's dower?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is my daughter whom I shall make the answer to," answered the
+merchant, in a solemn voice. "Gaolers will not believe me;" and
+addressing Isoline in a voice broken with tears: "I swear to you, my
+child, by the sacred memory of your mother, by my tenderness for you, by
+all the pleasures you have afforded me since your birth,&mdash;I swear to
+you, by the salvation of my soul, I have not a denier left; I have
+surrendered all to the Seigneur of Plouernel!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father, I believe you!" exclaimed the girl at his feet, and turning
+to Garin, she extended her hands towards him in prayer: "You have heard
+my father's oath; you may join mine to it."</p>
+
+<p>"I hold Bezenecq the Rich incapable of leaving his daughter thus
+penniless," retorted the bailiff. Turning then to the gaolers: "He will
+now have to confess to us. Strip him, stretch him on the gridiron and
+stir the coals. Let the brand flame up."</p>
+
+<p>The men of the seigneur of Plouernel threw themselves upon Bezenecq the
+Rich. Despite the resistance and the heart-rending, desperate cries of
+his daughter, whom they brutally held back, they stripped the bourgeois
+of Nantes, spread him upon the gridiron, and, by means of the iron
+chains, fastened him over the burning coals. "Oh, my father!" exclaimed
+<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a>Bezenecq, "I have disregarded your advice ... I now undergo the
+punishment for my cowardice ... for my selfishness ... I die under the
+torture for having been afraid to die arms in hand at the head of the
+serfs in revolt against the Frankish seigneurs.... Triumph, Neroweg!
+Yet, perchance, the terrible day of reprisals will come to the sons of
+Joel!"<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-a" id="CHAPTER_IX-a"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br /><br />
+THE RESCUE.</h3>
+
+<p>In her apartment, lighted by a lamp, Azenor the Pale was engaged in the
+preparation of the magical philter, promised by her to the seigneur of
+Plouernel. After blowing some powder on a fluid that she had poured into
+a flagon, she pulled out of a chest a little vial, whose contents she
+drank. Laying down the vial, she remarked with a sinister smile: "Now,
+Neroweg, you may come ... I am ready for you." Then, taking up the
+flagon, half full with a solution of several powders, she proceeded:
+"This flagon must now be filled with blood ... the imagination of these
+ferocious brutes must be struck ... come...." she added with a sigh,
+turning towards the turret where the little Colombaik was secreted.
+Raising the curtain that masked the alcove, Azenor saw before her the
+innocent little creature huddled in a lump in a corner, and silently
+weeping. "Come," said the sorceress to him in a sweet voice, "come to
+me." The son of Fergan the Quarryman obeyed, he rose and advanced
+timidly. Wan, thin, broken with want, his pale mien had, like his
+mother's, Joan the Hunchback's, an inexpressible charm of kindness.
+"Must you always be sad?" inquired Azenor, sitting down and drawing the
+child near to her and to a table on which lay a poniard. "Why do you
+always weep?" The little fellow wept afresh. "What's the cause of your
+sorrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"My mother, my father," faltered the child, without ceasing to weep, "I
+do not see them any more!"</p>
+
+<p>"You love your mother and father very much?" Instead of answering the
+sorceress, the poor little one threw himself sobbing upon her neck. The
+woman could not resist the impulse of responding<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> to the childish
+prompting of a caress, and she embraced Colombaik at the very moment
+when, fearing he had been disrespectful to Azenor, the child was about
+to drop on his knees before her. Sinking upon the floor, he broke out
+into copious tears. The young woman, more and more moved, silently
+contemplated Colombaik, murmuring to herself: "No, no ... I lack
+courage.... I shall not kill that poor child, a few drops of his blood
+will be enough for the philter." Already her hand approached the poniard
+on the table, when suddenly her ear caught an unusual noise in the
+turret. It was like the scraping of a chain drawn with difficulty over
+an iron bar. The sorceress, alarmed, pushed the child back and ran
+toward the turret at the moment that Fergan the Quarryman stepped in,
+pale, bathed in perspiration and holding in his hand his iron pick.
+Azenor drew back, dumb with stupor and fear, while Colombaik, with a cry
+of joy, rushed to the quarryman, holding up his arms to him and calling:
+"My father! my father!" Beside himself with happiness, Fergan dropped
+his iron bar, took up the child in his robust arms, and, raising him to
+his breast, pressed him passionately, interrogating the face of
+Colombaik with inexpressible anxiety, while the child, taking between
+his little hands the gruff face of the quarryman, covered it with
+kisses, muttering: "Good father! Oh, good father! I see you again at
+last!"</p>
+
+<p>The serf, without noticing the presence of the sorceress, devoured
+Colombaik with his eyes. Presently he observed, with a profound sigh of
+relief: "He is pale, he has been weeping, but he does not seem to have
+suffered; they can't have hurt him!" Embracing Colombaik with frenzy, he
+repeated several times: "My poor child! How happy your mother will be!"
+But his paternal alarms being calmed, he remembered that he was not
+alone, and not doubting that Azenor was the sorceress, whose dreaded
+name had reached as far as the serfs of the seigniory, he put his child
+down, took up again his pick, approached the young woman slowly with a
+savage mien and said to her: "So,<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> it is you, who have children
+kidnapped to serve your diabolical sorceries?" and with glistening eyes
+he raised his iron bar with both hands. "You will now die, infernal
+witch!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father, do not kill her!" cried out the child impetuously, clasping the
+quarryman's legs with both his hands. "Oh, do not kill this good lady
+who was embracing me just as you came in!"</p>
+
+<p>Fergan looked at Azenor, who, somber, pensive, her arms crossed upon her
+palpitating breast, seemed to brave death. Turning to the child: "Was
+this woman embracing you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father; and since I have been here she has been kind to me. She
+has sought to console me. She even often rocked me in her arms."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then," said the quarryman to the sorceress, "did you have my child
+kidnapped? What have you to say!"</p>
+
+<p>Azenor the Pale, without answering the question of the serf, and
+pursuing the thought that turned in her head, said: "Where does the
+passage run out through which you have penetrated to this turret?"</p>
+
+<p>"What's that to you!"</p>
+
+<p>The young woman stepped to a cabinet of massive oak, took from it a
+casket, opened it, and displaying before the quarryman the gold pieces
+that it was filled with, said: "Take this casket and let me accompany
+you. You have been able to enter this donjon by a secret passage, you
+will be able to get out again. We shall escape together from this
+accursed den. I pay a rich ransom."</p>
+
+<p>"You ... you mean to accompany me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to flee from this castle, where I am a prisoner, and run to
+rejoin at Angers William IX., Duke of Aquitaine&mdash;&mdash;" Stopping short and
+leaning her ear towards the door, Azenor made a sign of silence to
+Fergan, and proceeded in a whisper: "I hear voices and steps on the
+staircase. Someone is coming up here.... It is Neroweg!"</p>
+
+<p>"The count!" exclaimed the quarryman, with savage joy, stepping<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a> towards
+the door: "Oh, Worse than a Wolf, you will no longer bite! I shall kill
+the wretch!"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep still or we are lost," interrupted Azenor in a low voice. "The
+Count is not alone; think of your child!" and pointing with rapid
+gesture to the cabinet of massive oak, she hastily whispered to the
+serf: "Push that piece of furniture across the door. Be quick! We shall
+have time to flee! Your enemy, Neroweg, has only a few more steps to
+climb! I hear his spurs clank upon the stone floor!"</p>
+
+<p>Fergan, thinking only of the safety of his child, followed the advice of
+Azenor, and, thanks to the herculean strength he was endowed with,
+succeeded in pushing the massive piece of furniture across the door,
+which, thus barricaded, could not swing open into the room. The
+sorceress hastily wrapped herself in a mantle; took from the cabinet
+whence she had extracted the casket, a little leathern bag containing
+precious stones, and said to the quarryman, holding the casket out to
+him: "Take this gold and let's flee."</p>
+
+<p>"Carry your gold, yourself! I shall carry my child and my pick to defend
+him!" answered the serf, taking up his iron bar with one hand, and
+placing on his left arm little Colombaik, who held fast by his father's
+neck. At that very moment the fugitives heard from without the sound of
+the key that turned in the lock, followed by the voice of the seigneur
+of Plouernel: "Who is holding that door back inside? Is that one of your
+enchantments, accursed sorceress?"</p>
+
+<p>While the Count was beating against the door, and, redoubling his
+imprecations, vainly sought to force it, the quarryman, his son and
+Azenor, gathered in the turret, prepared to flee by the secret passage.
+One of the slabs of the flooring, being swung aside by means of a
+counterweight and chains wound around an iron axis, exposed the first
+step of a ladder so narrow that it could barely allow passage to one
+person at a time, and of such a slope at that spot that its first ten
+rungs could be cleared only<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> by sliding down almost on the back from
+step to step. Azenor was the first to undertake the narrow passage; the
+little Colombaik imitated her; the two were followed by Fergan, who then
+readjusted the counterweight. The stone slab, back again in its place,
+again masked the secret passage. This steep portion of the ladder was
+wrought in an abutment of the turret, where its base projected beyond
+the wall of the donjon. Its foot connected with the narrow stone spiral,
+which, wrought in the ten-foot thick wall, descended to the lowest
+depths of the donjon. At each landing, a skilfully masked outlet opened
+upon this secret passage, lighted by not a ray from without. But Fergan,
+equipped with his tinder box, punk and wick, of the kind that he helped
+himself with in the quarries, lighted the passage, and, with his iron
+pick in one hand, his light in the other, preceded his son and Azenor
+down the stone spiral. The descent was but slowly effected.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the fugitives, leaving above them the level of the landing
+where the hall of the stone table was located, and which was situated on
+the ground floor, arrived at the place that corresponded with the
+subterranean cells. Here the passage served not merely as a means of
+retreat in case of a siege, it also afforded the chatelain an
+opportunity to spy upon the prisoners and overhear their confidential
+communications. By its construction, the cell of Bezenecq the Rich gave
+special facilities for such espionage. Furthermore, a slab three feet
+square by two inches thick, fastened in a strong oaken frame on hinges,
+constituted a sort of stone door, undistinguishable from the inside of
+the somber apartment, but easy to push open from without. Thus the
+seigneur reserved to himself an access to those subterraneous chambers,
+unknown even to the dwellers of the castle. Above the opening and within
+the cell was sculptured that hideous mask, whose sight had frightened
+the daughter of the merchant. The two eyes and the mouth of this grim
+figure, bored through the full thickness of the wall and exteriorly
+chiseled in the form of<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> a niche, permitted the spy, posted at that
+place of concealment, to see the prisoners and overhear what they said.
+Thus it happened a few hours before that Fergan, climbing up by the
+light of his wick, had overheard the conversation between the Bishop of
+Nantes and Jeronimo, the legate of the Pope, and then that of the
+bourgeois of Nantes and his daughter. The fugitives were now on a level
+with the cell of Bezenecq, when suddenly brilliant rays of light shot
+through the openings in the stone mask, proceeding from a light within.</p>
+
+<p>Fergan was in advance of his child and Azenor. He halted at the sound of
+rawkish peals of laughter&mdash;frightful, like those of a maniac. The serf
+peeped through the holes pierced in the eyes of the mask, and this was
+what he saw by the light of a lantern placed upon the ground. Two naked
+corpses, the one suspended by the neck from the iron gibbet fastened in
+the wall, the other by the groins from the iron prong. The former,
+rigid, horribly distended and dislocated by the enormous weight of the
+stone attached to his feet; the latter, hooked by the flesh upon the
+sharp prong that penetrated his entrails, was bent backwards with his
+arms dangling against his legs. These victims, captured shortly before,
+from a new troop of travelers on the territory of the seigneur of
+Plouernel and taken to this cell, better fitted out than the others with
+instruments of torture, did not survive the experience. The corpse of
+Bezenecq the Rich was chained to the gridiron above the dying embers of
+the coal fire. The agonies of that unhappy man had been so excruciating
+that his members, held fast by the iron bands, had been convulsively
+distended. Undoubtedly at the moment of expiring he had made a supreme
+effort to turn his head towards his daughter, so as to die with her in
+sight. The face of the merchant, blackened, frightful to behold,
+retained the expression of his agony. A few steps from the corpse of her
+father, cowering upon the straw bed, her knees held in her arms, Isoline
+swayed to and fro, emitting at intervals rythmic peals of maniacal
+laughter. She had<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a> gone crazy. Fergan, moved with pity, was considering
+how to deliver the daughter of Bezenecq, when the door of the cell
+opened and Gonthram, the eldest son of Neroweg, stepped in, a torch in
+his hands and his cheeks of purple. His eyes, his unsteady walk, all
+announced a high stage of inebriety. Approaching Isoline, he struck
+against the gridiron, where lay the corpse of the bourgeois of Nantes.
+Unmoved by that spectacle, Gonthram stepped towards the young girl,
+seized her rudely by the arm, and said in a maudlin voice: "Come, follow
+me!" The demented girl seemed not to hear, she did not even raise her
+eyes, and continued swaying to and fro and to laugh. "You are quite
+gay," observed the whelp; "I also am gay. Come upstairs. We shall laugh
+together!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, traitor!" broke in a new personage, precipitating himself out of
+breath into the cell. "I made no doubt what you had in your mind when I
+saw you leave the table the moment my father went up to the sorceress!"
+And throwing himself upon his brother, Guy, the second son of Neroweg,
+cried out: "If you want the girl, you will have to pay for her with your
+blood!"</p>
+
+<p>"Vile bastard! You, the son of my mother's chaplain! You dare to
+threaten me!" In his rage, increased by intoxication, Gonthram raised
+his burning torch, struck his brother with it in the face and drew his
+sword. Guy, uttering a furious imprecation, also drew his sword. The
+struggle was short. Guy fell lifeless at the feet of his brother, who
+exclaimed: "The bastard is dead. I am the better man. The girl is mine!"
+and rushing back to Isoline: "Now, you are mine!"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" resounded a menacing voice, and before Gonthram, who had taken up
+the daughter of Bezenecq in his arms, had time to turn around, he
+received over his head a crushing blow with an iron bar, throwing him
+down upon his brother's body. From the place of concealment, where
+Fergan had stood, he saw the commencement of the fratricidal strife and
+had entered the cell by the secret opening when the fight was at its
+height between the<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> two sons of Neroweg. Time was passing. Some of the
+men of the seigneur of Plouernel, observing the prolonged absence of the
+two whelps, might at any moment come down. Fergan took the poor maniac
+by the hand and led her to the secret opening. "Now, stoop, dear child,
+and get through the aperture." Isoline remained motionless. Renouncing
+all hope of being understood by her, Fergan pressed his two hands with
+force upon the shoulders of the child. "Woman," the serf cried out to
+Azenor the Pale, who had remained outside of the cell, contemplating the
+two bleeding bodies of the sons of Neroweg, "take the hand of this poor
+girl and try to draw her out."</p>
+
+<p>"Why take this insane woman along?" said Azenor to Fergan. "She will
+retard our march and increase the difficulties of our flight."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to save this unfortunate being."</p>
+
+<p>Sustained by Fergan, who preceded Colombaik, carrying the lighted wick,
+Isoline descended with difficulty the steps of the staircase.
+Penetrating ever deeper into the bowels of the earth, the fugitives
+arrived at the bottom of the stone spiral that connected with a tunnel,
+bored through the living rock at such a depth that, passing under the
+sheet of water of the gigantic pit, from the midst of which the donjon
+rose, it issued out into the open half a league away from the castle at
+a place concealed amid tumbling bowlders and brushwood.<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_X-a" id="CHAPTER_X-a"></a>CHAPTER X.<br /><br />
+CUCKOO PETER.</h3>
+
+<p>Day was slowly breaking upon the fateful night during which the
+fugitives effected their escape from the manor of Plouernel. Joan the
+Hunchback, seated at the threshold of her hut, which lay at the
+extremity of the village, incessantly turned her eyes, red with weeping,
+towards the road by which Fergan, absent since the previous morning in
+quest of Colombaik, was expected. Suddenly the female serf heard from
+afar a great tumult, caused by the approach of a large crowd of people.
+At intervals confused and prolonged clamors were heard rising above the
+din, frantically crying out: "God wills it! God wills it!" Finally Joan
+saw a crowd of people turning a road that led to the village. At the
+head marched a monk mounted on a white mule, whose bones protruded from
+its skin, together with a man-at-arms astride of a small black horse,
+not less lean than the mule of his companion.</p>
+
+<p>The monk, called by some Peter the Hermit, but by most Cuckoo Peter,
+wore a tattered brown frock, on the left sleeve of which near the
+shoulder was sewn a cross of red material, the rallying sign of the
+Crusaders on the holy march of the Crusade. A rope served him for a
+belt. His unhosed feet, shod in worn-out sandals, rested on wooden
+stirrups. His cowl, pushed back, exposed a bald head, boney and grimy
+like the rest of his face, bronzed by the hot sun of Palestine. His
+hollow eyes, glistening with a somber fire, flamed from the depths of
+their orbits. His haggard looks expressed savage fanaticism. In one hand
+he held a cross of rude wood, hardly planed, with which ever and anon he
+smote the crupper of his mule to quicken its pace.</p>
+
+<p>The companion of Cuckoo Peter was a Gascon knight surnamed<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> Walter the
+Pennyless. Of a physiognomy as grotesque and jovial as that of the monk
+was savage and funereal, the mere sight of the knight provoked a smile.
+His eyes, sparkling with mischief, his inordinately long nose, that
+almost kissed the chin, his rakish mouth, slit from ear to ear, his
+features hinged on a perpetual grin, amused from the start, and when he
+spoke, his buffoonery and his mirthful sallies, delivered with southern
+spirit, carried hilarity to its highest pitch. Wearing on his head a
+rusty, cracked and knocked-in casque, ornamented with a bunch of goose
+feathers, his chest covered with a breast-plate no less rusty, no less
+cracked and no less knocked in than his casque, Walter the Pennyless
+also wore the red cross on the left sleeve of his patched cloak. Shod in
+cowhides, fastened with cords around his long heron legs, he bore
+himself with as triumphant an air on his lean black hirsute horse, that
+he named the "Sun of Glory," as if he bestrode a mettlesome charger. His
+long sword, sheathed in wood, named by him the "Sweetheart of the
+Faith," hung from his leathern shoulder belt. On his left arm he bore a
+shield of tin, covered with vulgar pictures. One of these, filling the
+upper part, represented a man clad in rags, knapsack on back and pilgrim
+staff in hand, departing on the Crusade, as indicated by the cross of
+red stuff painted on his shoulder. The lower picture represented the
+same man, no longer wan and haggard, no longer dressed in tatters, but
+splendidly fitted out, bursting with fat, and spread upon a bed, covered
+with purple cloth, beside a beautiful Saracen woman, with nothing on but
+collar and bracelets. A Saracen, wearing a turban and humbly kneeling,
+poured out the contents of a coffer full of gold at the foot of the bed
+where the Crusader was frolicking with his female bedfellow in an
+obscene posture. The very crudity of the idea expressed by these vulgar
+pictures was calculated to make a lively impression upon the childish
+imagination of the multitude.</p>
+
+<p>At the heels of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless followed<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> a mob of
+men, women and children, serfs and villeins, mendicants and vagabonds,
+prostitutes and professional thieves, the latter distinguishable by
+their cropped ears, as well as the murderers, some of whom, in a spirit
+of sanguinary ostentation, bedecked their breasts with pieces of black
+cloth bearing in white one, or two, sometimes three skulls&mdash;a sinister
+emblem, denoting that the holy Crusade gave absolution for murder,
+however frequently committed by the criminal. All bore the red cross on
+the left sleeve. Women carried on their backs their children too young
+to walk, or too tired to proceed on the route. Other women, in an
+advanced stage of pregnancy, leaned on the arms of their husbands,
+loaded with a bag containing all their havings. The least poor of the
+Crusaders traveled on donkeys, on mules or in wagons. They carried all
+their belongings with them, even to their pigs and chickens. The latter,
+fastened by the legs to the rails of the wagons, kept up a deafening
+cackle. Other poor people dragged their milk goats after them, or a
+loaded sheep, or even one or more cows.</p>
+
+<p>Contrasting with this tattered multitude, here and there some couples
+were seen, the cavalier in the saddle, his paramour on the crupper,
+happy to escape through that holy pilgrimage the jealous or disturbing
+surveillance of a father or a husband. These runaways also took the
+route of the Orient. Among them was Eucher with the handsome Yolande,
+dispossessed of her father's heritage by the seigneur of Plouernel. They
+had sold a few jewels, given one-half the proceeds to Yolande's mother,
+and with the rest the lovers bought a mule on which to follow the
+Crusaders to Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>This mob, consisting of three or four thousand persons, moving from
+Angers and surrounding localities, recruited its forces all along the
+route with new pilgrims. The faces of the serfs and villeins breathed
+joy. For the first time in their lives they left an accursed land,
+soaked in the sweat of their brow and in their blood, and to which, from
+generation to generation, they<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> and their fathers had been chained down
+by the will of the seigneurs. At last they tasted a day of freedom, an
+inestimable happiness to the slave. Their joyous cries, their disorderly
+songs, gross, licentious, resounded far and wide, and ever and anon they
+repeated with frenzy the words, hurled out by Cuckoo Peter in a hoarse
+voice: "Death to the Saracens! Let's march to the deliverance of the
+Holy Sepulchre! God wills it!" At other times they echoed the Gascon
+cavalier, Walter the Pennyless: "To Jerusalem, the city of marvels! Ours
+is Jerusalem, the city of pleasures, of good wine, of beautiful women,
+of gold and of sunshine! Ours is the Promised Land!"</p>
+
+<p>Singing, dancing, uproarious with gladness, the troop crossed the
+village and passed by the hut of Fergan. The serfs, instead of betaking
+themselves to the fields for their hard day's labor, ran ahead of the
+train, shut in at that moment between two lines of ruined houses that
+bordered the road. Joan, standing at the threshold of her door, looked
+at this mob as it passed, with a mixture of astonishment and fear. A big
+scamp of a gallows bird, nicknamed by his companions Corentin the
+Gibbet-cheater, was giving his arm to a young wench that went by the
+name of Perrette the Ribald. She noticed poor Joan the Hunchback at her
+door and cried out to her, alluding to her deformity: "Halloa, you
+there, who carry your baggage on your back, come with us to Jerusalem;
+you will be admired there as one of the prodigies among the other
+marvels!"</p>
+
+<p>"By the navel of the Pope! By the buttocks of Satan! You are right, my
+ribald!" cried the Gibbet-cheater. "There can be no hunchbacks in
+Jerusalem, a land of beautiful Saracen women, according to our friend
+Walter the Pennyless. We shall exhibit this hunchback for money. Come
+on!" said the bandit, seizing Joan by the arm, "follow us, you camel!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," added Perrette the Ribald, laughing loudly and seizing the
+other arm of the quarryman's wife, "come to Jerusalem; come to the land
+of marvels!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone!" said the poor woman, struggling to disengage<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> herself.
+"For pity's sake, leave me! I am expecting my husband and my child!"</p>
+
+<p>Forced to follow her persecutors, and carried, despite herself, by the
+stream of the Crusaders, Joan, fearing to be stifled or crushed under
+foot by the crowd, sought no longer to struggle against the current.
+Suddenly, instead of proceeding onward, the mob swayed back, and these
+words ran from mouth to mouth: "Silence! Cuckoo Peter and Walter the
+Pennyless are going to speak! Silence!" A deep silence ensued. Halting
+in the middle of a large open space, where, gaping with curiosity, the
+serfs of the village stood gathered together, the monk and his companion
+prepared themselves to harangue these poor rustic plebs. Cuckoo Peter
+reined in his white mule and rising in his stirrups, he screamed in a
+hoarse yet penetrating voice, addressing the serfs of the seigniory of
+Plouernel: "Do you, Christian folks, know what is going on in Palestine?
+The divine tomb of the Saviour is in the hands of the Saracens! The Holy
+Sepulchre of our Lord is in the power of the infidels! Woe is us! Woe!
+Malediction! Malediction!" And the monk struck his chest, tore his
+frock, rolled his hollow eyes in their sockets, ground his teeth, foamed
+at the mouth, went through a thousand contortions on his mule, and
+resumed with increased fury: "The infidel is lord in Jerusalem, the Holy
+City! The miscreant insults the tomb of Christ with his presence! And
+you, Christians, my brothers, you remain indifferent before so horrible
+a sacrilege! Before such an abomination&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" cried back with one voice the mob of the Crusaders. "Death to
+the infidels! Let's deliver the tomb! Let's march to Jerusalem, the city
+of marvels and of beauty! God wills it! God wills it!"</p>
+
+<p>The serfs of the village, ignorant, besotted, timid, opened wide their
+eyes and ears, and looked at one another, never before having heard the
+name of Jerusalem or of the Saracens mentioned, and unable to explain
+the fury and contortions of the<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> monk. Accordingly, Martin the Prudent,
+the same who, two days before, had ventured to depict to the bailiff the
+sufferings of his fellows, timidly said to Cuckoo Peter: "Holy patron,
+seeing that our Lord Jesus Christ sits on his throne in heaven, together
+with God the Father in eternal glory, what can it be to him whether his
+tomb be in the hands of the people whom you call Saracens? Kindly
+enlighten us."</p>
+
+<p>"That's what we would like to know," joined another serf, a young fellow
+who looked less stupid than the others. "We want to know that first."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless. "By my valiant sword, the
+Sweetheart of the Faith! Here have we a rude questioner. What's your
+name, my brave lad?"</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Colas the Bacon-cutter."</p>
+
+<p>"As surely as ham is the friend of wine, you must be a relative of my
+friend Simon the Porkrind-scraper," replied the Gascon knight, amidst
+peals of laughter from the serfs, who were delighted by this sally. "So,
+then, you would like to know, my worthy Colas the Bacon-cutter, what it
+can matter to Jesus Christ, enthroned in heaven with the Eternal Father
+and the sweet dove, the Holy Ghost, if his sepulchre is held by the
+Saracens?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, seigneur," rejoined the serf; "because, if that displeases him,
+how is it that, seeing he is God and omnipotent, he does not exterminate
+them? Why does he not turn those Saracens into pulp at a single wafture
+of his hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Woe is us! Abomination! Desolation of the world!" ejaculated Cuckoo
+Peter, breaking in upon the Gascon adventurer, who was about to answer.
+"Oh, ye people without faith, ingrates, impious and rebellious children!
+Jesus Christ gave his blood to redeem you. Is that so or not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Serfs were our fathers, serfs are we, serfs will our children be,"
+retorted Colas the Bacon-cutter. "We have not been redeemed, holy
+father, as you claim."<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a></p>
+
+<p>The answer of young Colas unquestionably embarrassed the monk; he shot
+at him threatening glances, writhed on his mule and resumed in a
+thundering voice: "Malediction! Desolation! Oh, ye of little faith!
+Jesus has given you his blood to redeem you, and you, in return, refuse
+to shed the blood of those accursed Saracens, who every day outrage his
+sepulchre! This is what the divine Saviour has said.... Do you hear?...
+Here is what he said.... Listen...."</p>
+
+<p>Walter the Pennyless here broke in with his own harangue: "Those
+accursed Saracens are gorged with gold, with precious stones, with
+silver vessels; they inhabit a marvelous country where there is a
+profusion without the trouble of cultivation: Golden wheat fields,
+delicious fruits, exquisite wines, sweethearts of all complexions! One
+must go there to believe it! Think of it! Winter is unknown, spring
+eternal. The poorest of those infidel dogs have homes of white marble
+and enchanting gardens, embellished with limpid fountains. The beggars,
+clad in silk, play tennis with rubies and diamonds." A murmur of
+astonishment, then of admiration ran through the serfs. Their eyes
+fixed, their mouths agape, their hands clasped, they listened with
+increasing avidity to the Gascon adventurer. "Such is the miraculous
+country inhabited by those infidel dogs, and the Christians, the beloved
+children of the holy Catholic Church, inhabit dens, eat black bread,
+drink brackish water, shiver under a sky frozen in winter and rainy in
+summer. No, let all the devils take it! Let my beloved brothers come to
+the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, exterminate the infidels, and then
+they will have for their reward the prodigious lands of Palestine!
+Theirs be Jerusalem, the city of silver ramparts, with golden gates,
+studded with carbuncles! Theirs be the wines, the beautiful maids, the
+riches of the accursed Saracens! If you wish all that, good people, it
+is yours!" Then, turning to Peter the Hermit, "Not so, holy man?"<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a></p>
+
+<p>"It is the truth," answered Cuckoo Peter; "it is the truth. <i>The goods
+of the sinner are reserved for the just</i>."</p>
+
+<p>In the measure that the adroit lieutenant of Cuckoo Peter had held up to
+the dazzled eyes of the poor villagers the ravishing picture of the
+delights and riches of Palestine, a good number of those famished serfs,
+clad in tatters and who all their lives had not crossed the boundaries
+of the seigniory of Plouernel, began to tremble with ardent covetousness
+and feverish hope. Others, more timid or less credulous, hesitated in
+believing those marvels. Of these old Martin the Prudent was the organ.
+Turning to his fellows: "My friends, that knight, on the back of that
+little black horse that looks like an ass, has said to you: 'One must go
+to that country to believe these marvels by seeing them with his own
+eyes.' Now, then, it is my opinion that it is better to believe them
+than to go and see them. It is not enough to depart for those regions.
+One must be certain of provisions on the route, and to return from such
+a distance."</p>
+
+<p>"Old Martin is right," put in several serfs. "Let's take his advice and
+stay home."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," added another serf, "those Saracens will not allow themselves
+to be plundered without resisting. There will be blows received ... men
+killed ... thousands of them."</p>
+
+<p>These views, exchanged aloud, no wise troubled the Gascon adventurer. He
+drew his famous sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith, and indicating with
+its point the pictures that ornamented his shield, he cried out in his
+cheerful and catching accent: "Good friends, see you this poor man with
+his cane in his hand? He departed for the Holy Land, his pouch as empty
+as his belly, his knap-sack as hollow as his cheeks. He is so ragged
+that one would think a pack of dogs had been at him! Look at him, the
+poor fellow, he is really to be pitied. What misery! What pinching
+poverty, my friends!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," the serfs exclaimed together, "he is really to be pitied."<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a></p>
+
+<p>"And now, my friends, what see you here?," resumed the Gascon
+adventurer, touching with the point of his sword the second picture on
+his shield. "Here is our very man, one time poor! You do not recognize
+him. I do not wonder, he is no longer the same, and yet it is himself,
+round of cheeks, clad like a seigneur and bursting his skin. Beside him
+lies a beautiful female Saracen slave, while at his feet a male Saracen
+comes to surrender his treasure! Well, now, my friends, this man, once
+so poor, so ragged at home, is you, is I, is all of us, and that same
+friend so plump, so sleek, so well clad, that, again, will be you, will
+be I, will be all of us, once we are in Palestine. Come, then, on the
+Crusade! Come and deliver the tomb of the Saviour! The devil take the
+rags, the rickety huts, the straw litters and the black bread! Let ours
+be marble palaces, silk robes, purple carpets, goblets of delicious
+wines, full purses, and beauteous Saracen women to rock us to sleep with
+their songs! Come to the Crusade!"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come!," cried out Cuckoo Peter. "If you are guilty of robbery, of
+arson, of murder, of prostitution, if you have committed adultery,
+fratricide or parricide&mdash;all your sins will be remitted. Come to the
+Crusade! Do you need an example, my brothers? William IX, Duke of
+Aquitaine, an impious fellow, a ravisher, a debauché who counts his
+crimes and adulteries by the thousands, William IX, that bedeviled
+criminal, departs to-morrow from the city of Angers for Palestine, white
+as a paschal lamb."</p>
+
+<p>"And I, white as a swan!" interjected Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. "God
+wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I as white as a dove!" said Perette the Ribald, with a peal of
+laughter. "God wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; let's depart on the Crusade!" cried out the more daring of
+the villagers, intoxicated with hope. "Let's depart for Jerusalem."
+Others, less resolute, less venturesome, and of these was the larger
+number, took the advice of Martin the Prudent, fearing to stake their
+fate, whatever their present misery, upon<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> the cast of a dangerous
+voyage and of unknown countries. They deemed insane the exaltation of
+their fellows in servitude. Finally, others, still hesitated to take so
+grave a step, and Colas the Bacon-cutter addressed Walter the Pennyless:
+"To depart is easy enough. But what will our seigneur say to that? He
+has forbidden us to leave his domains on pain of having our feet cut
+off. And he will surely have the order carried out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your seigneur!" answered the Gascon adventurer breaking out in a
+horse-laugh. "Scorn your seigneur as you would a wolf caught in a trap!
+Ask these good people who follow us whether they have bothered about
+their seigneurs!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, the devil take the seigneurs!" cried out the Crusaders. "We are
+going to Jerusalem. God wills it! God wills it!"</p>
+
+<p>"What!" put in Cuckoo Peter, "the Eternal wants a thing, and a seigneur,
+a miserable earthworm will dare oppose His will! Oh, desolation! Eternal
+malediction upon the seigneur, upon the father, upon the husband, upon
+the mother, who would dare resist the holy impulse of their children,
+their wives, their serfs, who run to the deliverance of the tomb of the
+Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>These words of Peter the Hermit were received with acclamation by the
+Crusaders. The beautiful Yolande and her lover, Eucher, as well as other
+loving couples, cried out in emulation and louder than the others: "God
+wills it! There is no will above his!"</p>
+
+<p>"Master Walter the Pennyless," resumed Colas the Bacon-cutter,
+scratching the back of his ear, "is it far from here to Jerusalem?"</p>
+
+<p>"The distance is from sin to safety!" bellowed Cuckoo Peter. "The road
+is short for the believers, endless for the impious! Are you a Christian
+or a miscreant? Are you an idolater or a good Catholic?"</p>
+
+<p>Colas the Bacon-cutter, finding himself, no more than some other serfs
+who still hesitated, sufficiently instructed by the monk's answer on the
+distance of the journey, asked again:<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> "Father, it is said to be a long
+ways from here to Nantes. Is it as far to Jerusalem?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, man of little faith!" answered Peter the Hermit, "dare you measure
+the road that leads to Paradise and to the Holy Virgin?"</p>
+
+<p>"By the four swift feet of my good horse, the Sun of Glory! They are
+thinking of the length of the road!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless.
+"See here, my friends, does the bird that escapes from its cage inquire
+the length of the road when it can fly to freedom? Does not the ass in
+the mill, turning his grindstone, and tramping from dawn to dusk in the
+same circle, travel as much as the stag that roves through the woods at
+pleasure? Oh, my good friends, is it not better, instead of, like the
+ass of the mill, incessantly to tramp this seigniorial soil unto which
+you are chained, to march in search of adventures, free, happy like the
+stag in the forest, and every day see new countries?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes," replied Colas, "the stag in the forest is better off than
+the ass in the mill. Let's depart for Palestine!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, let's depart for Palestine!" the cry now went up from several
+other villagers. "On to that land of marvels!"</p>
+
+<p>"My friends, be careful what you do," insisted Martin the Prudent. "The
+ass in the mill at least receives in the evening his meager pittance.
+The stags of the forest do not pasture in herds, hence they find a
+sufficiency in the woods. But if you depart with this large troop, which
+swells as it marches, you will be thousands of thousands when you reach
+Jerusalem. Who, then, my friends, will feed you? Who is to lodge you on
+the road? Who is to furnish you with clothes and footwear?"</p>
+
+<p>"And who is it that lodges and feeds the birds of the good God, man of
+little faith?" Cuckoo Peter exclaimed. "Do the birds carry their
+provisions with them? Do they not raid the harvests along their route,
+resting at night under the eaves of the houses? Answer, ye hardened
+sinners!"</p>
+
+<p>"By the faith of the Gibbet-cheater, you may trust that man!" here put
+in Corentin. "As truly as Perrette is a daisy, our route<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> from Angers to
+this place has been but one continuous raid to us big birds on two legs.
+What feasts we have had? Poultry and pigeons! Hams and sausages! Pork
+and mutton! Tons of wine! Tons of hydromel! By my belly and my back, we
+have raided for everything on our passage, leaving behind us but bones
+to gnaw at and empty barrels to turn over!"</p>
+
+<p>"And if those people were to complain," added Perrette the Ribald with
+her usual outburst of laughter, "we would answer them: 'Shut up,
+ninnies! Cuckoo Peter has read in the holy books that '<i>the goods of the
+sinner are reserved for the just!</i>' Are not we the <i>just</i>, we who are on
+the march to deliver the holy tomb? And are not you <i>sinners</i>, you who
+stay here stagnating in your cowardice? And if these ninnies said but a
+word, the Gibbet-cheater, backed by our whole band, would soon have
+convinced them with a thorough caning."</p>
+
+<p>These sallies of Perrette and Corentin completed the conversion of those
+serfs who still hesitated. Seeing in the voyage but a long and merry
+junket, a goodly number of them, Colas the Bacon-cutter at their head,
+cried out in chorus: "Let's depart for Jerusalem, the country of
+beautiful girls, good wines and ingots of gold!"</p>
+
+<p>"Onward, march, my friends! Trouble your heads neither about the road,
+nor about lodging, nor yet about food. The good God will provide!" cried
+Walter the Pennyless. "On the march! On the march! If you have
+provisions, take them along. Have you a donkey? mount him. Have you
+wagons? hitch on, and put wife and children in them. If you have nothing
+but your legs, gird up your loins, and on to Jerusalem! We are hundreds
+upon hundreds; we soon shall be thousands upon thousands; and presently
+we shall number hundreds of thousands. Upon our arrival in Palestine we
+shall find treasures and delights for all&mdash;beautiful women, good wine,
+rich robes, and lumps of gold in plenty!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we shall all have gained eternal salvation! We shall have a seat in
+Paradise!" added Cuckoo Peter in a strident voice,<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> brandishing his
+wooden cross over his head. "Let's depart for Jerusalem! God wills it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Forward, let's depart for Palestine!" cried out a hundred of the
+villagers, carried away by Colas, despite the prudent advice of Martin.
+These ill-starred men, a prey to a sort of delirium, ran to their huts
+and gathered up the little that they possessed. Some loaded their asses
+in haste; others, less poor, hitched a horse or a yoke of oxen to a
+wagon and placed their families on board; while Peter the Hermit and
+Walter the Pennyless, to the end of inflaming still more the ardor of
+these new recruits of the faith in the midst of their preparations for
+the journey, struck up the chant of the Crusades that was soon taken up
+in chorus by all the Crusaders:</p>
+
+<p>"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!</p>
+
+<p>"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that
+marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!</p>
+
+<p>"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!"</p>
+
+<p>Joan the Hunchback, having succeeded in freeing herself from the hands
+of Corentin and his wench, had pushed herself not without great pains,
+out of the compact mob, and was about to start back to her humble home
+by cutting across the skirt of the village, intending to wait for the
+return of her husband and child, a return that she hardly ventured to
+hope for. Suddenly she turned deadly pale and tried to scream, but
+terror deprived her of her voice. From the somewhat raised ground where
+she stood, Joan saw, down the plain, Fergan carrying his son in his
+arms, and running with all his might towards the village, with Garin the
+Serf-eater at his heels. The latter, giving his horse the spurs,
+followed the serf, sword in hand. Several men-at-arms on foot, following
+at a distance the tracks of the bailiff, sought to make up to him in
+order to render him armed assistance. Despite<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> his efforts to escape,
+Fergan led Garin by barely fifty paces. The lead was shortened from
+moment to moment. Already within but two paces, and believing the
+quarryman to be within reach of his sword, the bailiff had sought to
+strike him down by leaning over the neck of his horse. Thanks to several
+doublings, like those that hares make when pursued by the hound, Fergan
+escaped death. Making, finally, a desperate leap, he ran several steps
+straight ahead with indescribable swiftness, and then suddenly
+disappeared from the sight of Joan as if he had sunk into the bowels of
+the earth. A second later the poor woman saw Garin reining in his horse
+with great effort near the spot where the quarryman had just disappeared
+from view; he raised his sword heavenward, and then, instead of
+proceeding straight ahead, turned to the left and followed at a full
+gallop a hedge of green that traversed the valley diagonally. Joan then
+understood that her husband, having jumped with the child to the bottom
+of a deep trench, which the bailiff's horse could not clear, at the very
+moment when he would have been struck down by the bailiff, the latter
+had been compelled to ride along the edge of the trench to a point where
+he might cross it, in order to proceed to the village, where he counted
+upon capturing the quarryman. Joan feared lest her husband and child
+were hurt in the leap. But soon she saw her little Colombaik climb out
+of the trench with the aid of his little hand and supported by his
+father, whose arms only were visible. Presently Fergan also climbed out,
+picked up the child again, and carrying that dear load, continued to
+flee at a full run towards the village, which he aimed at reaching
+before the bailiff. Despite her weakness, Joan rushed forward to meet
+her child and her husband, and joined them. Fergan, without stopping and
+keeping the child in his arms, hurriedly said to his wife, almost out of
+breath and exhausted: "Let's reach the village. Let's get in ahead of
+Garin, and we shall be safe!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Colombaik, you are here at last!" Joan said, while running
+beside the serf and devouring the child with her eyes,<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> forgetting at
+the sight of him both the present perils and the past, while Colombaik,
+smiling and reaching out his little arms, said: "Mother! mother! How
+happy am I to see you again! Dear, good mother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said the serf while redoubling his efforts to gain the village
+before Garin, who was driving his horse at full speed, "had I not been
+delayed burying a dead woman at the egress of the tunnel, I would have
+been here before daybreak. We would have met to flee together."</p>
+
+<p>"My child! They have not hurt you?" Joan was thinking only of her child,
+one of whose hands she had seized and was kissing while weeping with
+joy, and running beside her husband. At that moment the chant of the
+Crusaders' departure resounded from afar with renewed fervor:
+"Jerusalem! City of marvels!"</p>
+
+<p>"What songs are these?" inquired the quarryman. "What big crowd is that,
+gathered yonder? Whence come all these people?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those are people who are going, they say, to Jerusalem. A large number
+of the inhabitants of the village are following them. They are like
+crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then we are really saved!" exclaimed the quarryman, seized with a
+sudden thought. "Let's depart with them!"</p>
+
+<p>"What, Fergan!" demanded Joan out of breath and exhausted with her
+precipitate gait. "We to go far away with our child!"</p>
+
+<p>But the serf, who found himself at the most a hundred paces from the
+village, made no answer, and followed by Joan, he finally reached the
+crowd, into the midst of which he dived, holding Colombaik and exhausted
+with fatigue, while, muttering to his wife: "Oh, saved! We are saved!"</p>
+
+<p>Garin, who had continued driving his horse along the trench until he
+reached a spot where he could cross, observed with astonishment the
+crowd of people that blocked his way and access to the village. Drawing
+near, he saw coming towards him several of the serfs who preferred their
+crushing servitude to the chances of a distant and unknown voyage. Among
+these was old Martin<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> the Prudent. Seeking to flatter the bailiff, he
+said to him trembling: "Good master Garin, we are not of those rebels
+who dare to flee from the lands of their seigneur to go to Palestine
+with that troop of Crusaders, that are traveling through the country. We
+do not intend to abandon the domain of our seigneur. We wish to work for
+him to our last day."</p>
+
+<p>"S-death!" cried out the bailiff, forgetting the quarryman at the
+announcement of the desertion of a large number of the serfs. "The
+wretches who have thought of fleeing will be punished." The crowd,
+opening up before the horse of Garin, he reached the monk and Walter the
+Pennyless, who were pointed to him as the chiefs of the Crusaders. "By
+what right do you thus enter with a large troop upon the territory of my
+seigneur, Neroweg VI, sovereign Count of Plouernel?" Then, raising his
+voice still more and turning to the villagers: "Those of you, serfs and
+villeins, who had the audacity of following these vagabonds, shall have
+their hands and feet cut on the spot, like rebels&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Impious man! Blasphemer!" exclaimed Cuckoo Peter breaking in upon the
+bailiff in a thundering voice. "Dare you threaten the Christians who are
+on the march to deliver the tomb of the Lord? Woe be unto you!&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You frocked criminal," the bailiff in turn interrupted, boiling with
+rage, and drawing his sword, "you dare issue orders in the seigniory of
+my master!" Saying which, Garin, driving his horse towards the monk,
+raised his sword over him. But Peter the Hermit parried the move with
+his heavy wooden cross, and struck the bailiff such a hard blow with it
+over his casque, that the latter, dazed for a moment, let fall his
+sword.</p>
+
+<p>"Death to the bandit, who would cut off the feet and hands of the
+avengers of Christ!" several voices cried out. "Death to him! Death!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, death!" yelled the serfs of the village, who had made up their
+minds to depart for the Holy Land, and who abhorred the bailiff. "Death
+to Garin the Serf-eater! He shall eat none more!" With that, Colas the
+Bacon-cutter threw him from his<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> horse, and in a moment the bailiff,
+trodden under foot, was slaughtered and torn to pieces. The serfs broke
+his bones, cut off his head, and Colas the Bacon-cutter, taking up the
+livid head of the Serf-eater with the prong of his pitch-fork, raised
+the bleeding trophy above the mob. Carrying it on high, he rejoined the
+troop of the Crusaders, whereupon the crowd marched away singing at the
+top of their voices:</p>
+
+<p>"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!</p>
+
+<p>"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that
+marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a>"God wills it! God wills it! God wills it."</p>
+
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II.<br /><br />
+THE CRUSADE.</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-b" id="CHAPTER_I-b"></a>CHAPTER I.<br /><br />
+THE SYRIAN DESERT.</h3>
+
+<p>The sun of Palestine inundates with its blinding and scorching light, a
+desert covered with reddish sand. As far as the eye reaches, not a house
+is seen, not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass, not a pebble. Not
+a sparrow could find shelter in this vast expanse. Everywhere a shifting
+sand, fine as ashes, radiates back in more torrid temperature the heat
+imparted to it by that flaming sun, vaulted by a fiery sky that dips in
+the western horizon into a zone of burning vapor. Here and yonder, half
+buried in the waves of sand that are periodically raised by the gales of
+these regions, appear the whitened bones of men and children, horses,
+asses, oxen and camels. The flesh of these bodies has been devoured by
+vultures, jackals and lions. The Saracen proverb is verified: "The
+Christians find here shelter only in the belly of the vultures, the
+jackals and the lions!" These decomposing human and other débris trace
+across the desert the route to Marhala, a city situated ten days' march
+from Jerusalem,&mdash;the holy city toward which converge the several armies
+of the Crusaders from Gaul, Germany, Italy and England, marching to the
+conquest of an empty tomb.</p>
+
+<p>If in this solitude there are skeletons and corpses half devoured, there
+are also dying and living beings. Numerous are the dying, few, on the
+contrary, the living; and the latter would count themselves happy if the
+dead and the dying around them were the worst of their plight. Here are
+the Crusaders, who, in their credulity, left the year before the
+"ungrateful soil of the Occident" for the "miraculous land of the
+Orient," where they arrived after a voyage of eleven or twelve hundred
+leagues. The bulk of the army that left Gaul, then under the command<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> of
+Bohemund, Prince of Taranto, slowly melted away yonder, in the midst of
+the thick cloud of dust raised by the marching Crusaders. In their wake
+followed a long train of stragglers, scattered helter-skelter,&mdash;women,
+children, the wounded, the infirm, the sick, a mass of wretchedness
+dying of thirst, heat and fatigue. Here and there they drop down by the
+way in this boundless desert, never to rise again.</p>
+
+<p>The least to be pitied among these stragglers are those who, having lost
+their horses, resolutely mounted an ass, an ox, a goat, occasionally one
+of those huge Syrian mastiffs, three feet in height. They thus drag
+along at the gait of the animal they ride, their swords on their side,
+their lances at their backs. In order to protect themselves from the
+consuming heat, that, descending at right angles on their skulls, often
+caused insanity or death, they carry strange head-pieces. Some shelter
+their heads under a piece of cloth spread out by means of sticks, that
+they hold in their hands in the manner of a dais; cleverer ones have
+plaited the dried leaves of the date plant into broad chaplets that
+shade their brows; the larger number wore a species of mask made of
+shreds of cloth, and perforated with a hole at the place of the eyes to
+protect their eye-lids from a dust so scorching and corrosive that it
+produced painful inflammations, and often led to death.</p>
+
+<p>At a great distance from these Crusaders followed the foot-passengers in
+grotesque costumes, and sinking to their knees in the shifting sand,
+whose mere burning contact rendered intolerable the excoriation of their
+feet, worn to the quick by the road. Their limbs bandaged in dirty rags,
+the wounded tramped along painfully, leaning on their staffs. Women,
+gasping for breath, carried their children on their backs, or dragged
+them heaped upon rude sledges that they pulled after them with the aid
+of their husbands. Among these wretches, almost wholly in tatters, some
+were seen in bizarre accoutrement. There were men, who barely covered
+with a crazy frock-coat, yet sported on their heads<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> a rich turban of
+Oriental material; others, out at toes, wore a splendid cloak of
+embroidered silk, dashed with spots of blood, like all the other spoils
+of pillage and massacre.</p>
+
+<p>Suffocated with stifling heat, blinded with the dust that the march
+raised, streaming with perspiration, parched with a devouring thirst,
+their skins burnt by the sun, ill of humor, gloomy and discouraged,
+these wretched beings were tramping along, muttering imprecations
+against the Crusade, when they perceived a numerous and brilliant
+cavalcade approaching through thick clouds of dust from a great distance
+in the rear. At the head of the cavalcade and mounted upon a spirited
+Arabian horse, black as ebony, advanced a young man in splendid
+accoutrements. It is William IX, the handsome Duke of Aquitaine, the
+impious poet, the contemner of the Church, the seducer of Malborgiane,
+whose portrait he carried in Gaul upon his shield. But Malborgiane is
+now forgotten and cast off, like so many other victims of this great
+debauchee. William IX is advancing at the head of his men-at-arms. His
+face at once bold and bantering, is partially covered by a wrapper of
+white silk that falls upon his shoulders. The outlines of his elegant
+and supple figure are set off by a light tunic of purple color; his
+broad hose, worn loose in Oriental style, exposes his boots of green
+leather, wrought in silver and tipped with gold. William carries neither
+arms or armor. With his left hand he guides his horse; on his right,
+covered with a gauntlet of embroidered leather, sits his favorite
+falcon, hooded in scarlet and its legs ornamented with little gold
+bells. Such is the courage of this bird that often does its master fly
+it against the vultures of the desert, as he more than once starts
+against the hyenas and jackals, the large hunting dogs with red collars
+that, breathing heavily, follow his horse. At the crupper of his
+prancing horse is a negro boy, eight or nine years of age, and quaintly
+arrayed. He carries a large parasol, whose shade shelters the head of
+William. At the right of the duke, and towering above him with its<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a>
+large body, ambles a camel richly caparisoned. Another negro boy guides
+the animal seated in front of the double litter, which, closed in with
+silken curtains, is fastened with girths to the back and body of the
+animal, and is so contrived that in each of its compartments a person
+can be comfortably seated, protected from the sun and the dust. William
+often ensconced himself in one of them.</p>
+
+<p>Beside William, rode the chevalier, Walter the Pennyless. Before his
+departure on the Crusade, the Gascon adventurer, pale, bony and
+tattered, bore a strong resemblance to the poor devil sketched on the
+upper part of his shield. Now, however, thanks to the sumptuousness of
+his dress, the knight recalls the second picture on his shield. From the
+pommel of his saddle hung a Venetian casque, which he had doffed for a
+turban, a more comfortable head-gear on the route. A long Dalmatic of
+light material, thrown over his rich armor, kept the latter from being
+heated in the burning rays of the sun. Of his poor equipment of yore,
+the Gascon preserved only his good sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith,
+and his little horse, the Sun of Glory. Surviving by the merest accident
+the perils and fatigues of the long passage, the Sun of Glory testified
+by the lustre of his coat to the good quality of the Saracen fodder,
+that he seemed to run short of as little as his master lacked
+provisions.</p>
+
+<p>Behind these personages followed the equerries of the Duke of Aquitaine,
+carrying his standard, his sword, his lance and his shield, on which
+William was in the habit of carrying the pictures of his mistresses, the
+ephemerous objects of his libertine whims. Accordingly, the picture of
+Azenor the Pale, replacing that of Malborgiane, now occupied the center
+of the buckler; but, with a brazen refinement of corruption, other
+medallions, representing some of his numerous other concubines,
+surrounded the image of Azenor in token of homage.</p>
+
+<p>The equerries led by the reins the duke's chargers, vigorous horses,
+covered and caparisoned in iron, carrying pendent from<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> their saddles
+the several pieces of their master's armor. He could thus don his war
+harness when came the hour of battle, instead of supporting its
+oppressive weight during the long route. After the equerries came, led
+by black slaves taken from the Saracens, the mules and camels that were
+laden with the baggage and provisions of the duke. If hunger, thirst and
+fatigue decimated the masses, the noble Crusaders, thanks to their
+wealth, almost always escaped privations. One of William's camels was
+loaded with several bags of citron and large pouches filled with wine
+and with water,&mdash;inestimable commodities in a journey over the deserts.</p>
+
+<p>About three hundred men-at-arms constituted the cavalcade of the Duke of
+Aquitaine. These cavaliers, the only survivors of a thousand warriors
+who departed on the Crusade, now habituated to battle, inured to fatigue
+and bronzed by the sun of Syria, had long braved the dangers of the
+murderous climate. Their heavy iron armor weighed on their robust bodies
+no more than a coat of gauze. Disdain for danger, together with
+ferocity, was depicted on their savage countenances. Many among them
+bore from the pommels of their saddles, as bloody trophies, some Saracen
+head freshly severed, and suspended from the single lock of hair that
+Mohammedans keep at the top of their skulls. The cavaliers of the duke
+were armed with strong ash or aspen-tree lances ornamented with
+streaming bannerets, and double-edged long swords, besides a battle axe
+or a spiked mace hanging from their saddles. Oval bucklers, hauberks or
+steel coats-of-arms, braces, greaves, iron jambards,&mdash;of such was their
+armor. The troop was rapidly riding through the bands of stragglers,
+when a white slender hand parted the curtains of the litter beside which
+rode the duke, and a voice was heard calling:</p>
+
+<p>"William, I am thirsty, let me have some water!"</p>
+
+<p>"Azenor wishes to refresh herself!," said the noble Crusader reining in
+his horse and turning to Walter the Pennyless. "Fetch some water for my
+mistress. I know woman's impatience.<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a> Besides, the lips must not be
+allowed to languish that ask for a fresh drink or a warm kiss!"</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur duke, I shall fetch the drink, do you take care of the kiss,"
+retorted the adventurer, turning his horse's head toward the baggage,
+while, stooping down on his horse, the duke pushed his head under the
+curtain.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, William, only the other day my lips were white and frozen. The fire
+of your kisses has returned to them their reddish hue."</p>
+
+<p>"Which proves that I can perform as great prodigies as you, my beautiful
+witch."</p>
+
+<p>"You quit giving me that name, William. It recalls the days I spent in
+the turret of Neroweg Worse than a Wolf, whom I execrate,&mdash;days of shame
+and trial to me, and whose memory haunts me."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are well revenged for those days of shame. Count Neroweg is now
+poorer than the lowest of his serfs as a result of his losses at the
+gaming tables of Joppa where he met such consummate gamblers that they
+won from him five thousand gold besans, his silver plate, his baggage,
+his horses, his arms and even his sword. By Satan! I imagine I see that
+Neroweg, that Worse than a Wolf, that Count of Plouernel, so rudely
+plucked at the start of his Crusade, fighting with an old cap on for
+helmet, a stick for a lance, and for charger an ass, a goat or good
+Palestine mastiff!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's drop that sad topic, and talk about yourself, who have been the
+dream of my youth. Now that I am yours, I should feel happy, and yet my
+heart is cruelly tormented. Your inconstancy makes me despair. I am
+dying with jealousy. Can it be that that infamous Perrette the Ribald
+has her share of your caresses?"</p>
+
+<p>"What a frisky and bold girl that Perrette is! After the siege of
+Antioch, cup in hand, her hair to the breeze&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Be still, William, I am jealous of her!"<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Poor Ribald! She must have died on the route. She never turned up again
+after that moment."</p>
+
+<p>"I could have strangled her with my hands, and Yolande, also!"</p>
+
+<p>"A ravishing girl! What a beautiful shape! A skin of satin! One
+imagines, seeing her, the Diana of old resurrected!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are pitiless!" replied Azenor with a tremulous voice. "I hate those
+two women."</p>
+
+<p>"Let others conquer Jerusalem! As to me, I'm satisfied with conquering
+German, Saxon, Bohemian, Hungarian, Wallachian, Moldavian, Bulgarian,
+Greek, Byzantine, Saracen, Syrian, Moorish and negro beauties. Yes, by
+Venus! If I am anxious to enter Jerusalem, it is for the purpose of
+capturing the handsomest of the Arabian virgins."</p>
+
+<p>"You bold and debauched fellow, it is not an only woman I have to fear
+for a rival! I am crazy for this man! Woe is me!"</p>
+
+<p>"In order to appease your anger, I shall confide to you that there is a
+whole race your jealousy has nothing to apprehend from. Heavens and
+earth! the mere sight of a woman of that one breed would make me as
+chaste as a saint, and would turn your lover into another St. Anthony!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of what race are you speaking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of the Jews!" answered the Duke of Aquitaine with a look of disgust.
+"Oh, when I had all the Jews and Jewesses exterminated from my
+seigniories, not one woman of that accursed species escaped the torture,
+and death!"</p>
+
+<p>"Whence do you gather such a rage against those wretched people? What
+harm have they done you? You have shown yourself cruel towards them,"
+said Azenor the Pale with a slight tremor in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Blood of Christ! See me take a Jewess for mistress! a Jewess!" replied
+the duke, trembling anew. An instant later, wishing no doubt to
+disengage himself from the thoughts that haunted him, William cried out
+joyfully: "To the devil with the Jews,<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> and long live Love! A sweet
+kiss, my charmer! A conversation on those infernal people leaves me an
+after-taste of sulphur and brimstone, as if I had tasted the kitchen of
+Satan! Let mine be the ambrosia of your kisses, of your passionate
+caresses, my loving one!"</p>
+
+<p>A few distant cries and a tumult that broke out among the duke's
+men-at-arms interrupted his conversation with Azenor. He turned his
+head, and saw Walter the Pennyless riding towards him, holding a small
+vermillion cup in the hand that was free from his horse's bridle. "What
+noise is that?" asked the duke, taking the cup and passing it to Azenor.</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur duke, at the moment when your black slaves let down a pouch of
+water to fill this cup, into which I had first pressed the juice of two
+citrons and the sugar of one of the reeds found in this country and the
+marrow of which is as sweet as honey, the stragglers gathered around.
+'Water! Water! I die of thirst!' cried some; 'My wife and children are
+dying for want!' cried others. By my sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith,
+never did frogs at a mid-summer drought croak more frightfully than
+those scamps. But some of your men-at-arms soon put an end to the
+frightful croaking, by laying about with their lances. The impudence of
+that rag-tag and bob-tail crowd is inconceivable! 'Where are those clear
+fountains that you promised us at our departure from Gaul?' they yelled
+in my ears; 'where are the refreshing shades?'"</p>
+
+<p>"And what answer did you make, my merry Gascon, to those ignorant
+questioners?" asked the duke laughing, while Azenor, leaning out of the
+litter, was imbibing and enjoying the contents of the little vermillion
+cup.</p>
+
+<p>"I assumed the rude voice of my friend, Cuckoo Peter, and said to those
+brutes: 'Faith is a rich fountain that refreshes the soul. You have
+faith, ye soldiers of Christ. Dare you ask where are the shady gardens?
+Is not faith, besides a fountain, also an immense tree that spreads over
+the faithful its protecting<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> branches? Rest yourselves, spread
+yourselves in that shade. Never will an earthly oak tree have afforded
+you a more delectable shelter under its leafy branches. Finally, if
+these various refreshments should not yet suffice you, then broil in the
+heat like fish under the sand!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Well answered, my worthy Gascon!" And turning to his troop, the duke
+ordered in a loud voice: "On the march, and make haste, lest the army
+capture without us the city of Marhala, where a rich booty awaits us."<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-b" id="CHAPTER_II-b"></a>CHAPTER II.<br /><br />
+SERF AND SEIGNEUR.</h3>
+
+<p>The cloud of dust raised by the troop of the Duke of Aquitaine was lost
+at a distance in a burning mist, whose reddish vapors were invading the
+horizon. Those among the stragglers who had resisted the fatigue, a
+consuming thirst, or painful wounds, followed haltingly, at great
+distances from one another, the road to Marhala, marked with so much
+human débris, above which flocks of vultures, for a moment frightened
+away, again leisurely flapped their wings. The last group of the
+stragglers had disappeared in the whirlwind of dust raised by the train,
+when three living creatures, a man, a woman and a child&mdash;Fergan, Joan
+the Hunchback and Colombaik&mdash;were left alone in the midst of the desert.
+Colombaik, dying with thirst, was stretched upon the sand beside his
+mother, whose sore feet, wrapped in blood-clotted rags, could no longer
+support her. On his knees beside them, his back turned to the sun,
+Fergan sought to shade his wife and child with his body. Not far from
+them, the corpses of a man and woman were in sight. An hour before the
+woman had succumbed to the agonies of childbirth, bringing forth a still
+child. The little being lay at the feet of its mother, almost shapeless,
+and already blackened and shriveled by the fiery sun. The man had been
+killed by the blow of a lance of one of the duke's men-at-arms for
+having tried to capture one of the water pouches.</p>
+
+<p>Joan the Hunchback, seated beside Colombaik, whose head she held upon
+her knees, wept as she muttered: "Do you no longer hear me, dear heart?
+Do you not answer me?" The tears of the poor woman left their furrows on
+the dust-covered face of the child as they dropped, and ran down his
+cheeks to<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> the corners of his parched lips. His eyes half shut, and
+feeling his face bathed in his mother's tears, Colombaik carried his
+fingers mechanically towards his cheeks and his mouth, as if seeking to
+quench his thirst with the maternal tears. "Oh!" muttered Joan,
+observing the motions of her child, "Oh, if but my blood could recall
+you to life!" And, struck by the idea, she said to the quarryman:
+"Fergan, take your knife and open one of my veins; we may be able to
+save the child!"</p>
+
+<p>"I was myself thinking of letting him drink blood," answered Fergan;
+"but I am robuster than you&mdash;" and the serf stopped short, interrupted
+by the sound of a great flapping of wings above his head. He felt the
+air agitated around him, raised his eyes and saw an enormous brown
+vulture, its neck and head stripped of feathers, letting itself heavily
+down upon the corpse of the still-born child, seize the little body
+between its talons, and, carrying off its prey, rise into space emitting
+a prolonged cry. Joan and her husband, for a moment forgetful of their
+own agonies, followed with frightened eyes the circulating flight of the
+vulture, when the serf descried, approaching from afar, a pilgrim
+mounted on an ass.</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan," said Joan to the quarryman, whose eyes were fastened on the
+pilgrim, as he drew nearer and nearer, "Fergan, weakened as you are, if
+you lose blood for our child, you will perhaps die. I could not survive
+you. Who, then, would protect Colombaik? You can still walk and carry
+him on your shoulders. As to me, I am beyond proceeding. My bleeding
+feet refuse to carry me. Let me sacrifice myself for our child. You will
+then dig me a grave in the sand, that I be not eaten up by the vultures
+or the wild beasts."</p>
+
+<p>Instead of answering his wife, Fergan said to her sharply: "Joan, spread
+yourself on the ground; do not budge; pretend to be dead, as I shall. We
+are saved!" Saying which the serf threw himself down flat on his stomach
+beside his wife. Already the heavy breathing of the pilgrim's donkey was
+heard approaching.<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a> Though prodded, the beast moved slowly and with
+great effort, its legs sinking up to the knees in the sand. Its master,
+a man of tall and robust stature, was clad in a tattered brown robe,
+that fell to his feet, shod in sandals. In order to protect himself
+against the heat of the sun, he had drawn over his head like a cowl the
+tippet of his robe, which was sprinkled over with shells and bore the
+red cross of the Crusader on the left shoulder. From the donkey's
+pack-saddle hung a knap-sack, together with a large pouch of water.</p>
+
+<p>While drawing near the corpses of the man and the woman whose new-born
+child had just been carried off by the vulture, the pilgrim, speaking to
+himself, said in a low voice: "Dead bodies everywhere! The road to
+Marhala is paved with corpses!" Saying this he arrived near the place
+where Joan and Fergan lay motionless on the sand. "And still more dead
+bodies!" muttered the pilgrim, turning his head aside, and he kicked his
+mule with both heels to hasten its pace. Hardly had he gone a few steps,
+when, rising and springing forward with one bound, Fergan jumped on the
+crupper of the donkey, seized the traveler by the shoulders, threw him
+back and on the ground, and, placing both his knees on the pilgrim's
+chest, held him down while hurriedly calling: "Joan, there is a full
+pouch at the donkey's saddle, take it quick, and give our child to
+drink!" The courageous mother was not able to walk, but dragging herself
+on her knees and hands as far as the donkey, which had stood still after
+its master was thrown down, she succeeded in unfastening the pouch, and,
+weeping with joy she returned to her child, again dragging herself on
+her knees with the help of one hand while holding the pouch with the
+other, muttering: "Provided it is not too late, my God, and that our
+child can be recalled to life!"</p>
+
+<p>While Joan hastened to give her child to drink in the hope of plucking
+him from the claws of death, Fergan was engaged in a violent struggle
+with the traveler, whose traits he could not distinguish, the tippet of
+the latter's robe having wound itself<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> completely around his head. As
+robust as the quarryman, this man made violent efforts to extricate
+himself from the embrace of the serf. "I mean you no harm," Fergan was
+saying to him, continuing to struggle with his adversary. "My child is
+dying of thirst! you have in your pouch a precious beverage; I shall
+take it in the knowledge that you would have answered with a refusal,
+had I requested you for a few drops of the water that it contains."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that I have not a single weapon to kill this dog who steals away my
+water!" groaned the pilgrim while redoubling his efforts to disengage
+himself. "In a minute I would have killed you; I would have cut you to
+pieces, vagabond!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know this voice!" cried out Fergan, and brusquely pulling aside the
+folds of the tippet that covered the face of the traveler, the serf
+remained dumb with astonishment. Under him lay Neroweg, Worse than a
+Wolf!</p>
+
+<p>The seigneur of Plouernel profiting by that moment of confusion, freed
+himself from Fergan's hold, rose, and thinking only of his pouch of
+water, cast his eyes about him. He saw a few steps away Joan, radiant
+with joy, yet tearful, on her knees near Colombaik, and holding the
+pouch which the child pressed with his two little hands, while he drank
+with avidity. He seemed to regain life in the measure that he slaked his
+consuming thirst.</p>
+
+<p>"That bastard is drinking up my water!" Neroweg yelled with fury. "In
+this desert, water is life," and he was about to rush upon Joan and her
+child when the quarryman, recovering from his stupor, seized the Count
+of Plouernel between his robust arms: "We are not here in your
+seigniory; you covered with iron and I naked! Here we are man to man,
+body to body! In the midst of this desert we are equals, Neroweg! I
+shall have your life, or you shall have mine. Fight for it!"</p>
+
+<p>A terrific struggle ensued, in the midst of the cries of Joan and
+Colombaik, who trembled for husband and for father. The seigneur of
+Plouernel was a man of redoubtable strength; but the serf, although
+weakened with privation and fatigue, drew<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> energy from his hatred of his
+implacable enemy. A Gallic serf, Fergan was struggling with a descendant
+of the Nerowegs! The combatants swayed forward and back, silent,
+desperate, breast to breast, face to face, livid, terrible, foaming with
+rage, palpitating with a homicidal ardor, furiously pressing each other,
+under a brassy sky, in the midst of thick clouds of dust raised by their
+own feet. On their knees, their hands joined in prayer, passing
+alternately from hope to fear, Joan and Colombaik dared not approach the
+two athletes, who ever and anon reappeared through the cloud of dust,
+frightful to behold. Suddenly the thud of a heavy fall was heard,
+simultaneously with the exhausted voice of Fergan: "Woe is me! Oh, my
+wife! Oh, my child!" Fergan lay prone upon the sand, vainly battling
+against Neroweg, who, having gained the upper hand, sought to strangle
+his adversary. He held him under his left knee while raising himself by
+his right leg that he stretched out with a violent effort. At the cries
+of despair, "My wife! My child!" emitted by the serf, Colombaik ran to
+his father, threw himself flat on the ground and clinging to the bare
+and stiff leg of Neroweg, the child bit him in the calf. The sharp and
+unexpected pain drew from the Count a scream, and he turned back sharply
+towards Colombaik. Fergan, thus freed from the grasp of his seigneur,
+lost no time to spring upon his feet, and now keeping the advantage,
+succeeded in throwing Neroweg down. Calling his son to his aid, the serf
+managed to pinion the arms of the Count with a long cord that held his
+own robe at the waist, and to bind his legs with the fastenings of his
+own sandals. Feeling his strength exhausted by this desperate combat,
+Fergan, ready to faint, covered with perspiration, threw himself on the
+sand beside Joan and his son. These hastened to approach to his lips the
+pouch in which there still was some water left, while the seigneur of
+Plouernel, breathing fast and broken, shot at the quarryman looks of
+impotent rage.</p>
+
+<p>"We are saved!" said Fergan when he had slaked his thirst and felt his
+strength returning. "By husbanding the water still<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> left in this pouch,
+we shall have enough to reach Marhala with. I have a provision of dates
+in my knap-sack. The ass will serve you and the child to ride on, my
+poor Joan. I can still walk. As to the seigneur of Plouernel," Fergan
+proceeded with a somber look, "he will soon need neither provision nor
+conveyance!" And rising to his feet, while his wife and child followed
+his movements with uneasy eyes, the serf approached Neroweg. The
+seigneur, still stretched upon the sand, writhed in his bands, tugging
+to burst them; then, exhausted by his idle efforts, he lay motionless.
+"Do you recognize me?" asked the serf, crossing his arms on his breast,
+and looking down upon the fettered seigneur of Plouernel; "Do you
+recognize me? In Gaul you were my seigneur, I your serf. I am the
+grandson of Den-Brao the Mason, whom your grandfather, Neroweg IV,
+killed of hunger in the subterranean donjon of Plouernel. I am a
+relative of Bezenecq the Rich, who died under the torture, in the
+presence of his own daughter, herself going crazy with fear, and dying
+at the very moment when I was rescuing her from her cell. I had to dig
+her grave among the rocks that lie about the issue of the secret passage
+from your castle."</p>
+
+<p>"By the tomb of the Saviour! Is it you, vagabond, who penetrated to the
+turret of Azenor the Pale? You helped her in her flight?"</p>
+
+<p>"I went to look in your den for my child, whom you see yonder."</p>
+
+<p>"Woe is me! I am alone in this desert, without arms, bound hand and
+foot, at the mercy of this vile serf. How comes this dog to have
+survived this long journey? A curse upon him!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have survived in order to avenge upon you the wrongs you have
+perpetrated upon my kin. This is not the first time that a descendant of
+Joel the Gaul locks horns with a descendant of Neroweg the Frank. Before
+us, in the course of centuries that rolled by, the ancestors of us two
+have met arms in hand. Fate so wills it. It is a war to death between
+our two races. The struggle, mayhap, will continue yet ages to come.
+Neroweg, I<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> am the evil genius of your race, as you and yours are the
+persecutors of mine."</p>
+
+<p>"That I should have to meet this miserable runaway serf, and find myself
+in his power in the midst of a Syrian desert!" muttered the seigneur of
+Plouernel, a prey to superstitious terror. "Jesus, my God, have mercy
+upon me! I am a great sinner! Mighty Saint Martin, come to my help!"</p>
+
+<p>"Neroweg," proceeded Fergan, after a moment's reflection, "the heat
+grows suffocating, despite the sun's being veiled behind that reddish
+mist that is slowly rising heavenward. My wife and I shall not proceed
+on our journey until the moon rises. You and I shall have time to talk
+matters over, before taking leave of each other forever."</p>
+
+<p>The seigneur of Plouernel contemplated the serf with a mixture of
+astonishment, defiance and terror. Fergan exchanged a look with Joan,
+and sat down on the sand at a little distance from Neroweg. Indeed, the
+atmosphere was becoming so stifling that the travelers, panting for
+breath, and streaming in perspiration, yet, without making any motion,
+would have been unable to resume their journey.</p>
+
+<p>"In Gaul, at your seigniory, you were at once indicter, judge and
+executioner over your serfs. To-day, my seigniory is this desert! and
+you my serf! In my turn I shall be the indicter, the judge and the
+executioner. The indictment I shall draw up will be the recital of my
+journey. You may then, perhaps, understand the horror that you,
+seigneurs, inspire your serfs with, when you will have learned the
+dangers that we brave to escape your tyranny and enjoy a day of freedom.
+When we left your seigniory, we were three thousand Crusaders, men,
+women, or children. Our numbers increased daily. Thus, after we had
+traversed Gaul from west to east, from Anjou to Lorraine, we were more
+than sixty thousand when we crossed over into Germany. Other troops of
+Crusaders, no less numerous than ours, and also proceeding from Gaul, to
+the north from Flanders, to the south from Burgundy or Provence, struck
+like ourselves the<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> route for the Orient. After traversing Hungary and
+Bohemia, skirting the Adriatic to Wallachia, and following the banks of
+the Danube, we arrived at Constantinople. Thence we entered Asia Minor,
+and from Asia Minor we made into Palestine, where we now are. What a
+journey! For poor serfs, barefooted and in rags, the road is long. To
+tramp fifteen hundred leagues in order to escape the oppression of the
+seigneurs! But unhappy serfs that we are! We flee the seigneurs, and the
+seigneurs pursue us into Palestine. The seigneur Baudoin seizes Edessa,
+and there you have a 'Count of Edessa'; Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, takes
+Tripoli, and there you have a 'Prince of Tripoli.' When we shall have
+arrived in Galilee, in Nazareth, in Jerusalem, we may live to see a
+'King of Jerusalem,' a 'Baron of Galilee,' a 'Marquis of Nazareth!'&mdash;a
+full seigniorial hierarchy."</p>
+
+<p>"This miserable serf has gone crazy," muttered the seigneur of Plouernel
+to himself. "He may, perhaps, forget to kill me."</p>
+
+<p>"Our troop left Gaul, as I said, sixty thousand strong, under the lead
+of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. On the road the inoffensive
+inhabitants were pillaged, ravaged and massacred to the cry of 'God
+wills it!' Deceived on the length of the journey and in their ignorance,
+hardly had the Crusaders left Gaul, when, at the sight of each new town
+they asked: 'Is that Jerusalem?' 'Not yet,' answered Cuckoo Peter, 'we
+must march on!' And we marched. At the start it was a joy, a delirium, a
+triumphal procession! Serfs and villeins were the masters. People fled
+and trembled at our approach. The 'soldiers of Christ' sacked or burned
+the towns, set fire to the harvests, killed the cattle that they could
+not drag along, slaughtered old men and children, raped the women and
+then cut them to pieces, heaped up booty, and from city to city repeated
+the question: 'Is not that Jerusalem, either?' 'Not yet!' answered
+Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. 'Not yet! March on, march on!'
+And we marched. The strangers, at first taken by surprise, allowed
+themselves to be pillaged and massacred by the 'soldiers of the faith.'
+But, soon apprised by report of the ravages committed<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a> by the Crusaders
+and of their ferocity, these were fought with determination, and so
+effectively were they cut down, that our troop, consisting of more than
+sixty thousand people at the start, numbered at its arrival in
+Constantinople only five or six thousand survivors. During the journey
+through Asia Minor and Palestine, that number was reduced by one-half
+through battles, the pest, hunger, thirst and fatigue. Among the
+survivors, some, seized and kept for serfs of the new seigniories of
+Edessa, Antioch or Tripoli, have been forced to cultivate these lands
+for the seigneurs under the killing sun of the Holy Land. Others, and I
+am of the number, preferring freedom to renewed servitude, risked their
+lives in order to continue their march to Jerusalem. Some expect to find
+considerable booty in the Holy City; others imagine they will gain
+Paradise by rescuing the tomb of Christ. Of them all, I alone wish to
+reach Jerusalem, in order to see the places where, now a thousand and
+odd years ago, my ancestress, Genevieve, witnessed the death of the
+young man of Nazareth. This is how was accomplished the pilgrimage of
+those thousands of serfs and villeins, whose bones mark a long trail
+from the frontiers of Gaul to this place. Fatality drove them. They were
+forced to move on, or perish on the road. Thus, myself, fleeing from
+your seigniory to escape your gaolers, would but have been exposed to
+renewed servitude had I stopped in Gaul. Beyond the frontiers, to
+separate myself from the Crusaders, and take my chances with my wife and
+child among nations in arms against the 'soldiers of the cross,' would
+have been insanity. There was no choice but to march, and march again.
+Moreover, miserable as it was, yet our vagrant life was no worse than
+the life of serfdom. That's how it happened, Neroweg, that we meet here
+in the desert where you are mine, just as in your seigniory I was
+yours,&mdash;at my will and mercy, in life and death. Do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>The seigneur of Plouernel muttered in a hollow voice, expressive of
+concentrated rage: "Oh, to perish by the hand of a vile serf!"<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you shall die. But I mean to make your dying hour a long-drawn
+torture. The vain-glory, the cupidity, the ambition of founding
+seigniories in the Orient, the hope of buying back your forfeitures and
+of escaping from the claws of the devil have driven you seigneurs to the
+Crusade! Oh, how stupid you were! How many of you, haughty seigneurs,
+after having sold or mortgaged your lands to the Church, are not this
+hour ruined by gaming and debauchery, and reduced to beg your way! How
+many have not been massacred or abandoned by your serfs a few miles from
+your seigniories! How many of you have not died of the pest or under the
+scimiter of the Saracen! Let this thought embitter your dying hour,
+Neroweg, you are about to die like a beggar midst the sands of Syria,
+while the Bishop of Nantes, your mortal enemy, having slipped through
+your fingers, now enjoys the largest part of your domains! At this hour
+you groan with a rage that is impotent, and my vengeance begins."</p>
+
+<p>"A curse upon that Italian priest whom I captured with the Bishop of
+Nantes! That Jeronimo turned my head speaking to me of the Crusade. He
+made me fear for my salvation, pointing out that the hand of God weighed
+heavy upon me by the death of one of my sons, killed by his own
+brother!"</p>
+
+<p>"Both your sons are dead, Neroweg! I myself felled the fratricide with a
+blow of my iron bar at the moment he was about to do violence to the
+daughter of Bezenecq the Rich! Both the wolves and the whelps of the
+seigniories are beasts of prey and of carnage. They must be
+exterminated!"</p>
+
+<p>"My son Gonthram did not die, and Jeronimo promised me, in the name of
+God, that if I departed for the Crusade and let the Bishop of Nantes
+free, I would insure the recovery of my son. Oh, heart-broken at the
+sight of one son dead and the other dying, I was bereft of reasoning! I
+obeyed the priest and departed for Palestine,&mdash;to my greater undoing.
+Bitterly I repent the day!"</p>
+
+<p>Fergan, struck at the tenderness that the seigneur of Plouernel<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> had not
+been able to suppress at the mention of his son Gonthram, said to him:
+"You love your son?"</p>
+
+<p>Neroweg shot with his eyes daggers of hatred at the serf as he lay
+stretched out on the sand at the latter's feet. Two tears rolled down
+his savage face. But wishing to conceal his emotions from Fergan, he
+turned his head brusquely aside. Joan and Colombaik, having drawn near
+the quarryman, listened in silence to his dialogue with Neroweg. While
+the seigneur sought to hide his tears, the woman saw them and said in a
+whisper to her husband: "Despite his wickedness, that seigneur weeps at
+the thought of his son. His sorrow affects me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father," put in Colombaik, joining his hands, "if he weeps, be you
+merciful! Do not harm him!"</p>
+
+<p>The serf remained silent a moment, then, addressing his seigneur said:
+"You are moved at the thought of your child, and yet you meant to have
+mine strangled. Do you imagine a serf has not, like you, a father's
+heart?"</p>
+
+<p>Neroweg answered with an outburst of sarcastic laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you laughing about?"</p>
+
+<p>"I laughed as I would if I heard an ass, or other beast of burden, talk
+about his 'father's heart,'" rejoined the seigneur of Plouernel. "You
+vagabond, were I not in your power now, I would kill you for the vile
+dog that you are!"</p>
+
+<p>"In his eyes a serf has no more soul than a beast of burden!" repeated
+the quarryman. "Yes, this man speaks in the sincerity of his savage
+pride. He weeps for his own child. After all he is human. And yet, what
+is a serf to him? An animal without heart, reason or feeling! But why
+should I wonder? Neroweg cannot choose but share with his likes that
+opinion of our animal abjectness. Our craven attitude confirms it. Our
+conquerors are thousands, while we, the conquered, number millions, and
+yet we patiently bear the yoke. Indeed, never did more docile cattle
+march under the whip of a master, or stretch the neck to the butcher's
+knife!" After a moment's silence, Fergan resumed: "Listen, Neroweg! You
+are in my power, disarmed<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a> and fettered. I am about to fulfil a great
+act of justice by braining you with my cudgel like a wolf caught in a
+trap. It is the death that you deserve. Had I a sword, I would not use
+it on you. But what you have just said has made me think and somewhat
+spoils my pleasure. I admit it; by reason of our brutishness and
+cowardice, we deserve to be looked upon and treated like cattle by you,
+our seigneurs. 'Tis true, we are as craven as you are ferocious, but if
+our cravenness explains your criminal conduct, it does not excuse it.
+So, you shall die, Neroweg! Yes, in the name of the horrid ills that
+your race has made mine suffer, you shall die! I only wish to keep a
+memento of you, a descendant of the Nerowegs," and Fergan leaned forward
+over the seigneur of Plouernel. The latter, believing his last hour had
+come, could not restrain a cry of anguish. But the serf only pulled from
+Neroweg's robe one of the shells that it was sprinkled with, as symbols
+of a pious pilgrimage. For an instant Fergan contemplated the shell with
+a pensive mien. Joan and her son, following with astonished and uneasy
+looks the movements of the quarryman, saw him raise his ragged kilt,
+that only half-covered his thighs, and detach a long belt of coarse
+cloth that was wound around his waist. Inside the belt the quarryman
+carried several pious mementos, that had been handed down from
+generation to generation in his family, and which, before finally
+marching away with the troop of the Crusaders, he had taken with him. To
+them he added the shell he had just pulled from the robe of Neroweg VI.
+Refastening his belt, the serf cried out: "And now, justice and
+vengeance, Neroweg! I have accused you, judged and condemned you. You
+shall now die!" Looking around for his heavy and knotted staff, he
+grasped the massive implement with both his powerful hands, while his
+wife and child implored aloud: "Mercy!" The serf, however, throwing
+himself upon the seigneur of Plouernel planted one foot on the latter's
+breast: "No, no mercy! Did the Nerowegs know mercy for my grandfather,
+for Bezenecq the Rich, or for his daughter?" Saying which, the quarryman
+raised the cudgel over the head<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> of Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf, who,
+gnashing his teeth, faced death without blanching. It would have been
+over then and there with the seigneur of Plouernel had not Joan embraced
+the knees of her husband, imploring him aloud: "For the love of your
+son, have mercy! Without the water that you took from this seigneur,
+Colombaik would have expired in the desert!"</p>
+
+<p>Fergan yielded to the prayers of his wife. Despite the justice of the
+reprisal, it went against his nature to kill an unarmed enemy. He threw
+his staff far away; remained for an instant gloomy and silent and then
+said to his seigneur: "It is said that despite your crimes, you and your
+likes at times remain true to your vows. Swear to me, by the salvation
+of your soul and by your faith as a knight, to respect from this moment
+the life of my wife, of my child and of myself. I do not fear you so
+long as we are alone in this desert, but if I meet you at Marhala or
+Jerusalem with the other seigneurs of the Crusade, I and mine will be at
+your mercy. You could order us burned or hanged. Swear that you will
+respect our lives, I shall then have mercy upon you, and set you free."</p>
+
+<p>"An oath to you, vile serf! To soil my word by passing it to you!" cried
+out Neroweg, and he added with another outburst of sardonic laughter:
+"As well might I give my word as a Catholic and a knight to the ass or
+any other beast of burden!"</p>
+
+<p>"This is too much!" yelled Fergan exasperated, while he ran to pick up
+his club. "By the bones of my father, you shall die!"</p>
+
+<p>At the very moment, however, when the serf had anew seized the cudgel,
+Joan, clinging to his arm said with terror: "Do you hear yonder growing
+noise?... It approaches.... It rumbles like thunder!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father," cried out Colombaik, no less horrified than his mother, "look
+yonder! The sky is red as blood!"</p>
+
+<p>The serf raised his eyes, and, struck with the strange and startling
+spectacle, forgot all about Neroweg. The orb of the sun, already near
+the horizon, seemed enormous and of purple hue. Its rays disappeared at
+intervals in the midst of a burning<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a> mist which it lighted with a dull
+fire, and whose reflection suddenly crimsoned the desert and the air.
+The frightful spectacle seemed to be seen through some transparent glass
+tinted with a coppery red. A furious gale, still distant, swept over the
+desert and carried with its dull and prolonged moanings a breath as
+scorching as the exhalations of a furnace. Flocks of vultures fled at
+full tilt before the approaching hurricane, scurrying over the ground or
+dropping down motionless, palpitating, or uttering plaintive squeaks.
+Suddenly the sun, ever more completely eclipsed, disappeared behind an
+immense cloud of reddish sand that veiled the desert and the sky, and
+that advanced with the swiftness of lightning, chasing before it the
+jackals and the lions, that roared with fear, and rushed by,
+terror-stricken, a few steps from Fergan and his family.</p>
+
+<p>"We are lost! This is a sand-spout!" cried out the quarryman.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had the serf uttered these words of despair when he found himself
+enveloped by a sand cloud as fine as ashes, and dense as a fog. The
+mobile soil, hollowed, thrown up and up-turned by the irresistible force
+of the sand-spout, opened at the feet of Fergan, who, with wife and
+child, disappeared under a sand wave. The gale furrowed, beat about and
+tossed up the sands of the desert as a tempest furrows, beats about, and
+tosses up the waters of the ocean.<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-b" id="CHAPTER_III-b"></a>CHAPTER III.<br /><br />
+THE EMIR'S PALACE.</h3>
+
+<p>The city of Marhala, like all others in the Orient, was crossed by
+narrow and sinuous streets, bordered with whitewashed houses, bearing
+narrow windows. Here and there the dome of a mosque or the top of a palm
+tree, planted in the middle of an interior court-yard, broke the
+uniformity of the straight lines formed by the terraces, that surmounted
+all the houses. Since about fifteen days, and after a murderous siege,
+the city of Marhala had fallen into the power of the army of the
+Crusaders, commanded by Bohemond, Prince of Taranto. The ramparts of the
+city, half torn down by the engines of war, presented at several places
+only a heap of ruins, from which a pestilential odor escaped, due to the
+decomposition of the Saracen bodies that were buried under the débris of
+the walls. The gate of Agra was one of the points most violently
+attacked by a column of Crusaders under the order of William IX, Duke of
+Aquitaine, and also most stubbornly defended by the garrison. Not far
+from the spot rose the palace of the Emir of Marhala, killed at the
+siege. According to the manner of the Crusaders, William had his
+standard raised over the door of the palace, of which he took
+possession.</p>
+
+<p>Night was falling. Maria, a large wrinkled old woman, with a beaked
+nose, protruding chin, and clad in a long Saracen pelisse, sat crouched
+upon a kind of divan, furnished with cushions, in one of the lower halls
+of the Emir's palace. She had just issued the order to some invisible
+person: "Let the creature come in, I wish to examine her!"</p>
+
+<p>The creature that came in was Perrette the Ribald, the mistress of
+Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. The young woman's complexion, now tanned by
+the sun, rendered still more striking the<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> whiteness of her teeth, the
+coral tint of her lips and the fire of her eyes. The expression of her
+pretty face preserved its blithe effrontery. Her tattered costume was of
+both sexes. A turban of an old yellow-and-red material partially covered
+her thick and curly hair; a waistcoat or caftan of pale green and open
+embroidery, the spoils of a Saracen and twice too large for her, served
+her for a robe. Held at the waist by a strip of cloth, the robe exposed
+the naked legs of the Ribald, together with her dusty feet, shod in
+shoddy sandals. She carried at the end of a cane a small bundle of
+clothes. Upon entering the hall, Perrette said to the old woman
+deliberately: "I happened on the market place when an auction sale of
+booty was being conducted. An old woman, after eying me a long time,
+said to me: 'You seem to be the right kind of a girl. Would you like to
+exchange your rags for pretty clothes, and lead a merry life at the
+palace? Come with me.' I answered the old woman: 'March, I follow!
+Feastings and palaces are quite to my taste.'"</p>
+
+<p>"You look to me to be a wide-awake customer."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm eighteen years old. My name is Perrette the Ribald. That's what I
+am."</p>
+
+<p>"Your name is written on your brazen brow. But are you good company? Not
+quarrelsome and not jealous?"</p>
+
+<p>"The more I look upon you, honest matron, the surer I am of having seen
+you before. Did you not keep at Antioch the famous tavern of the Cross
+of Salvation?"</p>
+
+<p>"You do not deceive yourself, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you must have made many a bag of gold besans in your holy brothel."</p>
+
+<p>"What were you doing in Antioch, my pretty child?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was in love ... with the King!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are bantering, my friend, there was no king in the Crusade."</p>
+
+<p>"You forget the King of the Vagabonds."</p>
+
+<p>"What! The chief of those bandits, of those skinners, of those eaters of
+human flesh?"<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Before he became the king of the bandits, I loved him under the modest
+name of Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. Oh, what has become of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must have left him?"</p>
+
+<p>"One day I made a slip. I committed an infidelity towards him. I do not
+plume myself upon my constancy. I left the King of the Vagabonds for a
+duke."</p>
+
+<p>"A duke of beggars?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! A real duke. The handsomest of all the Crusaders, William IX."</p>
+
+<p>"You were the mistress of the Duke of Aquitaine?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was in Antioch, after the siege. William IX was crossing the
+market-place on horseback. He smiled, and reached his hand out to me. I
+placed my foot on the tip of his boot, with one jump I landed in front
+of his saddle, and he took me to his palace," and seeming to recall some
+droll incident, Perrette laughed out aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you laughing at some of your tricks?" asked the old shrew.</p>
+
+<p>"On that same day when the Duke of Aquitaine took me on his horse, a
+very beautiful woman went by in a litter. At the sight of her he turned
+his horse and followed the litter. I, fearing he would drop me for the
+other woman, said to him: 'What a treasure of beauty is that Rebecca the
+Jewess, that has just gone by in a litter.' Ha! ha! ha! old lady,"
+Perrette added, breaking out anew into roars of laughter. "Thanks to
+that lucky slander, my debauché turned about and galloped off to his own
+palace, fleeing from the litter no less frightened than if he had seen
+the devil. And so it happened that, at least for that one day, I kept my
+duke, and we spent the night together."</p>
+
+<p>"I see. And what became of your king?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the same evening of that adventure, he left Antioch with his
+vagabonds on an expedition. I have not seen him since."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my little one, in default of your king, you will find your duke
+back. You are here in the house of William."<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Of the Duke of Aquitaine?"</p>
+
+<p>"After the siege of the city, William took possession of the Emir's
+palace. He gives to-night a feast to several seigneurs, the flower of
+the Crusade. Almost all old customers of my tavern in Antioch: Robert
+Courte-Heuse, Duke of Normandy; Heracle, seigneur of Polignac; Bohemond,
+Prince of Taranto; Gerhard, Count of Roussillon; Burchard, seigneur of
+Montmorency; William, sire of Sabran; Radulf, seigneur of Haut-Poul, and
+many more merry blades, without counting the gentlemen of the cloth, and
+the tonsured lovers of pretty girls, of Cyprus wine and of dice."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it for this one feast, you old mackerel, that you are engaging me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You will remain in the palace until the departure of the army for
+Jerusalem, my gentle pupil and pearl of gay girls."</p>
+
+<p>The entrance of a third woman interrupted the conversation between Maria
+and Perrette, who, uttering a short cry, ran to a miserably dressed
+young girl, just let in. "You here, Yolande?"</p>
+
+<p>Yolande preserved her beauty, but her face had lost the charm of candor,
+that rendered her so touching when she and her mother implored Neroweg
+VI not to deprive them of their patrimony. The face of Yolande,
+alternately bold and gloomy, according as she brazened out or blushed at
+her degradation, at least gave token that she was conscious of her
+infamy. At sight of Perrette, who ran towards her with friendly
+eagerness, Yolande stepped back ashamed of meeting with the queen of the
+wenches. Perrette, reading on the countenance of the noble girl a
+mixture of embarrassment and disdain, said to her reproachfully: "You
+were not quite so proud when, ten leagues from Antioch, I kept you from
+dying of thirst and hunger! Oh, you put on airs! You have become
+haughty!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why did I leave Gaul?" muttered Yolande with sorrowful contrition.
+"Though reduced to misery, at least I would not have known ignominy. I
+would not have become a courtezan!<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> A curse upon you, Neroweg! By
+depriving me of the inheritance of my father, you caused my misfortune
+and shame!"</p>
+
+<p>The girl, unable to repress her tears, hid her face in her hands, while
+Maria, who had attentively examined her, said to Perrette in an
+undertone: "Oh, the pretty legs of that girl! Do you know Yolande?"</p>
+
+<p>"We left Gaul together, I on the arm of the Gibbet-cheater, Yolande at
+the crupper of her lover, Eucher. In Bohemia, Eucher was killed by the
+Bohemians who resisted us. Yolande, now a widow and alone, could not
+continue so long a journey without protection. From one protector to
+another, Yolande fell under the eyes of the handsome Duke of Aquitaine
+at Bairut in Syria. Later I found her riding on the road to Tripoli
+dying of hunger, thirst and fatigue&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And you came to my aid, Perrette," fell in Yolande, who, having dried
+her tears, overheard the words of the queen of the wenches. "You gave me
+bread and water to appease my hunger and thirst, and you saved my life."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, my children, let's not have tears," remarked the matron. "Tears
+make old faces. You shall be taken to the baths of the Emir, where are
+assembled some of the most beautiful Saracen female slaves of that
+infidel dog."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment an old woman, the same who had introduced Perrette and
+Yolande to the hall, came in roaring with laughter, and said to the
+other shrew: "Oh, Maria, what a find! A diamond in your brothel!"</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you laugh that way?"</p>
+
+<p>"A minute ago, coming back from casting my hook on the
+market-place,"&mdash;and she broke out laughing anew. Presently she
+proceeded: "And I found there&mdash;I found there&mdash;a diamond!"</p>
+
+<p>"Finish your story!"</p>
+
+<p>But the second old hag, instead of answering, disappeared for an instant
+behind the curtain that masked the door, and immediately re-appeared
+conducting Joan the Hunchback, who led by<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> the hand the little
+Colombaik, no less exhausted than herself from privations and fatigue.
+To all cruel hearts the poor woman, indeed, was a laughable sight. Her
+long, tangled hair, half tumbling over her face, fell upon her bare
+shoulders, dusty like her breast, arms and legs. Her clothing consisted
+of shreds, fastened around her waist with a band of plaited reeds, so
+that her sad deformity was exposed in all its nudity. Joan had stripped
+herself of the rags that constituted the bodice of her robe in order to
+wrap the feet of Colombaik, flayed to the quick by his long tramp across
+the burning sands. The quarryman's wife, sad and broken down, quietly
+followed the shrew, and daring not to raise her eyes, while the latter
+did not cease laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"What sort of thing is that you bring me there?" cried out the coupler.
+"What do you want to do with that monster?"</p>
+
+<p>"A first-class joke," replied the other, finally overcoming her
+hilarity. "We shall rig out this villein in some grotesque costume,
+leaving her hump well exposed, and we shall present this star of beauty
+to the noble seigneurs. They will split their sides with laughter.
+Imagine this darling in the midst of a bevy of pretty girls. Would you
+not call that a diamond?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ha, ha, ha! An excellent idea!" the matron rejoined, now laughing no
+less noisily than her assistant. "We shall place upon her head a turban
+of peacock feathers; we shall ornament her hump with all sorts of
+gew-gaws. Ha, ha! How those dear seigneurs will be amused. It will pay
+us well!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's not all, Maria. My find is doubly good. Look at this marmot. It
+is a little cupid. Everyone to his taste!"</p>
+
+<p>"He is certainly sweet, despite his leanness, and the dust that his
+features are stained with. His little face is attractive."</p>
+
+<p>Seized with compassion at the sight of Joan and her child, Yolande had
+not shared in the cruel mirth of the two shrews. But Perrette, less
+tender, had broken out into a loud roar, when, suddenly struck by a
+sudden recollection, and attentively eyeing Joan, against whom
+Colombaik, no less confused and uneasy than his mother, was cuddling
+closely, the queen of the wenches<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a> cried out: "By all the Saints of
+Paradise! Did you not inhabit in Gaul one of the villages of a
+neighboring seigniory of Anjou?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," answered the poor woman in a weak voice, "we started from there
+on the Crusade."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember a young girl and a tall scamp who wanted to carry you
+along to Palestine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember," answered Joan, regarding Perrette with astonishment; "but
+I managed to escape those wicked people."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather say those 'good people,' because the young woman was myself, and
+the tall scamp my lover, Corentin. We wanted to take you to the Holy
+Land, assuring you that you would be exhibited for money! Now, then, by
+the faith of the queen of the wenches! confess, Yolande, that I am a
+mighty prophetess!" added Perrette, turning to her companion. But the
+latter reproachfully answered her: "How have you the courage to mock a
+mother in the presence of her child!"</p>
+
+<p>These words seemed to make an impression upon Perrette. She checked her
+laughter, relapsed into a brooding silence, and seemed touched by the
+fate of Joan, while Yolande addressed the woman kindly: "Poor, dear
+woman, how did you allow yourself to be brought here with your child?
+You cannot know what place this is. You are in a house of prostitution."</p>
+
+<p>"I arrived in this city with a troop of pilgrims and Crusaders, who, by
+a miracle, escaped, like myself and son, a sand-spout that buried, a
+fortnight ago, so many travelers under the sands of the desert. I had
+sat down with my son under the shadow of a wall, exhausted with fatigue
+and hunger, when yonder woman," and Joan pointed to the shrew, "after
+long looking at me, said to me charitably: 'You seem to be very much
+tired out, you and your child. Will you follow me? I shall take you to a
+holy woman of great piety.' It was an unlooked-for piece of good luck to
+me," added Joan. "I put faith in the words of this woman, and I followed
+her hither."</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a>"Alack! You have fallen into a hateful trap. They propose to make sport
+of you," Yolande replied in a low voice. "Did you not hear those two
+shrews?"</p>
+
+<p>"I care little. I shall submit to all humiliation, all scorn, provided
+food and clothing be given to my child," rejoined Joan in accents that
+betokened both courage and resignation. "I will suffer anything upon
+condition that my poor child may rest for a while, recover himself and
+regain his health. Oh, he is now doubly dear to me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you lose his father?"</p>
+
+<p>"He remained, undoubtedly, buried in the sand," answered Joan, and like
+Colombaik, she could not restrain her tears at the memory of Fergan.
+"When the sand-spout broke over us, I felt myself blinded and
+suffocated. My first movement was to take my child in my arms. The
+ground opened under my feet and I lost consciousness. I remember nothing
+after that."</p>
+
+<p>"But how did you reach this city, poor woman?" asked the queen of the
+wenches, interested by so much sweetness and resignation. "The road is
+long across the desert, and you seem too feeble to sustain the fatigues
+of such a journey."</p>
+
+<p>"When I regained consciousness," answered Joan, "I was lying in a wagon,
+near an old man who sold provisions to the Crusaders. He took pity upon
+me and my child, having found us in a dying condition, half buried under
+the sand. Surely my husband perished. The old man told me he saw other
+victims near us when he picked us up. Unfortunately the mule to which
+the wagon of the charitable man was hitched died of fatigue ten leagues
+from Marhala. Compelled to remain on the road and to abandon the troop
+of pilgrims, our protector was killed trying to protect his provisions
+against the stragglers. They pillaged everything, but they did not harm
+us. We followed them, fearing to lose our way. I carried my child on my
+back when he found himself unable to walk. It was thus that we arrived
+in this city. It is a sad story!"</p>
+
+<p>"But your husband may yet, like you, have escaped death. Do not
+despair," observed Yolande.<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a></p>
+
+<p>"If he escaped that danger, it was probably to fall into a greater, for
+the seigneur of Plouernel&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The seigneur of Plouernel!" exclaimed Yolande interrupting Joan, "do
+you know that scoundrel?"</p>
+
+<p>"We were serfs in his seigniory. It is from the country of Plouernel
+that we departed for the Holy Land. Accident made us meet with the
+seigneur count shortly before the sand-spout burst upon us. My husband
+and he fought&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And did he not kill Neroweg?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, he yielded to my prayers."</p>
+
+<p>"What, pity for Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf!" exclaimed Yolande in an
+explosion of rage and hatred. "Oh, I am but a woman! But I would have
+stabbed him to the heart without remorse! The monster!"</p>
+
+<p>"What did he do to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He deprived me of the inheritance of my father, and, falling from shame
+to shame, I have become the companion of the queen of the wenches."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mademoiselle Yolande," remarked Perrette, returning to her cynic
+quips, "will you ever remain proud?"</p>
+
+<p>"I?" answered the young woman with a sad and bitter smile. "No, no!
+Pride is not allowed me. You are the queen. I am one of your humble
+subjects."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, my daughters!" said the matron. "The day declines. Go to
+the baths of the Emir. As to you, my beauty," proceeded the devilish
+shrew, addressing Joan, "as to you, we shall rig you up, we shall
+perfume you, and above all we shall have your hump radiate with
+matchless lustre."</p>
+
+<p>"You may do with me what you please, when you will have given my child
+wherewithal to appease his hunger and thirst. He must recover his
+strength, he must sleep. I shall not leave him one instant."</p>
+
+<p>"Be easy, my star of beauty, you shall remain at his side, nor shall
+your child want for anything. We shall pay due attention to him."<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-b" id="CHAPTER_IV-b"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br /><br />
+ORGIES OF THE CRUSADERS.</h3>
+
+<p>The interior court-yard of the palace of the Emir, of Marhala, presented
+that evening a fairy aspect. The court was a perfect square. Along the
+four sides ran a wide gallery of Moorish ogives carved with trifoil and
+supported by low pillars of rose-colored marble. Between each column and
+into the court, large vases of Oriental alabaster filled with flowers
+served as pedestals to gilded candelabras holding torches of perfumed
+wax. Mosaics of various colors ornamented the floor of the galleries.
+The ceilings and walls disappeared under white arabesques chiseled on a
+purple background. Soft silken divans reclined against the walls,
+pierced with several ogive doors that were half closed with curtains
+fringed with pearls. These doors led to the interior apartments. At each
+corner of the galleries, gilded cages with silver bars held the rarest
+birds of Arabia, on whose plumage were mirrored the glint of the ruby,
+the emerald and the azure sapphire. In the center of the court a jet of
+crystalline water shot up from a large porphyry vase, falling back in a
+brilliant spray, and producing the murmur of a perpetual cascade as the
+water overflowed into a broad basin, from whose marble rim rose another
+circle of large and gilded candelabras, similar to those along the
+galleries. This refreshing fountain, sparkling with light, served as
+central ornament to a low table that wound around the basin and was
+covered with a cloth of embroidered silk. On it glistened the
+magnificent gold and silver vessels, carried from Gaul by the Duke of
+Aquitaine, and the rich spoils taken from the Saracens: goblets and
+decanters studded with precious stones, large amphoras filled with wine
+of Cyprus and Greece, huge gold platters on which were<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a> displayed
+Ph&oelig;nician peacocks, Asiatic pheasants, quarters of Syrian antelopes
+and mutton, Byzantine hams, heads of the wild boars of Zion, and
+pyramids of fruit and confectionery. The banquet hall had for its dome
+the starry vault. The night was calm and serene; not a breath of wind
+agitated the flames of the torches.</p>
+
+<p>But the tumult of an orgie resounded at this sumptuous table, around
+which, seated or reclining upon couches, feasted the guests of William
+IX. Distinguished above all and occupying the place of honor, was the
+legate of the Pope; then followed, to the right and left of the Duke of
+Aquitaine, Bohemond, Prince of Taranto; Tancred; Robert Courte-Heuse,
+Duke of Normandy; Heracle, seigneur of Polignac; Siegfried, seigneur of
+Sabran; Gerhard, Duke of Roussillon; Radulf, seigneur of Haut-Poul;
+Arnulf, sire of Beaugency; and other seigneurs of Frankish origin,
+beside the knight, Walter the Pennyless. These noblemen, already
+effeminated by Oriental habits, instead of remaining armed from dawn to
+dusk, as in Gaul, had exchanged their harness of war for long robes of
+silk. The Duke of Aquitaine, whose hair floated on a tunique of gold
+cloth, wore, after the fashion of the ancients, a chaplet of roses and
+violets, already wilted by the vapors of the feast. Azenor the Pale,
+whose lips, no longer white as of yore, but now red with life, was
+seated beside William, superbly ornamented with sparkling collars and
+bracelets of precious stones. The papal legate, clad in a robe of purple
+silk bordered with ermine, carried on his breast a cross of carbuncles
+hanging from a gold chain. Behind him, ready to wait upon his master,
+stood a young negro slave, in a short blouse of white silk with silver
+collar and bracelets ornamented with corals. The cup-bearers and
+equerries of the other seigneurs likewise attended the table. The wines
+of Cyprus and of Samos had been flowing from vermillion amphoras since
+the beginning of the feast, and flowed still, carrying away in their
+perfumed waves the senses of the guests. The Duke of Aquitaine, one arm
+encircling the waist of Azenor, and raising heavenward the<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> gold goblet
+at which his mistress had just moistened her lips, called out: "I drink
+to you, my guests! May Bacchus and Venus be propitious to you! Honor to
+him who is deepest in love!"</p>
+
+<p>Heracle, the seigneur of Polignac, in turn raised his cup and answered:
+"William, Duke of Aquitaine, we, your guests, drink to your courtesy and
+your splendid banquet!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!" joined the Crusaders; "let's drink to the banquet of William
+IX! Let's drink to the courtesy of the Duke of Aquitaine!"</p>
+
+<p>"I drink gladly," said Arnulf, the seigneur of Beaugency, in his cups,
+and, shaking his head, he added meditatively, a sentence already
+repeated by him a score of times during the repast with the tenacity of
+the maudlin: "I'd like to know what my wife, the noble lady Capeluche,
+is doing at this hour in her chamber!"</p>
+
+<p>"By my faith, seigneurs," said the seigneur of Haut-Poul, "as true as
+ten deniers were paid for an ass's head during the scarcity at the siege
+of Antioch, I have not in my life feasted like to-night. Glory to the
+Duke of Aquitaine!"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's talk of the scarcity," rejoined Bohemond, the Prince of Taranto;
+"its recollection may serve to rekindle our satisfied hunger and our
+extinguished thirst."</p>
+
+<p>"I ate up my shoes soaked in water and seasoned with spices," said the
+sire of Montmorency.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, noble seigneurs," put in Walter the Pennyless, "that there
+are comrades, luckier or wiser than we, who never suffered hunger in the
+Holy Land, and whose faces are fresh and ruddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who are they, valiant chevalier?"</p>
+
+<p>"The King of the Vagabonds and his band."</p>
+
+<p>"The wretches who ate up the Saracens, and regaled themselves with human
+flesh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneurs," remarked Robert Courte-Heuse, Duke of Normandy, "we must
+not run down Saracen flesh."<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a></p>
+
+<p>"These feasts on human flesh," explained the seigneur of Sabran, "are
+not at all wonderful. My grandfather once told me that, during the
+famous famine of 1033, the plebs fed on one another."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember one evening," added Walter the Pennyless, "when I and my
+friend Cuckoo Peter had a famous supper&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And what has become of that Peter the Hermit?" inquired Gerhard, Duke
+of Roussillon, interrupting the Gascon adventurer. "It is now a month
+since he left us. We have not heard from him since. Is he dead or
+alive?"</p>
+
+<p>"He has gone to join the army of Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, who we are
+to connect with before Jerusalem," answered Walter. "But allow me, noble
+seigneurs, to tell you my tale. As I was saying, one evening, at the
+camp before Edessa, Cuckoo Peter and I, attracted by a delicious kitchen
+odor, that spread from the quarter of the King of the Vagabonds, walked
+into their quarters, and their worthy monarch made us sup on a tender
+roast, so fat, so toothsomely seasoned with saffron, salt and thyme,
+that I swear by my good sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith, Cuckoo Peter
+and I licked our chops! What a morsel!"</p>
+
+<p>"We should not enlarge in that manner upon abominable feasts on human
+flesh, seigneurs," said the legate; "we should entertain ourselves with
+some other subject more pleasing and pious. If you are willing, I shall
+tell you of a miracle that we are preparing for to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"What miracle, holy man?" inquired the Crusaders. "What a lucky
+windfall!"</p>
+
+<p>"A prodigious miracle, my children, which will be one of the most
+telling triumphs of Christianity. Peter Barthelmy, deacon of Marseilles,
+had a vision after the capture of Antioch. Saint Andrew appeared before
+him and said: 'Go into the church of my brother Peter, situated at the
+gate of the city. Dig up the earth at the foot of the main altar, and
+you will find the iron of the lance that pierced the side of the
+Redeemer of the world. That mystic iron, carried at the head of the
+army, will insure<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> the victory of the Christians and will pierce the
+hearts of the infidels.' Peter Barthelmy having communicated to me this
+miraculous vision, I assembled six bishops and six seigneurs, the most
+pious and pure. We went to the church. The earth was dug up in our
+presence at the foot of the main altar&mdash;and&mdash;to our stupefaction&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The iron of the holy lance was found!" interrupted William IX, in a
+roar of laughter, relapsing into his habitual incredulity.</p>
+
+<p>"You deceive yourself, sinner!" answered the legate. "Peter Barthelmy
+found nothing in that hole. What a misfortune that a man, who so
+passionately hates the Jews, should be incredulous to such a degree! But
+sooner or later the grace of heaven will descend upon you. Meantime I
+shall confound your incredulity. The lance's iron was not then found.
+But Peter Barthelmy, moved by a new inspiration of Saint Andrew, threw
+himself into the hole, dug in it with his nails, and finally did
+discover the iron of the holy lance. To-morrow, the deacon is to walk
+across a burning pyre, in order to demonstrate, in plain view of all,
+the virtue of that precious relic, that will render him insensible to
+the flames. The miracle is assured&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A truce with your idle talk!" said William, interrupting the legate.
+"Halloo, there, cup-bearers, equerries, bring the dice, the checks, my
+casket of gold, and fetch in the dancers. After a banquet, there's
+nothing like a cup in one hand, the dice in the other, and beautiful
+girls in sight, dancing, naked or in gauze!"</p>
+
+<p>"To the game, to the game!" cried the Crusaders. "Equerries, fetch the
+dice, bring in the dancers and withdraw!"</p>
+
+<p>The orders of the Duke of Aquitaine were executed. The domestics of his
+household placed under the galleries and near the divans little Saracen
+tables of sculptured ivory, on which they laid the checks and dice. The
+Crusaders, in keeping with their unbridled passion for gambling, had
+provided themselves with fat purses of gold besans, now handed to them
+by their lackeys. During the tumult due to the preparations for the<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a>
+games and the removal of the seigneurs from the tables to the divans
+under the gallery, Azenor, her features distorted by the tortures of
+jealousy, convulsively grasped the arm of the Duke of Aquitaine, who at
+that moment was opening a casket filled with gold, and whispered to him
+in a hollow and excited voice: "William, you gave the order to bring in
+women hardly clad and even naked!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's so, my charmer, and you heard the grateful applause of my
+guests!"</p>
+
+<p>"Who are those women?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dancers, the joy of banqueters after a feast. Beauties who have nothing
+to refuse&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Whence come they?"</p>
+
+<p>"From the land of marvels, India!"</p>
+
+<p>"Take care! Do not drive me to extremes! Hell burns in my heart! Woe is
+me! Those creatures here, and under my very eyes? You know that jealousy
+turns me crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>The Duke of Aquitaine answered his mistress with bantering nonchalance,
+and drew near a group of seigneurs who were looking at a troop of girls
+that had just burst into the banquet hall. Noticeable above all were
+Perrette and Yolande, the former always brazen and challenging. Already
+the Crusaders, inflamed with wine and amorousness, acclaimed the troop
+with cries of vulgar license, when Maria announced in a loud voice: "One
+moment, noble seigneurs, reserve your enthusiasm for the treasure of
+youth, of beauty and of charms that I hold under this veil and who is
+about to dazzle your charmed eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>Saying this, the shrew pointed to a confused form, hidden under a long
+white veil that trailed on the floor. Astonishment and curiosity calmed
+for a moment the impure ardor of the Crusaders. A deep silence ensued.
+The eyes of all sought to penetrate the semi-transparency of the veil,
+when suddenly the Duke of Aquitaine cried out: "Gentlemen, it is my
+opinion that that aster of beauty must be the reward of that cavalier
+who displayed the greatest valor at the siege of Marhala!"<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes!" responded the Crusaders. "That's right! That treasure must
+be the prize of the most valorous!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not, then, be gainsaid by any," proceeded the Duke of
+Aquitaine, "when I proclaim that Heracle, the seigneur of Polignac,
+showed himself the bravest among the brave at the siege of this city."
+Cries of approval received William's words, who went on saying:
+"Heracle, seigneur of Polignac, yours is that treasure of beauty! Yours
+alone the privilege of unveiling that radiant aster that will dazzle us
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>The seigneur of Polignac eagerly broke through the group of Crusaders,
+while Perrette exclaimed banteringly, affecting despair: "Oh, cruel man,
+you leave me for a miraculous beauty!" and catching the eye of William
+she cried out: "My handsome duke will console me for all my sorrows!"</p>
+
+<p>"By Venus!" said William in great glee, "welcome to you, my ribald! Come
+to my arms, and all sensuous pleasure along with you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your Azenor will strangle me!"</p>
+
+<p>"The devil take Azenor! Long live Love!"</p>
+
+<p>During this short dialogue between the Duke of Aquitaine and Perrette,
+the seigneur of Polignac had approached the veiled woman, and raised the
+gauze that concealed from the eyes of all the prize of the most valiant.
+The surprise and discomfiture of the Crusaders were first expressed by
+mute stupor. Before them stood poor Joan the Hunchback, on her head an
+enormous red turban stuck with peacock's feathers, and a short skirt of
+the same color on her body, fastened at her waist and completely
+exposing her sad deformity. By her side, little Colombaik pressed
+himself close to his mother, and was dressed in a flowing tunic, his
+hair curled and perfumed, but his eyes and ears covered by a bandage. "I
+consent to serve as your toy, to endure all humiliations, seeing you
+have promised to provide for my child and not to separate me from him,"
+were the words of Joan to Maria before lending herself to this cruel
+buffoonery; "but I insist, in the name of my dignity as mother, in the
+name of my child's chastity,<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> to cover his eyes and ears, that he may
+not be a witness of his mother's degradation."</p>
+
+<p>At sight of Joan the Hunchback, the Crusaders, first stupefied, soon
+broke out in loud peals of laughter, which were redoubled by the
+disappointment that Heracle of Polignac seemed to labor under. Still
+under the effects of his discomfiture, he gazed open-mouthed at Joan.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, livid, her features distorted with jealousy, Azenor was
+running from one Crusader to another, asking where William had gone to.
+But the seigneurs, half intoxicated and unconcerned at the sufferings of
+the love-sick woman, answered her with jests. "Let's carry the hunchback
+in triumph!" exclaimed several voices in the midst of deafening peals of
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>Joan paled with fear. Resigned beforehand to all sorts of jests and
+humiliations, she had not foreseen such an excess of indignity.
+Trembling and distracted, the poor woman dropped upon her knees and
+holding her child in her arms, she muttered amid sobs: "My poor child!
+Why did we not die with your father in the sands of the desert!"
+Already, despite Joan's tears, the Crusaders were seizing her, when a
+great uproar broke out in one of the chambers that opened into the
+gallery. Immediately, menacing and terrible to behold, Fergan the
+Quarryman threw himself into the middle of the hall armed with a cudgel
+and calling out loudly to Joan and Colombaik.</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan!" "Father!" the woman and the child cried out together. At the
+sound of their voices, Fergan rushed across the group of Crusaders
+swinging his heavy stick and distributing such hard blows before him to
+the right and to the left, that the seigneurs, stunned and frightened,
+retreated precipitately before the serf. Beating his way through them,
+Fergan joined at last his wife and child, and pressed them to his heart
+in a passionate embrace. The domestics, thrown down, trodden under foot
+and half killed by Fergan, rose out of breath and explained to the
+seigneurs: "We were standing at the gate, playing chuck-farthing, when
+this madman ran up to us from the direction of the<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> market-place. He
+asked us whether a hunchback and her child had been taken to the palace.
+'Yes,' said we, 'and just now they are the amusement of the noble guests
+of our seigneur, the Duke of Aquitaine.' The madman then threw himself
+upon us, ran through the gate of the palace, struck us with his cane,
+and got here."</p>
+
+<p>"He must be hanged on the spot!" the Duke of Normandy cried out. "These
+pillars will do for a gibbet. Fetch cords!"</p>
+
+<p>"That bandit has dared to threaten us with his cudgel! He deserves the
+gallows!"</p>
+
+<p>"Death to the criminal! Death!" cried out the Crusaders, now recovered
+from their first stupor, "Death to the vagabond!"</p>
+
+<p>"But where is the Duke of Aquitaine? No one can be hanged here without
+his consent."</p>
+
+<p>"He disappeared with the queen of the wenches. But his absence should
+not delay the execution of this wretch. When he returns he will find the
+vagabond hanging high and dry. William will ratify the sentence, and
+approve it."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall give my belt for a rope."</p>
+
+<p>After embracing his wife and child, Fergan took in at a glance the
+gravity of the situation, and observed that the seigneurs were not
+armed. Profiting by their first surprise, he had his wife and child
+climb on the banquet table and ordered them to stand with their backs
+against the marble edge of the basin. Thereupon, placing himself before
+them, his heavy cudgel in hand, he made ready for a desperate defence.
+But still wishing to try a last means of escape, he addressed the
+Crusaders, who were about to assault him: "For pity's sake, let me
+depart from this palace with my wife and child!"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to the bandit, praying for mercy! Quick! Let one of these
+pillars serve him for a gibbet. Swing a rope around his neck!"</p>
+
+<p>"You may hang me!" cried out the serf in despair, "but more than one of
+you will have to fall under my cudgel!"</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a>The threat rekindled the fury of the Crusaders. Already, braving the
+rapid swing of Fergan's cudgel, several seigneurs were rushing forward
+to seize the serf, when suddenly the braying of clarions was heard from
+afar, together with loud and nearing cries of: "To arms! The Saracens
+are upon us! To arms! To the ramparts!" Several men-at-arms of the Duke
+of Aquitaine rushed into the hall, sword in hand, and calling out: "The
+Saracens have profited by the night to surprise the city. They have
+entered near the gate of Agra by the breech that we made. They are
+fighting on the ramparts. To arms, seigneurs, to arms! Duke of
+Aquitaine, to arms!" Hardly had these men-at-arms pronounced the name of
+the duke in the midst of the increasing tumult caused by the
+announcement of this unforeseen attack, than William IX. appeared, his
+clothes in disorder, coming out of one of the chambers that opened into
+the gallery. He was pale and terror-stricken, and held in his hands a
+parchment, while he cried in a terrified voice: "A Jewess! A Jewess!
+Damnation!"</p>
+
+<p>"William, arm yourself!" his companions called out to him, as they
+precipitately rushed out with the men-at-arms. "The Saracens are
+attacking the city! Let's run to the ramparts! To arms!"</p>
+
+<p>"A Jewess!" repeated the Duke of Aquitaine with eyes fixed, his brow
+bathed in perspiration, and seeming neither to hear nor to see his
+companions in arms. Perceiving the legate of the Pope, William threw
+himself on his knees at the feet of the prelate: "Holy father, have pity
+upon me! I am damned! While I was chatting with the queen of the
+wenches, Azenor entered the chamber where we were and, holding out this
+parchment, said to me she was a Jewess, and that the parchment, written
+in Hebrew, furnished the proof. I have been a miserable sinner. Holy
+father, have pity upon me! I am damned! Mercy for my soul! Upon my knees
+I ask you for absolution!"<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-b" id="CHAPTER_V-b"></a>CHAPTER V.<br /><br />
+THE KING OF THE VAGABONDS.</h3>
+
+<p>At dawn, the sun rose over the plain that surrounds the city of Marhala,
+surprised at night by the Saracens and defended by the Crusaders. The
+infidels, relying more on their audacity than on their numbers, perished
+almost to a man in the assault. Only a small number of prisoners were
+taken. The approaches of the breech in the ramparts, not far from the
+gate of Agra, through which the Saracens sought to surprise the city,
+disappeared under a heap of corpses. Clouds of vultures hovered over
+that abundant quarry, but dared not yet let themselves down on it. Men
+of prey were ahead of the birds.</p>
+
+<p>These men, wholly naked, red and dripping blood, and hideous to behold,
+went and came like geniuses of death in the midst of that field of
+carnage. They would seize the body of a Saracen, strip it of its
+clothes, roll that in a bundle, and then, kneeling over the naked
+corpse, they pried open its jaws, rigid in death, carefully felt about
+in its mouth and under its tongue; finally, with the aid of long knives,
+they would cut open the corpse's gullet, chest and bowels, whose
+intestines they then pulled out and examined. Their faces, hands and
+members streaming blood, these demons were under the command of a chief.
+He gave orders and directed their sacrilegious profanations. They called
+him their king. It was Corentin the Gibbet-cheater, become chief of the
+vagabonds. His seneschal, one-time serf of the seigniory of Plouernel,
+was the identical Bacon-cutter, who, with a blow of his pitchfork had
+thrown Garin the Serf-eater from his horse just before the latter was
+butchered by the villagers.</p>
+
+<p>The King of the Vagabonds and his seneschal gave token of<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> rare
+dexterity in their shocking trade. The two had just seized, one by the
+head the other by the feet, the corpse of a young Saracen. His face, his
+rich raiment, hacked by sabre blows, the bodies of several Crusaders
+stretched on either side of him&mdash;all bespoke the fierce resistance the
+warrior must have offered. "Oh, oh!" said the King of the Vagabonds,
+"that dog must have been some chieftain, it can be seen by his
+embroidered green caftan. Great pity that his dress is so slashed to
+pieces; it might have served as a mantle for Perrette."</p>
+
+<p>"You still think of the Ribald?" asked the Bacon-cutter, helping
+Corentin to strip the Saracen of his clothes; "your Perrette is in the
+Paradise of the wenches, on the crupper of some canon, or in the harem
+of some emir."</p>
+
+<p>"Seneschal, Perrette would leave Paradise, an emir or a canon if the
+Gibbet-cheater told her to. Come. Our corpse is now naked. Make a bundle
+of the clothes. They will find purchasers in the market-place of
+Marhala. Now that we have taken the peel from this Syrian fruit," he
+added, pointing to the dead body, "let's open it. It is inside that the
+precious almonds must be looked for, such as besans of gold and precious
+stones. Give me your knife. I wish to sharpen it against mine. The blade
+of mine has been dulled on the gullet of that old Saracen yonder with
+the white beard. The devil! His cartilage was as tough as that of an old
+goat," and while his seneschal was bundling up some clothes, the King of
+the Vagabonds sharpened his knife, casting upon the corpses strewn
+around him looks of satisfied covetousness, and remarked: "That's what
+it means to get up early in the morning. After their night's fight, the
+Crusaders have gone to sleep. When they will come to plunder the dead,
+we shall be at the dice!"</p>
+
+<p>"Great King! It is an easy matter to rise early if one has not gone to
+bed. We arrived in time to gather the harvest on this field of carnage."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you, vagabonds, still reproach me for having induced you to leave
+the fortress of the Marquis of Jaffa?" replied the<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a> king, continuing to
+sharpen his knife. "Think of lying in a stronghold in order to play the
+brigand in Palestine! It was folly!"</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, many of those new seigneurs who have left themselves down in
+the Holy Land as dukes, marquises, counts and barons, begin everywhere,
+just as they used to in Gaul, to ply the trade of highwaymen on the
+mainroads."</p>
+
+<p>"With this difference, seneschal, that there are no high roads here, and
+hardly anybody to rob. One must roam over ten or twelve miles of sand or
+rocks in order to meet a few thin troops of travelers, who, instead of
+kindly allowing themselves to be plundered, like the townsmen and
+merchants of Gaul, but too often strike back, show their teeth and use
+them too."</p>
+
+<p>"Great King! You speak wisely. Indeed, during those two months spent
+with the Marquis of Jaffa, we made but two sorry finds. At one of these,
+by the faith of the Bacon-cutter, we were warmly curried and rudely
+beaten, and all for almost nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"In exchange, this fine Saracen quarry awaited us this morning at the
+gates of Marhala. Our work done, we shall take a dip in the fountain
+sheltered by yonder cluster of date trees. Thanks to the bath, we, who
+are now red as skinned eels, shall become again white as little doves,
+after which, having but to take the pick of these Saracen wardrobes, and
+our pouches well filled, we shall make our royal entry in the best
+tavern of Marhala."</p>
+
+<p>"Where, mayhap, you will find again your queen, tapping for the
+customers and sleeping with them."</p>
+
+<p>"May heaven hear you, seneschal, and may the devil grant me my prayers!
+Now, quick to work. The sun is rising. We are naked and run the risk of
+being roasted by the sun before we are through. The bath first, the
+feast afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"That word 'roasting' reminds me that this young Saracen is plump and of
+good muscle. In due time, what a fine mess would not a fillet of his
+large loins and round calves make, seasoned with some aromatic herbs and
+a pinch of saffron! Do you remember,<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> among other ragouts, the head of
+that old sahib of the mountain, boiled with a certain peppery sauce?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seneschal, my friend, you are altogether too talkative. Instead of
+incessantly opening your mouth, whence flow only vain words, open that
+of this Saracen, and perhaps beautiful besans of gold or diamond of
+Bossorah may roll out."</p>
+
+<p>It was a shocking spectacle, like the violation of a sepulchre. The King
+of the Vagabonds took the head of the corpse between his knees, while
+the Bacon-cutter tried to force open the rigid jaws of the dead body.
+Unable to do so he said to Corentin: "That dog of an infidel must have
+been in a rage at the moment of expiring. His teeth are clenched like a
+vice."</p>
+
+<p>"And that embarasses you, you gosling? Insert the blade of your knife
+between his teeth, flat, then turn it round. That will separate the jaws
+sufficiently to be able to insert your fingers." And while the
+Bacon-cutter was conducting his abominable researches obedient to the
+directions of Corentin, the latter remarked with a ferocious sneer: "Oh,
+ye miscreant Saracens, you have the malignity of hiding in the hollow of
+your cheeks gold pieces and precious stones, and even of swallowing
+them, to the end of depriving the soldiers of Christ of those riches!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing!" exclaimed the seneschal with disappointment and interrupting
+the king, "nothing in the cheeks and nothing under the tongue."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you felt carefully?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have felt and felt over again, everywhere. Perhaps during this
+night's battle, some foxy Crusader, like a man of experience, have
+seized the throat of this Saracen at the moment when he expired and may
+thus have caused him to spit out the gold he was hiding in his mouth.
+Provided that dog did not swallow it all down."</p>
+
+<p>"The scamp was capable of doing that. Feel about in his throat. After
+that we shall sound the chest and bowels." So said, so done. The two
+monsters put the corpse through a shocking butchery. Finally their
+ferocious cupidity was satisfied.<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> After a series of revolting
+profanations, they withdrew from the bleeding intestines of the corpse
+three diamonds, a ruby and five besans of gold, small thick pieces but
+barely the size of a denier. While the two vagabonds were finishing
+their ghoulish work, black clouds of thick and nauseous smoke rose from
+a pyre, started close by, by the other vagabonds, with green branches of
+turpentine tree. These fellows, instead of disemboweling the corpses,
+burned them, in order to look among the ashes for the gold and precious
+stones which the Saracens might have swallowed. These monstrosities
+having been gone through, the vagabonds proceeded to the neighboring
+spring where they washed their bloody bodies, and donned their clothes
+again, or decked themselves with the spoils of the Saracens. The booty
+was then divided&mdash;clothes, arms, turbans, shoes&mdash;and they wended their
+steps towards the gate of Agra. At the moment of entering the city, the
+King of the Vagabonds, mounting a heap of ruins, said to his men, who
+gathered around him: "Vagabonds, my sons and beloved subjects! We are
+about to enter Marhala, with booty on back and bysantins in pocket. I
+expect, I will it, I order it, in the name of wine, dice and wenches,
+that, before leaving Marhala, we shall have become again as beggarly as
+the vagabonds that we are! Never forget our rule: 'A true vagabond,
+twenty-four hours after a pillage, must have nothing left but his skin
+and his knife.' He who keeps a denier becomes cold to the quarry. He is
+expelled from my kingdom!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes! Long live our King! Three cheers for wine, dice and wenches!"
+responded the bandits. "The devil take the vagabond, who, rich to-day,
+keeps for the morrow aught but his skin and his knife! Long live our
+great King, Corentin the Gibbet-cheater!"</p>
+
+<p>And the savage troop marched towards the gate of Agra and entered the
+city of Marhala shouting and singing: "Glory to the brave Crusaders!"<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-b" id="CHAPTER_VI-b"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br /><br />
+THE MARKET-PLACE OF MARHALA.</h3>
+
+<p>Luckily disentangled from the fury of the guests of the Duke of
+Aquitaine by the nocturnal attack of the Saracens, Fergan the Quarryman
+had profited by the confusion to escape from the Emir's palace with Joan
+and Colombaik. While the Crusaders were hurrying to the ramparts of the
+gate of Agra, the serf turned his steps with wife and child, far away
+from the spot of the battle. Before sunrise, quiet reigned again in
+Marhala. Descrying one of those numerous taverns, that generally sprang
+up after the capture of a city, and were set up in some Saracen house by
+the camp-followers of the army, Fergan stepped in. To the great
+astonishment of Joan, he pulled out of his belt a gold piece, which he
+exchanged with the tavern-keeper for silver coin, to pay for his
+lodging. Once more alone with his family, the quarryman could give a
+loose to his tender feelings and relate to them how, after being
+separated from them by the sand-spout, he found himself half buried
+under the sand, and losing consciousness. In the darkness of the night
+he was shaken out of his lethargy by a sharp scratch on his shoulder. It
+was a hyena, that, pawing up the sand under which he lay, prepared to
+devour him, taking him for dead, but instantly fled seeing him sit up.
+Thus, delivered from a double danger, the serf had wandered about during
+dark, amidst the mournful yelpings of the wild beasts at their quarry
+over the corpses that they dug up. At dawn he saw, already half
+devoured, the remains of Neroweg VI.</p>
+
+<p>After vainly searching for Joan and his child, Fergan considered them
+lost forever, and followed the route marked out by the human bones. At
+the end of several hours' marching, he<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a> came across the corpse of some
+seigneur, to judge by the richness of his clothes, torn to shreds by the
+beasts of prey. Among the tatters was an embroidered purse full of gold.
+He appropriated it without scruple, and was soon joined by a troop of
+travelers bound for Marhala. He journeyed in their company. Upon his
+arrival in the city, and learning that several other travelers who
+escaped the disaster of the sand-spout had come in ahead of him, he
+inquired after a deformed woman with a child. A beggar, who had
+accidentally seen Joan and her son enter the palace of the Emir, gave
+him the information, and he was enabled to arrive in time to wrest them
+from the danger they were just threatened with.</p>
+
+<p>After a recital of his adventures, and leaving his wife and Colombaik in
+the tavern, Fergan went out at sunrise to purchase some clothing at the
+market-place, where booty was constantly sold at auction. Fearing to be
+met by some of the guests of the Duke of Aquitaine, the serf had smeared
+soot mixed with grease over his face. Rendered thus unrecognizable, he
+entered the market-place. Instead, however, of finding the place
+occupied by traffickers in booty, he saw a large gang of men hastily
+engaged in the construction of a pyre under the overseership of several
+prelates. A cordon of soldiers, placed at a distance from the pyre, kept
+the inquisitive from drawing too near. Fergan had just elbowed himself
+to the front of the mob, when a deacon, clad in black, said aloud: "Are
+there among you any strong men who wish to earn two deniers, and help
+finish the pyre quickly? They shall be paid the moment the work is
+done."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall help, if wanted," answered Fergan. Two deniers were worth
+earning. They would eke out his treasury.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said the priest, "you seem to be a lusty fellow. The faggots
+will weigh like straws on your broad shoulders." Five or six other
+wretches, having volunteered to join Fergan, the deacon took them to the
+center of the place, where, resting upon a large bundle of trunks of
+olive trees, palmettos and dried brushes, the pyre was being erected for
+the accomplishment of<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> the miracle announced by Peter Barthelmy, the
+Marseilles priest and possessor of the Holy Lance. This Barthelmy
+derived a large revenue from his relic by exhibiting it for money to the
+veneration of the Crusaders. Other priests, jealous of the receipts
+pocketed by the Marseillan, had assiduously backbitten his lance.
+Fearing a decline of earnings, and wishing to furnish a proof of the
+virtue of his lance, and at the same time confound his detractors, he
+had promised a miracle. Fergan set to work with ardor to earn his two
+deniers. He soon perceived that a narrow path crossed the heap of
+kindling-wood, which, about thirty feet long and raised four or five
+feet on either side, sloped down towards the path that cut it in two.
+Thus, towards the middle and for a space about two yards wide, the pyre
+offered hardly any food to the fire. After a half hour's work, Fergan
+said to the deacon: "We shall make the heap even, and fill up the gap
+that crosses it, so that the pyre may burn everywhere."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all!" the deacon hastened to say. "Your work is done on this
+side. We must now set up the stake and adjust the spit."</p>
+
+<p>Fergan, as well as his companions, curious to know the purpose of the
+stake and spit, followed the priest. A wagon hitched to mules, had just
+dumped several beams upon the place. One of these, about fifteen feet
+high, and furnished in some places with iron rings and chains, had at
+about its center a sort of support for the feet. Fergan's helpers
+followed the instructions of the deacon, and set up the stake at one of
+the corners of the pyre where the kindling wood was well heaped. Other
+workingmen placed not far away two iron X's, intended to support an iron
+bar about eight feet long and tapering into sharp points.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! oh! What a terrible looking spit!" said Fergan to the priest,
+placing the iron bar on the two X's with no little labor. "Are they
+going to roast an ox?" Instead of answering the serf, the deacon
+listened in the direction of one of the streets that ran into the place,
+and, hastily fumbling in his pockets, said to Fergan and the other men,
+while handing to each the promised<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> wages: "Your work is done. You may
+now go. The procession is approaching."</p>
+
+<p>Fergan and his assistants withdrew to the mob which the file of soldiers
+was holding back from the pyre. Church songs were heard, at first from a
+distance, but drawing ever nearer, and soon the religious procession
+issued into the market-place. Monks marched at the head, after them
+clergymen carrying crosses and banners, and then, in the midst of a
+group of high dignitaries of the Church, whose mitres and gold
+embroidered copes sparkled in the sun of the Orient, came the Marseilles
+priest, Peter Barthelmy, bare-footed and robed in a white shirt. He held
+up triumphantly in his hands the holy and miraculous lance. This
+contriver of miracles, of a countenance at once sanctimonious, artful
+and sly, preceded other prelates carrying banners. Azenor the Pale came
+next, clad in a long black robe, her hands bound behind and supported by
+two monks. She had been convicted of the abominable crime of being a
+Jewess. She was convicted of this enormity, not alone by the revelation
+that, in a paroxysm of jealousy, she had made to William IX., but also
+by the testimony of the parchment that she had handed to him in order to
+dispel his doubts. In that parchment, written in the Hebrew language and
+dating several years back, the father of Azenor urged his daughter to
+die faithful to the law of Israel. A few steps behind the victim,
+William IX., the Duke of Aquitaine, his hair in disorder and covered
+with ashes, dragged himself on his naked knees in abject penitence. Clad
+in a rough sack, his feet bare and dusty like his knees, and holding a
+crucifix in his two hands, the penitent cried out ever and anon in a
+lamenting voice, while smiting his chest with his fist: "<i>Mea culpa, mea
+culpa!</i> Lord God, have mercy upon my soul! I have committed the sin of
+the flesh with an unclean Jewess, I am damned without your grace! Oh,
+Lord, <i>mea culpa! mea culpa!</i>" On foot and in splendid raiment, the
+legate of the Pope and the archbishop of Tyre, marched on either side of
+the Duke of Aquitaine, repeating<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> from time to time in a voice loud
+enough to be heard by the penitent:</p>
+
+<p>"My child in Christ, trust in the mercy of the Lord! Render yourself
+worthy of His clemency by your repentance!"</p>
+
+<p>"Remain faithful to your vow of chastity, you who were given to
+debauchery!"</p>
+
+<p>"Remain faithful to your vow of poverty, you who were given to
+prodigality and magnificence!"</p>
+
+<p>"Remain faithful to your vow of humility, you who were proud and
+arrogant!"</p>
+
+<p>"But that will not suffice! You must surrender to the Church your
+earthly riches&mdash;lands, domains, castles, slaves&mdash;to the end that the
+priests may implore the Eternal for the remission of your transgressions
+and your numerous sins!"</p>
+
+<p>Behind these followed a few Saracens who had been captured at the late
+night surprise of Marhala. They were led, pinioned, by soldiers. The
+King of the Vagabonds, his seneschal the Bacon-cutter and several of the
+men of their band had been joined to this escort by order of Bohemond,
+Prince of Taranto, and chief of the army, who himself closed the
+procession, accompanied by a large number of crusading seigneurs, casque
+on head and lance in hand.</p>
+
+<p>This funeral train marched around the market-place, surrounded by an
+ever-swelling crowd, and ranked itself before the pyre, where the stake
+and the spit were in readiness.</p>
+
+<p>"The miracle of the lance!" cried the crowd, impatient to see Barthelmy
+cross a flaming pyre in his shirt and without burning&mdash;"the miracle of
+the lance!"</p>
+
+<p>"Woe is me!" muttered William IX., redoubling the blows with which he
+was lacerating his breast. "Woe is me! I am so great a sinner that
+perhaps the Eternal will not deign to manifest His omnipotence by a
+prodigy before me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Be comforted, my son!" answered the papal legate. "The Eternal will
+manifest Himself in order to confirm your faith,<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> seeing that you have
+been touched by grace, and humble yourself before His Church."</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday, father, I was an unclean criminal, an infamous evildoer, a
+miserable blind man. To-day my eyes are open to the truth. I see the
+everlasting flames that await me. Have pity upon me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Give up all your goods to the Church, remain poor as Job, the Church
+will then intercede for your salvation," replied the legate, issuing his
+orders to his deacon to set fire to the pyre.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately, walking almost without danger over the length of the path
+that crossed the paling, hidden by the height of the flames kindled at
+the four sides of the pyre, Peter Barthelmy seemed in the eyes of the
+credulous multitude actually to traverse the lake of fire. The serf saw,
+across a thick cloud of smoke that helped to increase the illusion,
+Peter Barthelmy, looking as if he was wading through flames up to the
+hip, run rapidly across the full length of the pyre, from which he
+emerged again brandishing his lance. The crowd, blind and fanatic,
+clapped their hands and shouted: "A miracle! A miracle!" Shocked at the
+impudence of the friar, who so shamelessly imposed upon the credulity of
+those poor people, Fergan decided to administer to him a stinging
+lesson. Affecting to yield to religious enthusiasm, he cried out: "Peter
+Barthelmy is a saint, a great saint! Whoever can secure the smallest bit
+of his clothing, or of his blessed body, even if but one hair, will be
+delivered of all ills!" The mob received Fergan's suggestion with
+fanatic approval. The file of soldiers, that held the multitude far
+enough back from the pyre, was broken through, and the most maniacal of
+these fanatics rushed upon Peter Barthelmy at the moment when, leaving
+the pyre a few steps behind him, he was brandishing his lance. An
+incredible scene ensued thereupon, related by Baudry, archbishop of
+Dole, an eye-witness of the occurrence, as follows in his "History of
+the Capture of Jerusalem:"</p>
+
+<p>"When Peter Barthelmy emerged from the pyre with his holy lance, the
+crowd rushed upon him and trampled him under foot,<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a> each wishing to
+touch him and carry off a piece of his shirt. He received several wounds
+in the legs. Bits of flesh were cut from his body. His ribs were knocked
+in. His spine was fractured. He would, in our opinion, have died on the
+spot, had not Raymond, seigneur of Pelet, an illustrious cavalier,
+quickly gathered a platoon of soldiers, thrown himself with them into
+the midst of the mob, and, at the risk of his own life, saved poor Peter
+Barthelmy."</p>
+
+<p>After this rude lesson given the cheat, Fergan approached the group of
+soldiers that were transporting the contriver of miracles in a dying
+state to a neighboring house. "The accursed brutes! The savages!"
+murmured the Marseilles priest, gasping for breath: "Have you ever seen
+such bedeviled rascals! The idea of wishing to turn me into relics!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is but a condign punishment for the besotted state of mind that,
+with infamous calculation, you plunge these wretched people in," said
+Fergan leaning over Barthelmy. The Marseillan turned around with a
+sudden start, but the serf had disappeared in the crowd, and passed to
+the other side of the pyre, now fully ablaze. At one of its corners was
+Azenor, chained to the stake. Her feet rested on the tablet which the
+flames began to lick. A few steps from the victim, on his knees among
+the priests and joining them in their mortuary songs, crouched the Duke
+of Aquitaine, from time to time crying amid sobs: "Lord! Cleanse me of
+my sins! May my repentance and the just punishment of this unclean
+Jewess earn grace for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, William!" cried out the condemned woman with a voice still strong
+and penetrating, "I feel the heat of the flames. They are about to
+reduce my body to ashes. These flames are less consuming than those of
+jealousy. Yesterday, driven to extremity, I made certain of my
+vengeance. A few instants of suffering will rid me of life, and your
+credulous stupidity avenges me. Look at yourself now, brilliant Duke of
+Aquitaine, the sport of priests, your implacable enemies, and the dupe
+of those who laugh at your imbecile fears! If there is a hell we shall
+meet there."<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Silence, you infamous and unclean beast!" cried out the legate of the
+Pope, "the flames that envelop you are as nothing to the everlasting
+fires where you are to burn through all eternity. A curse upon your
+execrable race, that crucified the Saviour of the world!"</p>
+
+<p>"A curse upon the Jews! Death to the Jews! Glory to God in heaven and to
+his priests on earth!" shouted the spectators.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, heart-rending screams rose above the din. Azenor the Pale,
+writhed with pain under her iron fetters as the flames, reaching her
+limbs, set her robe and long hair on fire. Presently the stake at which
+she was chained caught fire under her feet, swayed in the air for an
+instant, tumbled over into the furnace, and disappeared there with the
+victim in the midst of a wild flare of flames. The Duke of Aquitaine
+then embraced the knees of the papal legate and appealed to him
+imploringly: "Oh, my father in Christ, I vow to relinquish all my goods
+to our holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church! I vow to follow the Crusade
+barefooted in a sack! I vow to bury myself in the depths of a cloister
+upon my return to Gaul! I vow to die in the austerities of penance, to
+the end that I may obtain from God the remission of my sins and evil
+ways!"</p>
+
+<p>"In the name of the All-Powerful, I take cognizance of your vows,
+William IX., Duke of Aquitaine!" responded the legate in a ringing and
+solemn voice. "Only the observance of these vows can render you worthy
+of a day of celestial mercy, thanks to the intercession of the Church!"
+And the Duke of Aquitaine, bent low at the feet of the legate, his
+forehead in the dust, repeated his protestations and lamentations, while
+the King of the Vagabonds, stepping out of the file of soldiers that
+surrounded the Saracen prisoners, and accompanied by his seneschal the
+Bacon-cutter, approached the legate, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Holy father in God, I have come with my seneschal and a few of my
+subjects for the purpose of spitting one of those Saracen miscreants
+over the fire. You have but to deliver the victim to me."<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a></p>
+
+<p>"That belongs to Bohemond, Prince of Taranto," the legate answered the
+King of the Vagabonds, pointing with his finger to a group of crusading
+seigneurs who had just witnessed the miracle of Peter Barthelmy and the
+death of Azenor the Pale. The Prince of Taranto approached Corentin and
+speaking in a low voice led him to the side where the iron spit lay
+placed on the iron X's. Then, drawing near the escort that surrounded
+the prisoners, the prince made a sign. The soldiers parted ranks, and
+five bound Saracens faced Bohemond and the other Crusaders. Two of these
+prisoners, a father and son, were particularly remarkable, one by his
+noble and calm face, framed in a long white beard, the other by the bold
+and juvenile beauty of his lineaments. The old man, wounded in the head
+and arm at the night attack, had torn a few pieces of his long mantle of
+white wool to bandage his and his son's wounds. Their superb scarfs of
+Tyrian wool, their silk caftans, embroidered with gold, although soiled
+with blood and dust, announced the rank of the chiefs. Thanks to an
+Armenian priest, who served as interpreter, they held the following
+discourse with the Prince of Taranto, who, addressing himself to the old
+man, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Were you the chief of those infidel dogs who attempted to surprise the
+city of Marhala by night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Nazarean; you and yours have carried war into our country. We
+defend ourselves against the invaders."</p>
+
+<p>"By the cross on my sword! vile miscreant, dare you question the right
+of the soldiers of Christ to this land?"</p>
+
+<p>"The same as I inherited my father's horse and black tent, Syria belongs
+to us, the children of those who conquered it from the Greeks. Our
+conquest was not pitiless like yours. When Abubeker Alwakel, the
+successor of the Prophet, sent Yzed-Ben-Sophian to conquer Syria, he
+said to him: 'You and your warriors shall behave like valiant men in
+battle, but kill neither old men, women nor children. Destroy neither
+fruit trees nor harvests. They are presents of Allah to man. If you meet
+with Christian hermits in the solitudes, serving God and laboring<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> with
+their hands, do them no harm. As to the Greek priests, who, without
+setting nation against nation, sincerely honor God in the faith of
+Jesus, the son of Mary, we used be to them a protecting shield, because,
+without regarding Jesus as a God, we venerate him as a great, wise man,
+the founder of the Christian religion. But we abhor the doctrine that
+certain priests have drawn from the otherwise so pure doctrine of the
+son of Mary.'"</p>
+
+<p>These words of the old emir, absolutely in keeping with the truth, and
+that contrasted so nobly with the cruelty of the soldiers of the cross,
+exasperated Bohemond. "I swear by Christ, the dead and resurrected God,"
+he cried out, "you shall pay dearly for these sacrilegious words!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Be faithful to your faith, even unto the peril of your life</i>, said the
+Prophet," the Saracen replied. "I am in your power, Nazarean. Your
+threats will not keep me from telling the truth. God is God!"</p>
+
+<p>"The truth," added emir's son, "is that you Franks have invaded our
+country, ravaging our fields, massacring our wives and children,
+profanating the corpses!"</p>
+
+<p>"Silence, my son!" resumed the emir in a grave voice. "Mahomet said it:
+<i>The strength of the just man is in the calmness of his reasoning and in
+the justice of his cause.</i>" The young man held his peace, and his father
+proceeded, addressing the Prince of Taranto: "I told you the truth; I
+feel sorry for you if you are ignorant of, or deny it. Our people,
+separated from yours by the immensity of the seas and vast territories,
+could not harm your nation. We have respected the hermits and the
+Christian priests. Their monasteries rise in the midst of the fertile
+plains of Syria, their basilicas glisten in our cities beside our
+mosques. In the name of Abraham, the father of us all&mdash;Musselmen, Jews
+and Christians&mdash;we have welcomed like brothers your pilgrims, who came
+to Jerusalem to worship the sepulchre of Jesus, and his wise men. The
+Christians exercised their religion in peace, for Allah, the God of the
+Prophet,<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> said through the mouth of Mahomet, the Prophet of God: <i>Injure
+no one on account of his religion</i>. But our mildness has emboldened your
+priests. They have incited the Christians against us; they have outraged
+our creed, pretending theirs alone is true and that Satan inspired our
+prayers. We long remained patient. A thousand times the stronger in
+numbers, we could have exterminated the Christians. We limited ourselves
+to imprisoning them. Those of your priests who outraged us and sowed
+discord in our country, were punished according to our laws. You then
+came by the thousands from beyond the seas, you invaded our country, and
+you have let loose upon us the most atrocious ills. Our priests then
+preached a holy war; we have defended ourselves, and we shall continue
+to do so. God protects the faithful!"</p>
+
+<p>The calmness of the old emir exasperated the Crusaders. He would have
+been torn to pieces, together with his son and companions, but for the
+intervention of Bohemond, who with gesture and voice reined in the
+seigneurs. Addressing himself thereupon to the Saracen by means of the
+interpreter, he said: "You deserve death a hundred times, but I forgive
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall report your generosity to my people."</p>
+
+<p>"Be it so! But you shall also say to them: 'The Prince governor of the
+city and the seigneurs have to-day decided in council that all Saracens,
+henceforth captured, shall be killed and roasted, to serve as meat with
+their bodies to the seigneurs as well as to the army.'"<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Prince of Taranto, while speaking and acting like a cannibal, was
+following the inspiration of an atrocious policy. He knew that the
+eating of human flesh inspired the Mahometans with extreme horror,
+seeing they professed for their dead a religious veneration.
+Accordingly, Bohemond expected to conjure up such fear among the
+Saracens that it would paralyze their resistance, and they would no
+longer fight, fearing to fall<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a> dead or alive in the hands of the
+soldiers of Christ, and be devoured by them.<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a></p>
+
+<p>At the order of the Prince of Taranto, the King of the Vagabonds seized
+the emir's son, and, while the soldiers held the other prisoners back to
+compel them to witness the revolting spectacle, the young Saracen was
+slaughtered, disembowelled, spitted and broiled over the burning embers
+of the pyre that had just been the theatre of the miracle of Peter
+Barthelmy and of the death of Azenor the Jewess; and in the presence of
+the crusading seigneurs, of the legate of the Pope and of the clergy,
+the Saracen youth was devoured by the band of Corentin the
+Gibbet-cheater, assisted by the other wretches, whom a fury of fanatical
+self-glorification drove to join the anthropophagous feast. This done,
+the father of the victim and his companions were freed from their bonds
+and set at liberty, a liberty, however, that the old man did not profit
+from. He dropped dead on the spot with grief and horror. Another Saracen
+went crazy with horror; the other two fled distracted from the fated
+city.</p>
+
+<p>The frightful scene was hardly over, when messengers from Godfrey of
+Boullion arrived, notifying Bohemond to depart with his troops without
+delay, and join under the walls of Jerusalem the main army of Godfrey,
+who had just begun the siege of the Holy City.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately the trumphets were sounded in Marhala; the cohorts formed
+themselves; and the army of the Prince of Taranto leaving a garrison
+behind in the Saracen city, set out on the march for Jerusalem, singing
+that now well-known refrain of the Crusaders, which was re-echoed in
+chorus by the mob that followed in the wake of the army:<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the object of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that
+banner, that marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost! God wills it!
+God wills it! God wills it!"<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-b" id="CHAPTER_VII-b"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br /><br />
+THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.</h3>
+
+<p>Fergan left the city with wife and child clad in new raiment, thanks to
+the purse he had found in the desert. An ass carried their provisions&mdash;a
+large pouch of water and a bag of dates. He also took precautions of
+arming himself for defence against marauders. To drop out of the stream
+of the Crusaders would at that season have been insanity. After the
+capture of Jerusalem, large numbers of Crusaders were expected to return
+to Europe, taking ship at Tripoli on Genoese or Venetian vessels.
+Fergan's little treasure would enable him to pay for the passage of
+himself and family to either of those cities, whence he planned to cross
+Italy, return to Gaul and settle down at Laon in Picardy, where he
+confidently expected to find Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the
+Rich and joint descendant with the quarryman of Joel, the ancient Gallic
+Chief. Fergan felt a lively desire to see Jerusalem, the city where,
+over a thousand years before, his ancestress Genevieve had witnessed the
+agony of the carpenter of Nazareth, that humble artisan, that great and
+kindly sage, the friend of the slaves, of the poor and of the afflicted,
+the enemy of hypocrite priests, of the rich and of the powerful of his
+days. Joan and Colombaik alternately rode the ass when they were tired.
+The serf experienced a rare pleasure at seeing for the first time his
+wife and child properly clad, and steadily regaining the strength they
+had lost by their recent fatigues and privations.</p>
+
+<p>They followed the wake of the army. At its head marched a band of
+cavaliers carrying the banner of St. Peter, the disciple of Jesus.
+Behind Peter's banner came the train-bands under the command of their
+respective seigneurs, carrying the banner<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> of each seigniory embroidered
+with coat-of-arms, or war cries, such as: "To Christ, the Victorious!"
+"To the Reign of Jesus!" The latter motto appeared on the standard of
+the Prince of Taranto. The legate of the Pope followed next, accompanied
+by the clergy; then the troops of soldiers, on foot and on horseback;
+and finally the multitude of ragged men, women and children who trailed
+after the army. Fergan journeyed with these. To the end of husbanding
+their little purse, he employed himself taking charge of the mules or
+guiding the wagons, for which he received a few deniers and his food.
+The journey from Marhala to Jerusalem was trying in the extreme. A large
+number of helpless people dropped out on the route and died of thirst,
+hunger and fatigue, and became the pray of hyenas and vultures. Thus
+their bleaching bones, together with those of so many other victims,
+traced also the route to Jerusalem. Half a day's journey from the city
+Colombaik came near dying. Thrown down by a horse, his leg was broken in
+two places. As the child suffered excruciating pains he could not be
+transported on the ass. Leaving the other stragglers to continue their
+march, Fergan was left behind with Colombaik and Joan. The soil at that
+place was arid and mountainous. The pain suffered by Colombaik was
+intolerable. Hoping to descry some habitation, Fergan climbed to the top
+of a palm tree. At a great distance off the road nestled a collection of
+peasant houses at the foot of a hill, hidden under clusters of date
+trees. Aware of the kindheartedness natural to the Saracen people, whom
+nothing but the ferocity of the Crusaders pushed to a desperate
+resistance, above all aware of the religious regard that this nation has
+for the laws of hospitality, Fergan decided to transport his son with
+the aid of Joan to one of those houses and ask for help. The decision
+was put with all the greater promptness into execution out of fear for
+the marauders and vagabonds, who, hovering at a distance, would have
+slain them for the booty.</p>
+
+<p>The dwellers of the little hamlet had all fled at the approach of the
+army of the Crusaders, except one Arab and his wife.<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> Both of them, bent
+with age and seated at the threshold of their house, held their beads in
+their hands and were praying, in calm resignation awaiting death,
+certain that some soldier or other of Christ would come and pillage and
+ravage their home. The old Saracen and his mate, seeing Joan and Fergan
+approach carrying in their arms the child, who moaned piteously,
+realized that they need not fear them as enemies, and hastened forward
+to their encounter. Ignorant of the language of the travelers as these
+were of theirs, the Saracen couple exchanged a few words among
+themselves, pointing sympathetically to the child, and while the woman
+went towards a little garden, the man motioned to Fergan and Joan to
+follow him into the house. This dwelling was whitewashed without, after
+the fashion of the country; it was crowned by a terrace, and had no
+other opening than a narrow door. Two mats served for beds. After
+motioning Fergan and Joan to lay the child upon one of these and then to
+bare his leg, the host, who seemed gifted with certain surgical
+abilities, lengthily examined Colombaik's leg. He then stepped out,
+making a sign for Fergan and his wife to wait for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Fergan!" exclaimed Joan, kneeling beside Colombaik, "with what
+solicitude did not that Saracen and his wife look upon our child! And
+yet we are strangers to them, enemies. The Crusaders whom we follow,
+ravage their country, massacre them, torture them to death! And yet see
+with what kindness these worthy people receive us!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is natural. The Mohamedan priests, while preaching the sacred love
+of country and resistance to foreign oppression, also preach the holy
+laws of humanity towards God's creatures of whatever faith. Alack!
+Certain Christian priests order, and themselves set the example of, the
+extermination of those who do not share their beliefs. An atrocious
+creed!"</p>
+
+<p>The Arab returned with his wife. She carried in her hand a vase of
+water, some palm leaves just pulled off, and some herbs that she had
+pounded between two stones. The Saracen brought several splints of the
+length of Colombaik's leg, together with<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> a long bandage of cloth, with
+the aid of which she bound the splints firmly around the child's leg,
+after having covered it with the crushed herbs. The leg being bandaged,
+the old Arab woman sprinkled it with fresh water, and covered the whole
+limb with the palm leaves. Colombaik felt eased as if by enchantment.
+Full of gratitude, and unable to express themselves in a tongue that was
+not theirs, Fergan and Joan kissed the hands of their hosts. A tear
+rolled down upon the aged man's long beard, and he gravely pointed to
+heaven, meaning undoubtedly to tell his guests it was God that their
+thanks were due to. He then took the ass, which had remained standing at
+the door, and led it to the stable. The old woman brought in honey,
+fresh dates, sheep's milk and a buttered roll of meal. Fergan and Joan
+felt deeply touched by such a generous hospitality. Their child's
+sufferings were momentarily abating. The old man made them understand by
+a significant gesture, opening and closing his ten fingers three times
+and pointing to the child upon the mat, that he had to remain down
+thirty days, in order no doubt that the bones of his broken leg could
+again grow together and become strong. Thanks to the solitude where this
+house was ensconced in, the period necessary for the healing of the
+child ran peacefully by. They were the happiest days the serfs had yet
+known. After having exercised his hospitality towards them without
+knowing them, the aged Arabian grew attached to Fergan, Joan and
+Colombaik, touched by the gratitude that, to the best of their ability,
+they sought to manifest, and also by the tender affection that united
+Fergan and his wife. One day he took Fergan by the hand, led him up a
+stony hill, whence he pointed to the horizon, shaking his head
+expressive of uneasiness; he then pointed towards the foot of the hill
+at the tranquil habitation where they had dwelt nearly a month. Fergan
+understanding that he was urged to stay in that retreat, looked
+astonished at the Arabian. The latter thereupon folded his arms on his
+breast, closed his eyes, and, melancholily shaking his head, pointed to
+the earth, indicating that he was old, that<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> soon he and his wife would
+die, and that, if Fergan was so inclined, the house, the garden, and the
+little field attached to it, would be his.</p>
+
+<p>Fergan was but a poor serf, led to the Crusade by the urgency of
+escaping with wife and child the vengeance of his seigneur and the
+horrors of serfdom. Nevertheless, at that supreme moment, yielding
+obedience to the orders left by the Gallic chief Joel to his
+descendants, he achieved an act of self-sacrifice before which men more
+fortunately situated than himself might have recoiled. He might have
+accepted the aged Arabian's offer and ended his days free and happy in
+this retreat, in the company of his wife and child. But he was the
+depositary of a portion of the chronicles and relics of his family. He
+knew that Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich, held the
+archives of their family back to the invasion of Gaul by Cæsar, while
+himself was charged with a latter portion of safe-keeping. Some day he
+hoped to be able, in obedience to the behest of Joel, to add to those
+chronicles the recital of his own and his family's ordeals during the
+terrible period of the feudal oppression, and, in his turn, narrate the
+events they witnessed during this Crusade, one of the momentous crimes
+of Rome. Accordingly, Fergan considered it a sacred duty to make every
+effort to return to Gaul, and join his relation Gildas the Tanner in
+Laon. Moreover, since his arrival in Syria, he had heard that the
+inhabitants of several large cities in Gaul, more enlightened and more
+daring than the poorer rustic plebs, were beginning to stir. He had
+heard accounts of the insurrection of several cities of Gaul against
+their seigneurs, bishops and abbots, masters of the places. Perchance,
+those bourgeois revolts might lead to revolts among the serfs of the
+field. He conceived as possible a general revolt against the hierarchy
+of Church, monarchy and seigneurs, and he considered it a crime not to
+strive to be in Gaul at that hour of uprising and general
+enfranchisement. Fergan declined the Arab's offer.</p>
+
+<p>July 15, 1099, arrived. Forever indelibly fixed remained that fatal date
+upon the serf's mind. Towards noon, leaning upon<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> his mother and Fergan,
+Colombaik had been essaying his strength. For the first time in thirty
+days he had risen from his bed, and the two venerable hosts followed
+with tender solicitude the movements of the child. Suddenly the tramp of
+a horse was heard descending at a gallop the hill that rose above the
+house. The aged Saracen exchanged a few words with his wife and both
+stepped out precipitately. A few instants later they re-entered,
+accompanied by another grey-bearded Musselman covered with dust. His
+pale and disconcerted features expressed terror and despair. He spoke to
+the aged couple in abrupt words and panting for breath. Blood-stained
+bandages of linen around his right arm and leg betokened two recent
+wounds. Several times, in the midst of his excited words, the word
+"Jerusalem" was heard&mdash;the only word that the serfs could understand. As
+he spoke, fear, indignation and horror reflected themselves on the
+features of the aged Saracen and his wife, until presently their
+venerable faces were bathed in tears, and they fell upon their knees,
+moaning and raising their hands to heaven. At that moment the stranger,
+who in his pre-occupation had not noticed the serfs, recognized them by
+their clothes as Christians, emitted a cry of rage and drew his cimeter.
+Quickly rising to their feet, both the hosts ran to him, and after a few
+words, pronounced in a voice of tender reproach, the Saracen warrior
+returned his sabre to its scabbard and exchanged a few sentences with
+the aged couple. The latter seemed to conjure the stranger to remain
+with them; but he shook his head, pressed their hands in his, rushed
+out, threw himself upon his steaming horse, invoked the vengeance of
+heaven with a gesture, climbed the hill at a gallop, and vanished from
+sight. This friend of the aged couple had come to inform them of the
+capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. The recital of the massacres, the
+pillage, the unspeakable atrocities that the soldiers of Christ had
+soiled and dishonored their victims with, threw the aged couple into
+consternation. Anxious to ascertain the fact, Fergan addressed them,
+uttering the word "Jerusalem" in a sad and interrogating<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> tone. Instead
+of answering, however, both drew brusquely away as if they extended to
+him the horror that the Crusaders inspired them with. Fergan exchanged a
+sad glance with Joan, when the host, no doubt regretting his first
+impulse, returned to the serfs, leaned over Colombaik, who had been laid
+down again, and kissed him on the forehead. Joan and Fergan,
+understanding the delicacy of the sentiment thus expressed, were moved
+to tears. The old Saracen took Fergan for one of the soldiers of that
+ferocious and impious Crusade, and deposited a kiss of pardon and
+oblivion upon the innocent brow of the child of the reputed malefactor.
+The aged Saracen then left the house with his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Jerusalem has fallen into the power of the Crusaders," Fergan said to
+Joan. "I can reach the city in a few hours. I desire to go there. There
+is nothing for me to fear. I shall be back early to-morrow morning. We
+shall then decide what to do."</p>
+
+<p>Although uneasy at the prospect of his departure, the sweet Joan sought
+not to keep her husband back. After embracing her and entrusting to her
+his little treasury and the belt containing his family records and
+relics, Fergan left for Jerusalem. Hardly upon the road, which passed at
+quite a distance from his late retreat, he encountered a troop of
+pilgrims. They were also hastening to the holy city, whose domes,
+towers, minarets and even ramparts they began to perceive from afar
+after four hours march.</p>
+
+<p>That vast city formed a square a league long. The enclosure dominated
+from the west by the high mount of Zion, contained the four rocky hills
+on which Jerusalem was built in an amphitheatre,&mdash;to the east, Mount
+Moriah, on which rose the Mosque of Omar, built upon the site of the old
+Temple of Solomon; to the southeast, Mount Acra, to the north, Mount
+Bezetha; and further to the west the Mount of Golgotha, the Calvary
+where the young man of Nazareth was crucified under the eyes of Fergan's
+ancestress Genevieve. At the summit of Calvary rose the Church<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> of the
+Resurrection, built on the very spot where Jesus died, a magnificent
+church until then religiously respected by the Saracens, together with
+its treasures, despite the war of the Crusaders. Within the church stood
+the sepulchre of Christ, the pretext for this unhallowed war. Such was
+the distant view of Jerusalem. As the travellers approached, they saw
+more distinctly, within the ramparts of walls, the outlines of
+amphitheaters of white square houses, surmounted with terraces, and here
+and yonder, standing out against the deep blue of the sky, the domes of
+mosques, the steeples of Christian basilicas, and several bouquets of
+palm trees. Not a tree was visible in the environs of the city. The
+reddish, stony and parched ground, radiated the torrid heat of the sun
+that was westerning behind the hills. In the neighborhood of the camp,
+whose tents glistened only a short distance from the ramparts, a large
+number of Crusaders were seen dead or dying of the wounds that they
+received at the sortie made by the besieged. The wounded filled the air
+with pitiful wails, vainly imploring help. All the men, not the
+able-bodied alone, but even those whose wounds allowed them to walk, had
+precipitated themselves upon the city, in order to share in the sack.
+The abandoned camp contained only corpses, the dying, horses and beasts
+of burden. As the travelers drew still nearer to the city, whose gates
+had been knocked in after the siege, a confused and formidable noise
+struck their ears. It was a frightful mixture of cries of terror, of
+rage and of desperate supplication, above which ever and anon rose the
+fanatical clamor: "God wills it! God wills it!" After staggering and
+stumbling over thousands of corpses, strewn near the approaches of the
+gate of Bezetha, Fergan arrived at the entrance of a long street that
+issued into a vast square, in the middle of which rose the marvelous
+Mosque of Omar on the very site where once stood the ancient Temple of
+Solomon. It was as if the serf had stepped into a river of blood, red
+and reeking, and carrying in its current thousands of mutilated corpses,
+heads and disjointed members.</p>
+
+<p>The street that Fergan stepped into belonged to the new ward,<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a> the
+richest of the city. Stately dwellings and not a few marble palaces,
+surmounted with balustraded terraces, rose on either side of this vast
+thoroughfare paved with wide slabs of stone. A furious
+multitude&mdash;soldiers, men, women and children, all belonging to the
+Crusade&mdash;swarmed over this long street, uttering ferocious yells. A
+young Saracen woman rushed out of the door of the third house to the
+right of Fergan. She was deadly pale with terror, her hair streamed
+behind her, and her rich clothes were in shreds. In her arms she carried
+two children, two or three years old. Behind her an aged man, already
+wounded, appeared on the threshold, walking backward and striving to
+defend her. The flow of blood covered his visage and clotted his long
+white beard, while he struggled to keep back two Crusaders. One of
+these, carrying on his left shoulder a bundle of costly clothes, pursued
+the aged Saracen with sword thrusts, and finally ran him through the
+breast, throwing him dead at the feet of the young mother. The second
+Crusader, who, no doubt disdaining to carry a heavy booty, had strung
+around his neck several gold chains pillaged in this house, immediately
+seized the young woman by the throat and rolled her over on a heap of
+corpses, while the first crushed under his iron-tagged heels the heads
+of the two children that had dropped from their mother's arms. At that
+instant, one of the women who followed the army hastened by, a hideous
+and savage-looking hag, brandishing in her hand the stump of a knife,
+red with blood. A lad, about the age of Colombaik, accompanied the fury.
+"Each one his turn," said she to the soldier; "leave for me those whelps
+of the devil, my son will dispatch them!" And placing the knife in the
+lad's hand, she added: "Cut off their heads, disembowel those infidel
+dogs!" The child obeyed the hag's orders and disemboweled the two little
+children.</p>
+
+<p>Further away, a band of vagabonds and wenches, drunk with wine and
+carnage, was besieging a palace that the men of Heracle, seigneur of
+Polignac, had seized. As the symbol of possession, these had raised the
+embroidered banner of their<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a> seigneur upon the terrace of the splendid
+building. After throwing a shower of stones at the soldiers of the
+seigneur of Polignac, the vagabonds and wenches assailed the soldiers
+with sticks, pikes and cutlasses, shouting hoarsely in the midst of the
+bloody melée: "Death! To the sack! This house and its riches belong to
+us as well as to the seigneurs! To the sack! Death! Death!"</p>
+
+<p>"Exterminate this band of vagabonds!" shouted back the soldiers,
+thrusting about them with their lances and swords. "Death to these
+jackals who mean to devour the prey of the lion!"</p>
+
+<p>As Fergan advanced along this street he witnessed shocking scenes. The
+sight of a gigantic soldier carrying, strung on his upright lance, three
+little children from five to six months old, was a spectacle never to be
+forgotten. Suddenly he found himself shoved hither and thither, and
+presently shut in within a circle of armed men who seemed to be arranged
+in some kind of order before the entrance of one of the most splendid
+palaces on the street. Lemon and oleander trees, planted in boxes, but
+now broken in two and upset, still ornamented the moresque balustrades
+of the terrace. The band, among which there were several women, and that
+left a wide empty space free between itself and the walls, emitted yells
+of savage impatience. Presently, the sleeves of his brown frock rolled
+back to the elbows, and his hands red with blood, a monk leaned forward
+over the balustrade of the terrace. It was Peter the Hermit, the
+companion of Walter the Pennyless. The identical Cuckoo Peter, whose
+hollow eyes glistened with savage fanaticism, now called out to the
+crowd in a hoarse voice: "My brothers in Christ, are you ready? Draw
+near and receive your share of the booty."</p>
+
+<p>"We are ready, holy man, and have been long waiting," answered several
+bandits; "we are losing our time here; they are pillaging elsewhere,
+holy father in God! We want our share of the booty."</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes your share of this great feast, my brothers in Christ. The
+vapor of the infidels' blood rises towards the Lord<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> like an incense of
+myrrh and balsam! Let not one of the miscreants, that we are about to
+throw down to you from this terrace, escape with his life!"</p>
+
+<p>Peter the Hermit vanished and almost immediately the bust of a Saracen,
+clad in the purple caftan embroidered in gold, appeared above. Although
+bound hands and feet, the wild jumps of the unhappy man showed that he
+resisted with all his might the efforts of those who strove to throw him
+down into the street. A few minutes later, however, half his body had
+been forced over the balustrade. He straightened up once more, but
+immediately was hurled into space and dropped, head foremost, thirty
+feet below. A joyous clamor broke out at the man's fall, and redoubled
+when, with a dull thud, his skull struck the pavement and broke. He
+lived a few seconds longer, and strove to turn on his side while
+emitting violent imprecations. But soon, riddled with sword thrusts,
+broken with clubs and mauled with stones, there remained of him but a
+mangled lump in the midst of a pool of blood. "Father in God," cried out
+the mob, "the job is done! Hurry up! Send us another!"</p>
+
+<p>The hideous figure of Peter the Hermit re-appeared above the balustrade.
+He leaned his head forward and contemplated the remains of the Saracen.
+"Well done, my children!" The monk had hardly disappeared again, when
+two youths of fifteen to sixteen years, brothers no doubt, and bound
+face to face, were thrown down from the terrace. The violence of the
+fall snapped the bands that held them together. The elder was killed on
+the spot, the younger's legs were broken. For a few moments he dragged
+himself on his hands, moaning piteously and seeking to approach his
+brother's corpse. The Crusaders pounced upon these new victims. Women,
+monsters in human form, pulled out their entrails, indulged in obscene
+and infamous mutilations upon the two corpses, and throwing into the air
+the bleeding parts, cried out exultingly: "Let's exterminate the
+infidels! God wills it!"</p>
+
+<p>Twenty times did Peter the Hermit re-appear on the terrace,<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> and twenty
+times were bodies thrown down over the balustrade, and torn to pieces by
+the crowd, drunk with bloodshed. Among these victims were five young
+girls and two other boys from ten to twelve years of age.</p>
+
+<p>All the inhabitants of Jerusalem who were captured, even those who had
+paid ransom for their lives&mdash;men, women and children&mdash;all, to the number
+of seventy thousand human beings, were thus massacred. The extermination
+lasted two days and three nights, obedient to the following order of the
+seigneur Tancred, one of the heroes of the Crusade: "<i>We consider it
+necessary to put to the sword without delay both the prisoners and those
+who paid ransom.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The last of the victims, cast at the mob by Peter the Hermit, were being
+massacred, when another band of Crusaders, running up from the other end
+of the street and marching towards the large square, passed by shouting:
+"The people of Tancred are pillaging the Mosque of Omar. * * * By all
+the saints of Paradise and all the devils of hell, we want our part of
+the booty!"</p>
+
+<p>"And we stay here amusing ourselves with corpses!" cried out the
+butchers under Peter the Hermit's terrace. "Let's on to the mosque! To
+the sack! To the sack!"</p>
+
+<p>Again Fergan was carried by the torrent of the crowd and arrived upon a
+spacious square littered with Saracen corpses, seeing that, after the
+assault had succeeded, the Saracens had retreated, fighting from street
+to street, and drawn themselves up before the mosque, where a last
+battle was delivered. At that place, these heroes were all killed
+defending the temple, the refuge of the women, the children and the old
+men, too feeble to fight, and who relied upon the pity and mercy of the
+vanquishers. Easier far had it been to excite the pity of a hungry tiger
+than that of the Crusaders.</p>
+
+<p>Several tiers of marble stairs led down to the Mosque of Omar, whose
+floor was about three feet below the level of the street. Such had been
+the butchery indulged in by the Crusaders,<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> and so much blood had run
+down into the temple, which measured more than one thousand feet in
+circumference, that the blood, rising above the first stairs, began to
+run over into the square. The interior of the Mosque of Omar offered to
+the eye but one vast sheet of blood, still warm, and the vapor of which
+rose like a light mist above an innumerable mass of corpses, here
+wholly, yonder only partially submerged in the red lake, where heads and
+members hacked from the trunk with hatchets, were seen floating at
+large. Of the Crusaders who entered the Mosque of Omar for pillage, some
+waded in blood to their waists. The warmth of the flowing blood and the
+site of the shocking butchery made Fergan reel with dizziness. His heart
+thumped against his ribs and his strength gave way. In vain he sought
+support against one of the porphyry columns at the facade of the mosque.
+He dropped down unconscious, his legs steeped in blood.</p>
+
+<p>Fergan knew not how long he remained in that condition. When he regained
+consciousness it was night. The brightness of a large number of torches
+struck his eye. Religious songs, repeated in chorus by thousands of
+voices, fell upon his ears. Flanked by two files of soldiers, who
+marched in measured tread with torches in their hands, he saw a long
+procession pass by the temple. The procession wended its way to the
+Mount of Golgotha, close to the Church of the Resurrection, where stood
+the sepulchre of Jesus. At the head of the procession triumphantly
+marched the legate of the Pope, Peter the Hermit and the clergy,
+chanting praises to the All-powerful; after them the chiefs of the
+Crusaders, among them William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, clad in an old sack
+and smiting his breast. These were followed by the train-bands of the
+seigneurs, together with a multitude of soldiers, men, women, children
+and pilgrims, singing in chorus <i>Laudate Creator</i>. The crowd was so
+numerous that when the prelates and the chiefs of the Crusade, who
+headed the procession, reached the front of the Church of the
+Resurrection, the last ranks were still crowding upon each other<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> in the
+middle of the square of the mosque. Other Crusaders marched outside of
+the two files of torch-bearing soldiers.</p>
+
+<p>When Fergan approached the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
+brilliantly lighted within, he heard loud roars of laughter mingled with
+maudlin imprecations. The King of the Vagabonds and his band, in company
+with their wenches, all drunk with wine and carnage, had taken
+possession of the holy place, and had begun to pillage it of its
+ornaments. At the center of the sanctuary stood Perrette the Ribald, her
+hair disheveled like a Bacchante's.<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a></p>
+
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III.<br /><br />
+THE COMMUNE OF LAON.</h2>
+
+<p><a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a></p>
+
+<p><a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I-c" id="CHAPTER_I-c"></a>CHAPTER I.<br /><br />
+THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES.</h3>
+
+<p>For centuries Laon had for its temporal seigneur the bishop of the
+diocese, and figured from the start among the foremost cities of
+Picardy. Since the Frankish conquest, and down to the date of the events
+here narrated (1112), Laon constituted a part of the special domains of
+the kings. Clovis made himself master of the city through the treason of
+Saint Remy, who baptized that crowned bandit at Rheims. Clovis' wife,
+Clotilde, founded in the city the collegiate church of Saint Peter, and
+later Brunhild built a palace there. A bishop of Laon, Adalberon, the
+paramour of Queen Imma, was her accomplice in the poisoning of Lothair,
+the father of Louis the Indolent,&mdash;a homocidal example that was soon
+imitated upon himself by his Queen, Blanche, another adulterous
+poisoner, who, through the murder committed by her, confirmed the
+usurpation of Hugh Capet, to the injury of the last Carlovingian king.
+Charles, Duke of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis the Indolent, having
+become through the latter's death the heritor of the crown of the
+Frankish kings, took possession of Laon. Hugh Capet besieged him there,
+and, after several assaults, succeeded in capturing the city, thanks to
+the connections that Adalberon, the adulterer and poisoning bishop, had
+preserved in the place. Since then, Laon continued as a sovereign
+ecclesiastical seigniory, but always under the suzerainty of the French
+King. In the year 1112, the date of this narrative, the reigning king
+was named Louis the Lusty. As obese as, but much less indolent than his
+father, Philip I, the excommunicated lover of the handsome Berthrade who
+died in 1108, Louis the Lusty did not, like his father, submit to the<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a>
+affronts and vexations of the feudal seigneurs; he waged war to the
+knife against them to the end of extending with their spoils his own
+domains, that then took in only Paris, Melun, Compiegne, Etampes,
+Orleans, Montlhery, Puiset and Corbeil. Thus, in addition to the scourge
+of the private wars among the seigneurs, the people bent under the
+affliction of the wars of the king against the seigneurs, and of the
+Normans against the king. The Normans, the descendants of old Rolf the
+Pirate, had conquered England under their duke William. But, although
+settled down in that ultramarine country, the Kings of England preserved
+in Gaul the duchy of Normandy and Gisors, and from thence dominated the
+territory of Vexin, almost to the gates of Paris, waging incessant war
+upon Louis the Lusty. Thus Gaul continued to be ravaged by bloody
+strifes, with none other than the people, the serfs and villeins, as the
+perpetual victims. The wretched agricultural plebs, decimated by the
+execrable craze of the Crusades, that held out despite the recapture of
+Jerusalem by the Turks, found itself crushed by a double burden, their
+decreased numbers being compelled by increased labor to provide for the
+needs, the prodigalities and the debaucheries of the clergy and the
+seigneurs.</p>
+
+<p>The bourgeois and other townsmen, better organized, better able to
+realize their power, above all more enlightened than the serfs of the
+fields, had revolted in many cities against their lay or ecclesiastical
+seigneurs, and, by dint of daring, of energy and stubbornness, had, at
+the price of their own blood, regained their freedom and secured the
+abolition of the degrading and shameful rights that the feudal families
+had been long enjoying. A small number of cities, even without resorting
+to arms, had, by virtue of great pecuniary sacrifices, purchased their
+enfranchisement from the seigniorial rights, with round sums of money.
+Delivered from their former secular and creed servitude, the city
+populations celebrated with enthusiasm all the circumstances connected
+with their emancipation. Thus, on April 15, 1112, the bourgeois
+merchants and artisans of the city of Laon were<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> in gala since early
+morning. From one side to the other of the streets, male and female
+neighbors called one another from their windows and exchanged gladsome
+salutations.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, neighbor," said one, "the bright anniversary of the inauguration
+of our Commune Hall and belfry has arrived!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do not mention it, neighbor; I have not slept all night! With my wife
+and children we were up till three o'clock in the morning burnishing up
+my iron casque and coat of mail. Our armed militia will add great luster
+to the ceremony. May God be praised for this great day!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the procession of our artisans' guilds will be no less superb!
+Would you believe it, neighbor, that I, who during all my life of a
+carpenter have not, as you may imagine, ever held a needle in my hands,
+helped my wife to sew together the stripes of our new banner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God, the weather will be beautiful for the ceremony. Look how
+clear and brilliant the dawn is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't be otherwise! Such a feast could not lack good weather. I
+expect that when I shall hear for the first time the peals from our
+communal belfry every clank will make my heart bound!"</p>
+
+<p>These dialogues and many others, naive testimony of the joy of the
+inhabitants of Laon, took place along the length of all the streets from
+house to house, from the humblest to the richest. Almost all the
+windows, opened since the break of day, exposed to view the laughing
+faces of men, women and children, all actively engaged with preparations
+for the festivities.</p>
+
+<p>The gladsome stir in almost all the quarters of the city, rendered all
+the more striking the gloomy and sombre and, so to say, sullen aspect of
+a certain number of dwellings of ancient architecture, and whose gates
+were, as a rule, flanked by two turrets with pointed roofs, surmounted
+with a weather-vane. Not a chink of these dwellings, blackish with age,
+was open on this morning. They belonged to the ecclesiastical
+dignitaries of the metropolitan church, or to noble knights, who, not
+owning<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> estates large enough to live in the country, inhabited the
+cities, and ever sided against the bourgeois and with the lay or
+ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, in Laon, these clergymen and
+knights were designated as the <i>episcopals</i>, while the inhabitants, who,
+according to the language of the day, "took the oath of the Commune,"
+were called the <i>communiers</i>. The antique turrets of the dwellings of
+the episcopals were at once a species of fortification and a symbol of
+the nobility of their origin. On that morning, these dwellings, silent
+and shut up, seemed to denote the displeasure given to the noble
+episcopals by the rejoicings of the Laonese laboring classes.<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_II-c" id="CHAPTER_II-c"></a>CHAPTER II.<br /><br />
+THE CHARTER OF LAON.</h3>
+
+<p>But there were other dwellings, also flanked with turrets, besides those
+of the nobles. These others were gaily decorated, and the whiteness of
+their masonry, contrasting with the aspect of the ancient architecture
+of the nobles, to which they seemed to be annexes, bespoke a more recent
+date.</p>
+
+<p>One of these establishments, thus fortified only a short time since, lay
+at the corner of Exchange street, the leading mercantile thoroughfare of
+the city. The old door, whose threshold and lintels were of stone, and
+at either side of which rose two white and high turrets recently built,
+had been thrown open at the very first break of day, and several
+townsmen were seen going in and out. They came for certain instructions
+on the ceremonies. In one of the chambers of this dwelling sat Fergan
+and Joan the Hunchback. It was about twelve years since they had left
+the Holy Land. The hair and beard of Fergan, now over forty years of
+age, began to betray streaks of gray. He was no longer the serf of olden
+days&mdash;restless, savage, tattered. His features breathed happiness and
+serenity. Equipped almost wholly as a soldier, he wore a jacket of iron
+mail and a corselet of steel. He was seated near a table at which he
+wrote. Joan, clad in a robe of brown wool, and wearing on her head a
+sober bonnet, from under which a long white veil fell upon her
+shoulders, looked no less blissful than her husband. On the sweet face
+of this brave mother, once so severely tried, the expression of profound
+felicity was depicted. At the request of Fergan she had just drawn from
+an old oaken cabinet a little iron casket, which she placed upon the
+table where Fergan was writing. The<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a> casket, an inheritance from Gildas
+the Tanner, contained several parchment scrolls, yellow with the age of
+centuries, besides the several relics so dear to the family of the
+Gallic chief Joel, and among which was the silver cross of Genevieve,
+together with the pilgrim's shell that Fergan had taken from Neroweg VI
+in the desert of Syria. Fergan had just finished transcribing on a
+parchment a copy of the communal charter, under which, for the last
+three years, the city of Laon was free and led a peaceful and
+flourishing existence. The quarryman wished to join the copy of that
+charter to the archives of the family of Joel, as a witness of the
+awakening spirit of freedom of his own days, and of the inexorable
+resolution of the people to battle against the kings, the clergymen and
+the seigneurs, descendants or heritors of the Frankish conquest. For the
+last fifteen or twenty years back, other cities besides Laon, driven to
+extremities by the horrors of feudalism, had, some through insurrection,
+others through great sacrifices of money, obtained similar charters,
+under shelter of which they governed themselves like republics, similar
+to the heroic and brilliant days of Gaul's independence, centuries
+before the invasions of the Romans. The copy of the communal charter of
+Laon, the original of which, deposited in the Mayor's office, bore the
+name and signature of Gaudry, bishop of the diocese of Laon, and of
+Louis the Lusty, King of the French, ran as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p class="c"><span class="smcap">CHARTER OF THE COMMUNE OF LAON</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="c">I.</p>
+
+<p>All men, domiciled within the walls of the city and in its suburbs,
+belonging to any seigneur who holds as a fief the territory which
+they inhabit, shall swear allegiance to this Commune.</p>
+
+<p class="c">II.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the full extent of the city each shall render assistance
+to the other, loyally and to the best of his ability.</p>
+
+<p class="c">III.</p>
+
+<p>The men of this Commune shall be free holders of their goods.
+<i>Neither the King, nor the Bishop, nor any other, shall be entitled
+to make any levy upon them</i>, except by the judgment of their own
+town council.<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a></p>
+
+<p class="c">IV.</p>
+
+<p>Each shall, on all occasions, observe fidelity towards those who
+shall have taken the oath of the Commune, and shall aid them with
+deed and advice.</p>
+
+<p class="c">V.</p>
+
+<p>Within the limits of the Commune, all the men shall mutually help
+one another, according to their power; and they shall in no wise,
+whatever it be, suffer the seigneur, Bishop or any other, to
+distrain any property from them, or compel them to pay imposts.</p>
+
+<p class="c">VI.</p>
+
+<p>Thirteen <i>Councilmen</i> shall be elected by the Commune. One of these
+councilmen shall be elected <i>Mayor</i> by the suffrage of all those
+who shall have taken the oath of the Commune.</p>
+
+<p class="c">VII.</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor and the Councilmen shall make oath to favor no person by
+reason of friendship, and to render an equitable decision in all
+matters, according to their powers; all others shall take the oath
+of obedience and to sustain with arms the decisions of the Mayor
+and Councilmen. When the bell of the belfry shall sound to assemble
+the Commune, anyone who does not attend shall pay a fine of twelve
+sous.</p>
+
+<p class="c">VIII.</p>
+
+<p>If anyone injure a man who shall have taken the oath of the Commune
+of Laon, a complaint being lodged with the Mayor and Councilmen,
+they shall, after due trial, enforce justice upon the body and
+property of the guilty party.</p>
+
+<p class="c">IX.</p>
+
+<p>If the guilty party takes refuge in a fortified castle, the Mayor
+and Councilmen shall notify the seigneur of the castle, or his
+lieutenant. If in their opinion satisfaction shall have been
+rendered against the guilty party, that will suffice; but if the
+seigneur refuses satisfaction, <i>they shall themselves enforce
+justice upon the property and upon the men of said seigneur</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="c">X.</p>
+
+<p>If any member of the Commune shall have entrusted his money to some
+one of the city, and he to whom the money has been so entrusted
+takes refuge in some strong castle, the seigneur having been
+notified, shall either return the money, or drive the debtor from
+his castle. If the seigneur does neither, justice shall be enforced
+upon his goods and his men.</p>
+
+<p class="c">XI.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever the Mayor and the Councilmen shall desire to fortify the
+city, they shall be free to do so on whatever seigneur's territory
+it may be.</p>
+
+<p class="c">XII.</p>
+
+<p>The men of the Commune shall be free to grind their corn, and bake
+their bread wherever they please.<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a></p>
+
+<p class="c">XIII.</p>
+
+<p>If the Mayor and Councilmen of the Commune require money for the
+use of the city, and raise a tax, they may levy the same on the
+inheritances and property of the townsmen, and on the sales and
+profits made in the city.</p>
+
+<p class="c">XIV.</p>
+
+<p>No stranger, a copy-holder of any Church or seigneur, and
+established <i>outside of the city and its suburbs</i>, shall be
+included in the Commune without the consent of his seigneur.</p>
+
+<p class="c">XV.</p>
+
+<p>Whosoever shall be received in this Commune shall build a house
+within the space of one year, or shall purchase vineyards, or shall
+bring into the city moveable property, to the end that justice may
+be enforced, should a complaint be raised against him.</p>
+
+<p class="c">XVI.</p>
+
+<p>If anyone slander the Mayor in the exercise of his functions, the
+slanderer's house shall be demolished, or he shall pay ransom for
+the same, or he shall deliver himself to the mercy of the
+Councilmen.</p>
+
+<p class="c">XVII.</p>
+
+<p>No one shall molest or vex the strangers of the Commune. If any
+dare do so, he shall be deemed a violator of the Commune, and
+justice shall be enforced upon his person and his property.</p>
+
+<p class="c">XVIII.</p>
+
+<p>Whosoever shall have wounded with arms any one who, like himself,
+shall have taken the oath of the Commune, then, unless he justifies
+his act under oath or with witnesses, he shall lose his hand, and
+shall pay nine livres; six for the fortifications of the city and
+of the Commune, three for the ransom of his hand. If he is unable
+to pay, he shall leave his hand at the mercy of the Commune.</p></div>
+
+<p>Fergan had just finished transcribing the charter, when the door of his
+room opened. Colombaik stepped in. A young and comely wife of eighteen
+years at the most accompanied him. The son of the quarryman, a fine
+strapping young man of twenty-two, united in the expression of his face
+the sweetness of his mother and the energy of his father. Like the
+latter, he also was clad half townsman half soldier. His casque of black
+steel, ribbed with shining iron, imparted a martial air to his pleasing
+and open countenance. He carried a heavy cross-bow on his shoulder. From
+his right side hung a leather holster that held the bolts needed for his
+weapon. His wife, Martine,<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> only daughter of the old age of Gildas, the
+elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich, was of the age and endowed with the
+charms of Isoline, a victim like her father of the cupidity of Neroweg
+VI.</p>
+
+<p>"Father!" Colombaik cried out joyfully upon entering the room and
+alluding to his war-like outfit, "in your quality of constable of our
+bourgeois and artisan militia, do you find me worthy of figuring in the
+troop? Does Colombaik, the soldier, make you forget by his martial
+outfit Colombaik, the townsman and tanner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank heaven, Colombaik the soldier will not, I hope, have occasion to
+blot out Colombaik the tanner," put in Joan with her sweet smile, "any
+more than Fergan the constable will have occasion to blot out Fergan the
+master quarryman. You will both continue to battle, you with your
+beaters against the hides in the tannery, your father with his pick
+against the stones of his quarry. Is not that your hope and desire, dear
+Martine?" Joan added, turning to the wife of her son.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, my good mother," responded Martine. "Fortunately they are
+far behind, those evil days when the bourgeois and artisans of Laon, in
+order to escape the exactions of the bishop, of the clergymen, and of
+the knights, often had to barricade themselves in their houses and
+sustain a regular siege; and when, but too often, despite their
+resistance, their houses were entered and they were carried to the
+episcopal palace, where they were tortured for ransom. What a
+difference, my God, since we have been living under the Commune! We now
+are so free, so happy!" But Martine added with a sigh: "Oh, I regret
+that my poor father did not live to witness the change! His last moments
+would not have been saddened by the uneasiness that our future gave him.
+Seeing the terrible acts of violence indulged in by Bishop Gaudry,
+together with the nobles, against the inhabitants of Laon, acts that
+might any day have reached us as they reached so many others among our
+neighbors, my father always had before him the frightful fate of my
+uncle Bezenecq and his poor daughter Isoline!"<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Be at ease, my dear wife," rejoined Colombaik; "those accursed days
+shall not return! No, no! To-day old Gaul bristles with free Communes,
+as three hundred years ago it bristled with feudal castles. The Communes
+are our fortresses! Our belfry tower is our donjon. We no longer have to
+fear the seigneurs!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Martine, my sweet child," said Joan with deep emotion to the wife
+of her son, "happier than we, you happy youngsters will not see your
+children and your husbands enduring the horrors of servitude."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, we, the bourgeois and artisans of the cities are emancipated,"
+Fergan rejoined pensively; "but serfdom presses as cruelly now as in the
+past upon the serfs of the fields. I fought, for that reason, with all
+my power, the clause in our charter that excludes from the Commune the
+serfs living outside of the village, or those who do not possess money
+enough to build a house here. Is it not to exclude them, when the
+consent of their seigneurs, or a sufficient sum with which to build a
+house in the city is required from them, who own not even their own
+arms? And yet, that sole wealth of the industrious man is equal to any
+other." Turning then to Martine: "Oh, the father of your father and of
+Bezenecq spoke like a whole-souled and wise man when, years ago, while
+vainly inciting the townsmen to the insurrections that are to-day
+breaking out in so many cities of Gaul, he aimed, not at the revolt of
+the bourgeois and artisans merely, but also at that of the serfs. Serfs
+and bourgeois united would not be long in crushing the seigniories. But
+reduced to its own forces, the task of the bourgeoisie will be long and
+arduous.... We must be prepared for fresh struggles...."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, father," interposed Colombaik, "since the day when, in
+consideration of a good round sum, the bishop renounced his seigniorial
+rights and sold us our freedom for cash, has he ever dared to ride the
+high horse against us,&mdash;he, that brutal Norman warrior, who, before the
+establishment of the Commune, had the eyes of townsmen put out and often
+killed them for the mere offense of having condemned his acts of
+shameful debauchery,&mdash;he, <a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a>who in his own cathedral, only four years
+ago, killed with his own hands the unhappy Bernard des Bruyeres? No, no;
+despite his wickedness, Bishop Gaudry knows full well that, if, after
+pocketing our money as a consideration for giving his consent to our
+Commune, he were to try to return to his former practices, he would pay
+dear for his perjury. Three years of freedom have taught us to prize the
+sacred boon. We would know how to defend it, arms in hand, like the
+Communes of Cambrai, Amiens, Abbeville, Noyon, Beauvais, Rheims, and so
+many others."</p>
+
+<p>"For all that, Colombaik," remarked Martine, "I cannot help trembling
+when I see Black John, that African giant, who once was the bishop's
+hangman, cross the streets of our city. That negro seems ever to be
+plotting some act of cruelty, like some savage beast, that but waits for
+some opportune moment to snap his chain."</p>
+
+<p>"Be at ease, Martine," Colombaik answered with a smile. "The chain is
+solid, no less solid than that which holds that other bandit, Thiegaud,
+the serf of the Abbey of St. Vincent, and favorite of Bishop Gaudry, who
+familiarly calls him his friend 'Ysengrin,' a name given by children to
+the companion of the wolf. But, would you believe it, mother, that
+Thiegaud, a fellow stained with all imaginable crimes, that abominable
+reprobate, yet adores his daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"Even the wild beasts love their young ones," answered Joan. "Did not
+Worse than a Wolf, our former seigneur, with whom your father fought
+when we were in Palestine, weep when he thought of his son?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's true, mother; and so it is with this other wolf Thiegaud. The
+tenant of the little farm that your father left us, my dear Martine, was
+telling me yesterday that a short time ago Thiegaud's daughter came near
+dying, and he was almost crazed with grief. Moreover the wretch is as
+jealous of the chastity of his daughter as if he himself had led a clean
+life! The scamp tried to rob us, I am sure. When our tenant mentioned
+Thiegaud'<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a>s name to me it was because the fellow pretended to want to
+buy in the name of the bishop, who is a passionate hunter, as you know,
+a young colt raised on our meadow."</p>
+
+<p>"Take care!" said Fergan warningly. "The bishop is over head and ears in
+debt. If you sell the horse you will receive no money."</p>
+
+<p>"I know the fine sire! I told our tenant: 'If Thiegaud pays cash for the
+horse, sell it to him; if not, don't.' The days are gone by when the
+seigneurs had the right to buy on credit, which is to say, the right to
+buy without ever paying. To try and compel them to pay was tantamount to
+placing liberty and even life in jeopardy. To-day, however, if the
+bishop should dare rob a communier, the Commune would enforce justice
+upon the episcopals, whether they willed it or not. That's the text of
+our charter, signed, not by the bishop only, but also by King Louis the
+Lusty&mdash;a signature, 'tis true, that we paid dearly for."</p>
+
+<p>"We paid for it through the nose," rejoined Fergan. "That gross king
+chaffered and haggled for two days on a stretch. Our friend Robert the
+Eater was one of the communiers sent to Paris three years ago to secure
+our charter. What a gang of cut-throats make up that court! To start
+with, it was necessary to generously oil the palms of the royal
+councilors in order to dispose them in our favor. Louis the Lusty then
+wanted to have the proposed sum increased by a fourth, then by a third.
+Finally, over and above the redemption of his ancient rights of quarters
+and stabling for himself and his army, whenever he visited the city, he
+demanded the annual use of three houses, and if he did not avail himself
+of them, an equivalent of twenty livres a year, and three years in
+advance. You must admit, my children, that it is selling rather dear
+those 'rights of crown,' as they call them, monstrous rights, born of
+the iniquitous and bloody deeds of the conquest."</p>
+
+<p>"So it is, father," answered Colombaik; "we may well say that, in
+selling to us for their weight in silver, what they please to call their
+rights, the king and his seigneurs act like highwaymen,<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> who put the
+dagger to your throat and say: 'I robbed you yesterday; now give me your
+purse, and I shall not rob you to-morrow.'"</p>
+
+<p>"It is better to yield your money than your blood," said Joan. "By dint
+of work and privation one may recover his savings, and one is at least
+freed from those fearful savages, whom I cannot think of without
+shuddering."</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover, father," put in Martine, "it seems to me we need all the less
+fear the return of the tyranny of the seigneur, seeing that the king
+hates them as much as we, and fights them to the knife. We hear every
+day of his wars against the large vassals, of the battles he fights with
+them, and of the provinces he plucks them of."</p>
+
+<p>"But, children, who profits by war? Who is it that pays the piper for
+the ravages it causes? The people. Yes, the King hates the seigneurs
+because from century to century they seized upon a large number of
+provinces, that one time belonged to the Frankish crown when it
+conquered Gaul. Yes, the King fights the seigneurs to the knife, but
+likewise does the butcher wage relentless war against the wolves who
+devour the cattle intended for the shambles. That's the reason of the
+hatred of Louis the Lusty and the prelates towards the lay seigneurs.
+Church and royalty desire to annihilate the seigneurs in order
+themselves to lead at will the plebs cattle, bequeathed to them by the
+conquest. Oh, my children, my heart is full of hope. But so long as
+serfs, artisans and bourgeois shall not stand united against their
+hereditary enemies, the future looms up before me big with new perils.
+Happier than our forefathers, we have initiated a holy struggle, our
+children will have to continue it through centuries to come."</p>
+
+<p>"And yet, father, are we not now living in absolute peace and
+prosperity, free from crushing imposts, governed by magistrates of our
+own choice, who have no object other than the public weal? Our city
+becomes daily more industrious and affluent. The bishop and his
+episcopals can not be hair-brained<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a> enough to seek to restore old
+conditions and assail our liberty. We have weapons wherewith to defend
+ourselves!"</p>
+
+<p>"My child, if we wish to preserve our franchises, we must redouble our
+vigilance and energy, and keep ourselves ever ready for the fray."</p>
+
+<p>"Why pre-occupy ourselves so much about the future, father? Why should
+we have to redouble our vigilance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bishop Gaudry and the nobles of the city used to subject us, at their
+will and without mercy, to crushing imposts and hateful rights. We said
+to them: 'Renounce forever your rights and your annual taxes; emancipate
+us; subscribe to our Commune; we shall give you a considerable sum in
+full future payment.' Now, then, these idle people, wasteful and
+covetous, thought only of the present and accepted our offer. By this
+time, however, the money has been spent, or there is little of it left.
+They are regretting that, in the language of the story, they killed the
+goose that lay the golden eggs. They are seeking to break the contract."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" cried out Colombaik. "They would contemplate breaking the pact
+that they freely entered into&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen to me," interposed Joan. "I do not wish to exaggerate the
+apprehensions of your father for the future. Nevertheless, I believe to
+have noticed&mdash;" but breaking off she continued: "After all, I may have
+been mistaken&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What have you in mind, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be that you have not noticed that for some time back the
+knights, the city clergy, in short, all the folks of the party of the
+bishop, whom they call the episcopals, have been deporting themselves
+with a swaggering air towards the townsmen and artisans in the streets?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, Joan," remarked Fergan pensively. "I have been struck,
+less, perhaps, by the swagger of the episcopals, than by the insolence
+of their menials. It is a grave symptom, an indication of their
+resentment."<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Good! A ridiculous rancor, and nothing else!" said Colombaik smiling
+disdainfully. "Those holy canons and their noble pursuivants do not
+forgive the bourgeois for being free like themselves, and for having,
+like themselves, and when they please, turrets to their houses&mdash;a
+pleasure that I have bestowed upon myself, thanks to the finest stones
+of your quarry, father. Thus, our tannery could now sustain a siege
+against those ill-tempered episcopals. Besides, I have contrived for
+Martine a pretty little alcove in one of the turrets, and her initials,
+cut by me in copper, glisten in the weather-vane from the top of our
+turrets, just as the initials of a lady of rank."</p>
+
+<p>"It will, no doubt, be more than ever well to have a strong house,"
+observed Fergan. "It is not the weather-vanes on our turrets, but thick
+walls that trouble the episcopals."</p>
+
+<p>"They will have to become accustomed to our strong houses. If not, by
+heaven&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No passion, Colombaik," put in the benign Joan, again interrupting the
+impetuous young man. "Your father has made the same observation that I
+did; and since the retainers of the knights look provoking, their
+masters must be near becoming so themselves. This morning's ceremony
+will surely, for more reasons than one, attract a large number of
+episcopals along the line of the procession. For heaven's sake, my
+child, no rashness!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do not alarm yourself, Joan," rejoined Fergan, "we are too conscious of
+our good rights and of the strength of the Commune, not to keep cool in
+sight of mere insolence. But prudence does not exclude firmness."</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had the quarryman pronounced these words when the door flew open,
+and a young and attractive woman entered with a pert air. She was a
+brunette, sprightly and handsomely dressed, like the rich bourgeois that
+she was. An orange-colored silk petticoat was fastened to her exquisite
+waist with a silver belt; her skirt, made of fine Arras cloth and
+bordered with marten fur, hardly reached her knees; on her black hair,<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a>
+that shone like jet, she wore a bonnet, red like her stockings, which
+set off her well-shaped calves; finally, her feet were shod in smart
+shoes of shining Morocco leather. Simonne, that was her name, was the
+wife of Ancel Quatre-Mains, a master baker, renowned throughout the city
+of Laon and even the suburbs, for the excellence of his bread, his cream
+tarts, his honey cakes, his almond wafers and other dainties that were
+confectioned in his shop. He also drove the trade of flour merchant, and
+the Commune had chosen him one of its Councilmen. Ancel
+Quatre-Mains<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a>&mdash;the name was due to his prodigious quickness in
+kneading the dough&mdash;presented a singular contrast to his wife,&mdash;as calm
+and thoughtful as she was pert and giddy-headed, as chary of words as
+she was loquacious, as corpulent as she was lithesome. His physiognomy
+betokened imperturbable good-nature, coupled in his instance with a
+lively sense of justice, a generous heart, and extraordinary skill at
+his trade.</p>
+
+<p>Wishing to please his pretty wife, whom he loved as much as he was loved
+by her, the master baker had harnessed himself in war accoutrements. A
+large number of townsmen, until then deprived of the right to carry
+arms&mdash;a right exclusively reserved to the seigneurs, the knights and
+their pursuivants&mdash;found a pleasure and a triumph in such martial
+arrays. Ancel Quatre-Mains only slightly shared their taste; but in
+order to suit Simonne, who was greatly captivated by the military garb,
+he had put on a gobison, a species of strongly bolstered and thick
+leather corselet, that, not having been measured for him, pressed in his
+chest and caused his prominent stomach to protrude still more. On the
+other hand, his iron casque, much too large for him, kept falling over
+his eyes, an inconvenience that the worthy baker corrected from time to
+time by pushing his unlucky headgear to the back of his head. At times
+his legs also got entangled with the long sword that swung from a buff
+shoulder-belt, embroidered with red silk and silver thread by Simonne
+herself, who wished to imitate the tokens of approval bestowed by the
+noble ladies<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> upon their gallant knights. Ancel had long been the friend
+of Fergan, who loved and esteemed him greatly. Simonne, brought up with
+Martine and slightly her senior, cherished her like a sister. Thanks to
+their close neighborhood, the two young women visited each other every
+day after the routine of their household and even trade duties had been
+attended to, because, if Martine helped Colombaik in several departments
+of his tannery, Simonne, who was no less industrious than lovable,
+leaving to Ancel and his two apprentices the care of preparing the
+bread, would confection with her own pretty hands, as white as the wheat
+flour that they handled, the delicious cakes that the townsmen and even
+the noble episcopals were so fond of.</p>
+
+<p>Simonne stepped in the house of her neighbor with her habitual pertness.
+But her charming face, no longer smiling and happy as usual, was now
+expressive of lively indignation, and entering a few steps ahead of her
+husband, she cried out: "The insolent wretch! As true as Ancel is called
+Quatre-Mains, I would have wished, 'pon the word of a Picardian woman,
+that I had four hands to slap her face, noble dame though she be! The
+old hag, as ugly as she is wicked and quarrelsome!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Fergan smiling, knowing well the nature of Simonne,
+"you, ordinarily so gay and full of laughter! You seem highly incensed,
+neighbor!"</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened, Simonne? Who has excited your anger to such a
+pitch?" added Martine.</p>
+
+<p>"Trifles," said the baker, shaking his head and answering the
+questioning looks of Fergan, Joan and Colombaik; "it is nothing, good
+neighbors."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?... Nothing!" cried out Simonne, turning with a start to her
+husband. "Oh! According to you such insolence must pass unperceived!"</p>
+
+<p>The baker again shook his head, and, profiting by the opportunity to be
+rid of his casque, that pressed him heavily, he placed it under his arm.
+"Oh! It is nothing!" proceeded Simonne,<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> now addressing Fergan and Joan.
+"I take you for judges. You are wise and thoughtful people."</p>
+
+<p>"And what are we two, Martine and I?" queried Colombaik, laughing
+merrily. "So, then, you discard us?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not take you for judges, neither you nor Martine, because you
+would be too much of my opinion," replied Simonne; "Master Fergan and
+his wife are not, as far as I know, suspected of being hot-heads! Let
+them decide whether I am angry at nothing," she said, shooting a fresh
+look of indignation at the baker, who, greatly incommoded by his long
+sword, had sat down, placing it across his knees after laying his casque
+on the floor. "This is what happened," Simonne proceeded: "Agreeable to
+the promise I yesterday made to Martine of coming for her this morning
+to assist at the inauguration of our belfry, Ancel and I left the house
+early. Going up Exchange street we passed before the window of the
+fortified house of Arnulf, a nobleman of Haut-Pourcin, as he styles
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>"I know the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin," observed Colombaik; "he is one of
+the bitterest episcopals in town."</p>
+
+<p>"And his wife is one of the most brazen she-devils that ever joined a
+caterwauling!" cried out Simonne. "Judge for yourselves, neighbors. She
+and her maid were standing at one of the lower windows when Ancel and I
+went by. 'Look at her,' she said in a loud voice to her maid, laughing
+obstreperously; 'look at the baker's wife, how she struts in new clothes
+with her petticoat of Lombard silk, silver belt and skirt bordered with
+marten fur! May God pardon me! To see such creatures daring to put on
+silk and rich furs like us noble ladies, instead of humbly keeping to a
+petticoat of linsey-woolsey and a skirt hemmed with cat's skin, the
+proper clothing for the base station in life of these villeins! What a
+pity! Fortunately her yellow dress is of the color of her pastry and her
+bannocks! It will serve them for ensign!'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's only in favor of the excellent baking of Simonne's<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> cakes, no
+so, neighbors?" put in the baker, "because, when the bannock comes out
+of the oven, it should be yellow as gold."</p>
+
+<p>"See what a fool I am! I failed to take the words of the noble woman for
+a compliment!" Simonne resumed, saying: "But I answered her insolence
+plump and plain: 'The word of a Picardian woman, upon it, Dame
+Haut-Pourcin, if my petticoat is the ensign of my bannocks, your face is
+the ensign of your fifty years, despite all your cosmetics, and all your
+affectations of youth, of maidenhood and of freshness!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Colombaik broke out laughing. "An excellent answer to the old
+fairy, who, indeed, is always dressing like a young girl. There you have
+the nobility! The pretty dresses of our women trouble them as much as
+the turrets of our houses. Let them split with rage!"</p>
+
+<p>"My answer struck home," proceeded Simonne. "The dame of Haut-Pourcin
+shook like a fury at the bars of her window, yelling: 'You
+street-walker!... You gallows-bird!... To dare to talk that way to
+me!... You vile emancipated serf!... But patience!... Patience!... I
+shall soon have you cow-hided by my servants!'"</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, oh! As to that,' I answered her, 'do not talk nonsense, Dame
+Haut-Pourcin,'" put in the baker; "'the days are gone by when the noble
+dames had the woman of the bourgeois beaten!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," added Simonne with indignation, "and do you know what that harpy
+replied, while shaking her fist at Ancel? 'Off with you,' said she, 'you
+lumbering churl! The vile bourgeoisie will not much longer talk so big!
+Soon we will no longer see clowns wearing the casques of knights, and
+jades like your wife, wearing silk petticoats paid for by their
+paramours,'" saying which, Simonne, whose anger had until then been
+shaded with frolicsome animation, became purple with confusion. Two
+tears rolled down her large black ayes, and she added in a moved voice:
+"Such an outrage ... to me.... And Ancel says that's nothing! Such an
+outrage exasperates me!"</p>
+
+<p><a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a>"Come now, be cool. Are you not as honorable a woman as you are an
+industrious housekeeper?" said the baker affectionately approaching
+Simonne, who was wiping off her tears with the back of her hand. "That
+stupid insult cannot touch you, my dear, and does not even deserve to be
+remembered."</p>
+
+<p>"Ancel is right," said Fergan. "That old woman is gone crazy. Crazy
+people's words do not count. But, friends, there is this about it. We
+must recognize that the insolence of the episcopals increases from day
+to day. Those allusions to former times foreshadow an evil intent on
+their part. It is well to be forewarned."</p>
+
+<p>"What, father, will those people be so badly advised as to think of
+attacking our Commune? Is their insolence to be taken notice of? Will it
+be necessary for us to place ourselves on our guard against their evil
+designs?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yeast that ferments is always sour, my child," replied the baker,
+reclining his head pensively. "The remark of your father is just. The
+provocations of the episcopals have a secret cause. I was just saying to
+Simonne: 'It is nothing!' I now say: 'It is something!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Very well! Let it be so! Let them dare!" cried out Colombaik. "We are
+ready for those noblemen and clergymen, for all the tonsured fraternity
+and their bishop to boot!"</p>
+
+<p>"And if the women take a part, as at the insurrection of Beauvais,"
+exclaimed Simonne, clenching her little fists, "I, who have no children,
+shall accompany my husband to battle, and the dame of Haut-Pourcin will
+pay dear for her insults. 'Pon the word of a Picardian woman, I shall
+slap her insolent face as dry as an Easter wafer!"</p>
+
+<p>The good baker was smiling at the heroic enthusiasm of his pretty wife
+when the peal of a large bell was heard from a distance. Fergan, his
+family and neighbors, listened to the sonorous and prolonged sound with
+a tremor of joy.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my friends!" said Fergan with emotion, "do you hear it sound for
+the first time from the belfry of our Commune? Do<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> you hear it? To-day
+it summons us to a feast; to-morrow it will call us to the meeting of
+the council where we attend to the business of the city; some day it
+will give us the signal for battle. A belfry of the people! Your voice
+of bronze, at last awakening ancient Gaul from her slumber, has given
+the signal for the insurrection of the Communes!"</p>
+
+<p>While the quarryman was speaking, all the bells of the churches of Laon
+began to chime in with the peals of the belfry. The deafening clangor
+soon dominated and completely drowned the isolated tinkling of the
+communal bell. This rivalry of bell-ringing was no accident, nor yet a
+token of sympathy. It was an affront, premeditated by the bishop and his
+partisans. They realized the patriotic importance that the communiers of
+Laon attached to the inauguration of the symbol of their emancipation,
+and decided to mar the festivity.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, those friars! Always spiteful and hypocritic until the day when
+they deem themselves strong enough to be merciless!" exclaimed
+Colombaik. "Have your way, ye black-gowns! Ring at your loudest! The
+canting bells of your churches shall not silence our communal belfry!
+Your bells ring mankind to servitude, to imbecility, to the renunciation
+of their dignity; the belfry gathers them to fulfil their civic duties
+and to defend freedom! Come, father, come! The bourgeois militia must by
+this time be assembled around the pillars of the market-place. You are
+constable and I a captain-of-ten. Let's start. Do not let us be waited
+for. Liberty or death!"<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_III-c" id="CHAPTER_III-c"></a>CHAPTER III.<br /><br />
+EPISCOPALS AND COMMUNIERS.</h3>
+
+<p>Fergan put on his casque, and presently giving his arm to Joan the
+Hunchback, as Colombaik gave his to Martine, and Quatre-Mains to his
+wife Simonne, the three couples sallied forth from Colombaik's tannery,
+followed by his apprentices, who, likewise were members of the Commune.</p>
+
+<p>The rivalry of the bells continued undiminished. At intervals the bells
+of the churches intermitted their clangor, no doubt in the hope of
+having silenced the belfry. Its sonorous and regular peal proceeded,
+however, unchecked, and the clerical clangor was renewed with redoubled
+fury. The incident, puerile in seeming, but serious at bottom, produced
+a deep resentment towards the party of the nobles. It was a long
+distance from the tannery of Colombaik to the market-place, the
+rendezvous of the bourgeois militia. Large crowds blocked the streets,
+moving towards the communal Town Hall, that had been three years
+building and was recently finished. Only the casting and hanging of the
+bell in its campanile had retarded the inauguration of the monument so
+dear to the townsmen. More than once did Joan turn back to look, not
+without uneasiness, in the direction where her son followed with
+Martine, together with Quatre-Mains and Simonne. Joan's apprehensions
+were well founded. A large number of the domestics of the noble and
+clerical households were dispersed among the crowd, and from time to
+time hurled some vulgar insult at the communiers, upon which they would
+immediately take to their heels. Knights, clad in full armor, crossed
+and re-crossed the streets, their fists upon their hips, their visors
+up, and casting disdainful and defiant looks<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> upon the people. These
+provocations increased particularly in the vicinity of the rendezvous of
+the militia, at the head of which, and armed as if for battle, the Mayor
+of Laon and his twelve Councilmen were to march in procession to the
+Town Hall in order to inaugurate by a solemn session the meeting of
+these magistrates, held until then at the house of John Molrain, the
+Mayor.</p>
+
+<p>The market-place of Laon, like that of all the cities of Gaul, consisted
+of large stalls, where, on Saturdays, occasionally also on other days of
+the week, the merchants, leaving their everyday shops, exposed their
+products for sale. Outsiders and the suburb population, who drew their
+supplies from Laon, thus found at one place all that they might want.
+But on that day the market served as the gathering place for a goodly
+number of bourgeois and artisans, who had armed themselves to join the
+procession and impart to it an imposing appearance. In case of war,
+every communier was obliged to furnish himself with a pike and an axe,
+or club, at the first call from the belfry, and hasten to the
+rendezvous. As a rule the crowd seemed indifferent to the insolent gibes
+and provocations of the episcopals. The communiers, at least a majority
+of them, felt themselves strong enough to despise the challenges to
+riot. A few, however, yielded to a certain sense of fear for the
+iron-clad nobles, who were accustomed to the use of weapons, and with
+whom the Laonese, who owed their enfranchisement to a contract and not
+to an insurrection, had not yet had occasion to measure themselves.
+Finally and moreover, hardly freed from their rude and base servitude,
+many of the townsmen still preserved, involuntarily, a certain habit, if
+not of respect, yet of dread for people whose cruel oppression they had
+so long been subject to. Shortly, the captains-of-tens, commanding
+squads of tens, and the captains-of-hundreds, commanding companies of
+hundreds, all under the command of Fergan, who had been chosen
+constable, or chief of the militia, drew up their ranks along the stalls
+of the market-place.<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a> Colombaik was a captain-of-ten, his body was
+complete except for one lad called Bertrand, the son of Bernard des
+Bruyeres, a rich bourgeois who, three years previous, was assassinated
+in the cathedral by Gaudry, bishop of Laon.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably," said Colombaik, "poor Bertrand will not join us to-day. This
+is a feast day, and there are no more feast days for the poor fellow
+since the murder of his father."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet there comes Bertrand!" cried out one of the militiamen, pointing at
+a young man, who, pale, frail and sickly-looking, of a timid and kind
+appearance, wearing a steel casque and armed with a heavy axe that
+seemed to weigh down his shoulder, was approaching from a distance.
+"Poor Bertrand!" the militiaman added, "so feeble and wretched! He is
+excused for not having avenged the death of his father upon our accursed
+bishop!" Cordially received by his companions, Bertrand answered their
+solicitous inquiries with some embarrassment, and silently took his
+place in the ranks. The Mayor arrived soon after, accompanied by his
+Councilmen, some unarmed, others armed like Ancel Quatre-Mains, who
+joined them there. John Molrain, the Mayor, a man in the vigor of life
+and of a countenance at once calm and energetic, marched at the head of
+the magistrates of the city. One of them carried the banner of the
+Commune of Laon,&mdash;if the steeple of the people's belfries rose daringly
+in the teeth of the feudal donjons, the communal banners floated no less
+high than those of the seigneurs. The banner of Laon represented two
+embattled towers, between which rose a naked sword. The emblem
+signified: "Our city, fortified by walls, will know how to defend itself
+by arms against its enemies." Another Councilman carried in a vermillion
+casket, lying upon a silk cushion, the communal charter, signed by the
+bishop and the nobles, and confirmed by the signature of Louis the
+Lusty, King of the French. Finally, a third carried, also upon a
+cushion, the silver seal of the Commune, which served to attest the acts
+and decrees rendered by the town Council in the name of<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a> the Commune.
+This large medal, cast in bass relief, represented the Mayor, who, clad
+in his long robe and with his right hand pointing heavenward, seemed to
+be taking the oath, while his left hand held a sword with the point
+resting on his breast. "I, Mayor of Laon, have sworn to maintain and
+defend the franchises of the Commune: sooner die than betray my
+trust!"&mdash;such was the patriotic meaning of the communal seal, in short,
+"Liberty or death!"</p>
+
+<p>When the city magistrate arrived, Fergan, who was issuing his last
+orders to the militiamen, saw a priest, the archdeacon of the cathedral,
+called Anselm, step out of the crowd. Fergan held the tonsured
+fraternity in singular aversion, yet greatly esteemed Anselm, a true
+disciple of Christ. "Fergan," whispered the archdeacon to the quarryman,
+"press your friends to redouble their calmness and their prudence, I
+conjure you. Prevent them from replying to any provocation. I can tell
+you no more. The time is short. I must proceed to the episcopal palace."
+Saying this, Anselm disappeared in the crowd. The advice of the
+archdeacon, a wise man, beloved by all, and, due to his office, in a
+position to be reliably informed, struck Fergan. He no longer doubted
+there was a conspiracy, secretly hatched by the episcopals against the
+Commune. Profoundly preoccupied, he placed himself at the head of his
+militiamen, in order to escort the Mayor and the Councilmen to the Town
+Hall. The obscure names of this magistracy, taken from Fergan's family
+archives, and over which he inscribed the exhortation: "May they be ever
+dear to your memory, ye sons of Joel!" were: John Molrain, Mayor.
+Councilmen: Foulque, the son of Bomar; Raoul Cabricoin; Ancel,
+son-in-law of Labert; Haymon; Payen-Seille; Robert; Remy-But;
+Menard-Dray, Raimbaut the sausagemaker; Payen-Oste-Loup; Ancel
+Quatre-Mains, and Raoul-Gastines.</p>
+
+<p>The procession started amidst the joyful acclamations of the crowd, who
+enthusiastically shouted their rallying-cry: "Commune!<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a> Commune!"
+swollen by the sonorous peals from the belfry, the clerical clangor
+having finally ceased, due to the apprehension of the episcopals, lest
+the prolonged ringing of their bells was taken for their participation
+in the festivities. Before arriving at the place where the Town Hall
+stood, the procession defiled before the house of the knight of
+Haut-Pourcin, a large and fortified dwelling, flanked with two thick
+towers, that were joined by an embattled terrace, projecting above the
+door. Upon this species of balcony were gathered a large number of
+knights, clergymen, nobles and elegantly bedezined ladies, some young
+and handsome, others old and ugly. Among the least old of the latter and
+yet ugliest of all, the dame of Haut-Pourcin was conspicuous. A gaunt
+virago of about fifty, bony, of parchment skin, and of arrogant mien,
+she wore a violet cloak with gold buttons and a cape of peacock
+feathers; on her grizzly hair she had coquettishly fastened a chaplet of
+lillies of the valley in full bloom, like a shepherdess. The whiteness
+of her floral ornaments heightened the yellowish color of the dame's
+bilious complexion, a complexion, however, that was less yellowish than
+her long teeth. At sight of the procession, headed by the Mayor and his
+Councilmen, she turned to those near her, crying out in a sour and
+piercing voice that was distinctly heard by the communiers, the terrace
+lying only twelve or fifteen feet above the street: "Mesdames and
+messeigneurs, have you ever seen a pack of asses tramping to their mill
+with a more triumphant air?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" answered one of the knights aloud, laughing and pointing with his
+switch at the Mayor, John Molrain: "And look at the master-ass that
+leads the rest! How he prances under his furred saddle-cloth!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pity his headgear conceals his long ears from us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Blood of Christ! What a shame to see these Gallic clowns, made slaves
+by our ancestors, now carrying swords like us of the nobility!" put in
+the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin. "And we, the<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> descendants of the
+conquerors; we knights tolerate such villainy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Halloa, there, Quatre-Mains the baker!" yelled the dame of Haut-Pourcin
+in a squeaky voice, leaning over the railing of the terrace, "Seigneur
+Councilman, trotting cuckolded and content while armed for war! The last
+bread that my butler fetched from your shop was not baked enough, and I
+suspect you of having cheated me in the weight!"</p>
+
+<p>"Halloa, there, Remy the currier!" added a bulky canon attached to the
+cathedral, "Seigneur Councilman, who are there loitering about,
+administering the affairs of the city, why are you not at work on the
+mule saddle that I ordered?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, messeigneurs, there comes the cavalry!" exclaimed a young woman
+laughing and smelling at a nosegay of sweet marjorams. "Look at the
+swagger of the vagabond who commands his braves, would you not think he
+was about to hew down everything in sight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, messeigneurs, look at that hero yonder! Oppressed by his visor, he
+is carrying his casque front side back and his sabre on his shoulder!"</p>
+
+<p>"And that one, who holds his sword like a wax-taper! Guess he is a
+Pope's soldier!"</p>
+
+<p>"And yonder goes one who came near putting out the eye of his neighbor
+with his pike! What a ridiculous set! What silly people!"</p>
+
+<p>"For heaven's sake, messeigneurs, are you not frozen with terror at the
+thought that, some day, we may find ourselves face to face and lance in
+hand, with this bourgeoisie, this formidable rabble-rout of shaven
+fronts, big paunches and flat feet?"</p>
+
+<p>At first, patiently endured by the communiers, these insults,
+accentuated with outbursts of contemptuous laughter and disdainful
+gestures, ended, nevertheless, by irritating the more impetuous. Dull
+murmurs rose from the crowd; the procession halted, despite the
+entreaties of Fergan, who urged upon the<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a> militiamen the silence of
+contempt. Some threatened the episcopals with their fists, others with
+their arms; but their tormentors redoubled their gibes at the sight of
+such signs of irritation. Suddenly John Molrain, the Mayor, rushing to
+one of the stone benches, common near the doors of dwellings to assist
+riders in mounting their horses, jumped upon it, ordered silence, and
+addressed the crowd in a sonorous voice, that reached the ears of the
+episcopals:</p>
+
+<p>"Brothers, and all those who have taken the oath of the Commune of Laon,
+make no reply to impotent insults! Let any dare attack the Commune with
+deeds and not with words, then will we, your Mayor and Councilmen,
+summon the offender before our tribunal, and justice will be enforced
+upon our enemies&mdash;prompt and energetic justice! Until then, let us
+answer all provocation with disdain. The resolute man, strong in his
+rights, despises insults. At the hour of judgment, he condemns and
+punishes!"</p>
+
+<p>These wise and measured words quieted the excitement of the crowd, but
+they also reached the ears of the nobles, assembled on the terrace of
+the house of the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin, and added fuel to their rage.
+They menaced the communiers with their canes and swords, while
+redoubling their gibes. "Your swords are not long enough, they do not
+reach us!" Colombaik cried out to them, while passing under the balcony
+with his division of the militia. "Come down into the street! We shall
+then see whether iron is heavier in the hands of a bourgeois than in
+that of a knight!"</p>
+
+<p>This challenge was answered by the episcopals with fresh insults.
+However, they dared not descend into the street, where they would have
+been seized and taken prisoners by the militia. For a moment delayed on
+its march, the procession resumed its way and arrived at the place of
+the Town Hall, a monument dear to the artisans and other townsmen.</p>
+
+<p>The edifice, a spacious and handsome structure recently erected,<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a> formed
+an oblong square. Elaborate sculptures ornamented its facade and the
+lintels of its numerous windows and architrave, which consisted of three
+ogive arcades sustained by elegant sheaves of stone columns. But the
+portion of the edifice upon which particular care had been devoted, both
+in point of construction and ornamentation, was the tower of the belfry
+and the campanile, where hung the bell. This tower, proudly rising above
+the roof, stood out in full view. From tier to tier a slender sheet
+supported rounds of small columns surmounted with ogives chiseled in
+trefoil, so that across the network of chiseled stone the spiral of the
+staircase was visible that led up to the campanile, veiled in white
+cloth up to the moment when the procession issued upon the place. When
+the covering dropped off and the campanile stood unveiled, a shout of
+admiration and patriotic enthusiasm rose from all breasts. Nothing so
+airy as that campanile, looking like a gilded cage of iron, whose
+outlines stood out against the blue of the sky like a lace-work of gold,
+glittering in the rays of the sun. Above the dazzling dome, the communal
+banner floated in the spring breeze of that beautiful April morning. The
+enthusiastic cheers of the crowds rose again and again, and the north
+wind must have carried to the ears of the episcopals the cry, a thousand
+times repeated:</p>
+
+<p>"Commune! Commune! Long live the Commune!"<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IV-c" id="CHAPTER_IV-c"></a>CHAPTER IV.<br /><br />
+THE ECCLESIASTICAL SEIGNIORY OF GAUDRY.</h3>
+
+<p>The episcopal palace of Laon rose close to the cathedral. Thick walls,
+fortified with two heavy towers, between which stood the gate,
+surrounded the dwelling from all sides. From the view-point of the
+benign morality of Jesus&mdash;the friend of the poor and the
+afflicted&mdash;nothing was less episcopal than the interior of this palace.
+One would imagine himself in the fortified castle of some feudal
+seigneur, a broiler and hunter. The singular contrast between the place
+and the character that it should have presented, left a painful
+impression upon all upright hearts, and such, indeed, was the feeling
+experienced by archdeacon Anselm, when, shortly after engaging Fergan to
+urge upon the communiers indifference towards the provocations of the
+episcopals, that disciple of Christ crossed the yard of the bishop. Here
+falconers were engaged washing and preparing the raw meat destined for
+the falcons, or cleaned up their roosts; yonder, the huntsmen, their
+horns on their guard-chains and whip in hand, led for pastime a pack of
+large dogs of Picardy, prized so highly by hunters. Further away, serfs
+of the episcopal domain were being drilled in the handling of arms under
+the command of one of the bishop's equerries. This last circumstance
+struck the archdeacon with amazement, and increased his fears for the
+peace of the city. The venerable man was overcome with sadness and two
+large tears dropped from his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Although an associate of clergymen, Anselm was a man of great kindness
+of heart, pure, disinterested, austere and of rare learning. He was
+called "doctor of doctors." He declined the episcopacy several times,
+fearing, it was said, to seem to censure,<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> by the Christian meekness of
+his nature and the chastity of his habits, the conduct of most of the
+bishops of Gaul. His face, at once pale and serene, his hair thinned by
+study, imparted a distinguished aspect to his person, tempered by the
+kindliness of his eyes. Modestly dressed in his black gown, Anselm was
+slowly crossing the yard of the abbey, contrasting their noisy tumult
+with the repose of his own studious retreat, when he saw, approaching
+him from a distance, a negro of giant stature, dressed in Oriental garb,
+his head covered with a red turban. This African slave, of mean and
+savage physiognomy, was named John since his baptism. He was, many years
+before, given as a present to Bishop Gaudry by a Crusader seigneur,
+returned from the Holy Land. By little and little Black John grew to be
+the favorite of his new master, the intermediary of the latter's
+debaucheries, or the instrument of his cruelties, before the
+establishment of the Commune. Since that transformation, the persons and
+property of the communiers had become safe. If an injury was done to
+either, the Commune obtained or itself enforced justice against the
+wrong-doer. Accordingly, the bishop and the nobles had been forced to
+renounce their habits of violence and rapine.</p>
+
+<p>When the archdeacon saw Black John, the latter was descending a
+staircase that ended in a door, wrought under a vault closed with a
+grating, that separated the first two walks of a green reserved for the
+bishop. A woman, wrapped in a mantle that completely concealed her face,
+accompanied the slave. Anselm could not restrain a gesture of
+indignation. Knowing the dwellers of the palace, and aware that the
+staircase under the vault led to the apartments of the bishop, he had no
+doubt that the veiled woman, leaving the palace at so early an hour and
+under the guide of Black John, the bishop's regular procurer, had passed
+the night with the prelate. Blushing with chaste confusion, the
+archdeacon had turned his head away with disgust at the moment when,
+having opened the grated gate, the slave<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> and his female companion
+passed close by him. Stepping into the vault, the archdeacon entered the
+green,&mdash;a spacious enclosure, that, swarded and planted with trees,
+spread before the windows of the private apartments of Bishop Gaudry.</p>
+
+<p>This man, a Norman by extraction and descended from the pirates of old
+Rolf, after having fought in the ranks of William the Bastard, when he
+conquered England, was later, in 1106, promoted to the bishopric of
+Laon. Cruel and debauched, covetous and prodigal, Gaudry was, besides
+all, a passionate huntsman. Still agile and vigorous, although beyond
+the prime of life, he was at that moment trying a young horse and
+breaking it in to step on the green that Anselm had just entered. In
+order to feel more at ease, the bishop had taken off his long morning
+robe, lined with fur, and kept on nothing but his sock-pointed shoes,
+his hose and a short jacket of flexible material. Bare-headed, his gray
+hair to the wind, still an able and bold cavalier, and riding bare-back
+the young stallion, that had for the first time come from the paddock,
+Gaudry was pressing his nervy knees against the flanks of the mettlesome
+animal, resisting its boundings and kicking, and forcing it to run in a
+circle over the sward of the green. The bishop's equerry applauded with
+voice and gesture the skill of his master, while a serf of robust frame
+and gallows-bird countenance followed the riding lesson with cunning
+eyes. This serf, who belonged to the abbey of St. Vincent, a fief of the
+bishopric, was named Thiegaud. The fellow&mdash;originally charged with the
+collection of toll over a bridge near the city, a dependency of the
+castellan Enguerrand de Coucy, one of the most ferocious feudal tyrants
+of Picardy who was dreaded for his audacity and cruelty&mdash;had been guilty
+of a number of extortions and even murders. Gaudry, struck by the
+resolute character of the scamp, demanded him from the castellan of
+Coucy in exchange for another serf, and charged him with the collection
+of the arbitrary taxes that he imposed upon his vassals, a charge that
+Thiegaud filled with remorseless severity.<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> Thus the bishop treated the
+serf with great familiarity, habitually called him his "friend
+Ysengrin"&mdash;the wolf's companion&mdash;and, at a pinch, used him for a
+go-between in his debaucheries, not, however, without awakening the
+vindictive jealousy of Black John, who felt secretly enraged at the
+sight of another than himself in the secret confidence of his master.</p>
+
+<p>Gaudry, while riding around the green, saw the archdeacon, made the
+stallion suddenly face about, and after a few more boundings the
+impetuous animal brought the bishop close to Anselm. Lightly jumping
+off, the bishop said to his equerry, throwing the bridle over to him:
+"I'll keep the horse; take him to my stables; he will be matchless in
+the hunt of stags and boars!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you keep the horse, seigneur bishop," answered Thiegaud, "give me a
+hundred and twenty silver sous. That's the price they demand."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right. What's the hurry?" rejoined the bishop, and turning
+to his equerry: "Gerhard, take the horse to the stable."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so," said Thiegaud, "the tenant-farmer is waiting at the gate of
+the palace. He has been ordered to take the horse back or receive its
+price in money. It is the orders of the owner of the stallion."</p>
+
+<p>"The impudent scamp who gave that order deserves to receive as many
+lashes as his horse has hairs in his tail!" cried out the bishop. "Have
+I not, as a matter of right, six months' credit in my own seigniory?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," coolly answered Anselm, "that seignioral right has been abolished
+since the city of Laon is a free Commune. Never forget the difference
+between the present and the past. The seignioral rights are abolished."</p>
+
+<p>"I am reminded of that but too often!" answered the bishop with
+concentrated vexation. "However that may be, Gerhard, obey my orders and
+take the horse to the stable."<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur," said Thiegaud, "the owner is waiting, I tell you. He must
+have the money, a hundred and twenty silver sous, or the animal back."</p>
+
+<p>"He shall not have the horse!" answered the bishop angrily striking the
+ground. "If the farmer dares to grumble, tell him to send me his master.
+We shall see whether he will have the audacity to appear on such an
+errand before his bishop."</p>
+
+<p>"He will surely have the audacity, seigneur bishop," replied Thiegaud.
+"The owner of the horse is Colombaik the Tanner, a communier of Laon and
+son of Fergan, master quarryman of the mill hill. I know these people. I
+notify you that the father and son are of those ... who dare ...
+anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Blood of Christ! and devil's horns! we have had words enough!" cried
+out the bishop. "Gerhard, take the stallion to the stables!"</p>
+
+<p>The equerry obeyed, and the archdeacon was on the point of remonstrating
+with Gaudry on the injustice and danger of his conduct, when, hearing a
+great noise in the yards contiguous to the green, the bishop, already in
+a bad humor and yielding to the passion of his temperament, rushed out
+of the green, without taking time to put on his robe again and leaving
+it behind on a bench. He had hardly crossed the first yard, followed by
+the equerry, who led the horse, and by Thiegaud, who in his perversity
+was smiling at this latest iniquity of his master, when he saw a crowd
+of the domestics of his household coming towards him. They were all
+yelling and gesticulating violently, and surrounded Black John, whose
+gigantic stature rose above them by the full length of his head. No less
+excited than his fellows, Black John also yelled and gesticulated,
+foaming at the mouth with rage and brandishing his Saracen dagger.</p>
+
+<p>"What means this hurly?" inquired the bishop of Laon stepping before the
+advancing crowd. "Why do you scream in that way?"<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a></p>
+
+<p>Several voices answered at once: "We are crying out against the
+bourgeois of Laon! The dogs of the communiers!"</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened? Answer quick!"</p>
+
+<p>"Black John will tell monseigneur!" several voices called in great
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>The African giant turned towards his fellows, motioned them to be
+silent, and wiping on his sleeves the bloody blade of his dagger, said
+to the bishop in an excited voice, still trembling with rage, but not
+without calculatingly casting upon Thiegaud a look of rancorous hatred:</p>
+
+<p>"I had just led Mussine the Pretty to the outer gate&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter!" Thiegaud ejaculated stupefied at the very moment when,
+angrily stamping the ground, the prelate checked the indiscreet words of
+his slave with a silent gesture. Black John remained mute like one who
+understands too late the folly he committed, while the rest of the
+bishop's domestics stealthily giggled at the consternation of Thiegaud.
+Some dreaded him for his malignity, others envied him for his intimate
+relations with their master. Thiegaud, livid at the startling
+revelation, flashed at Gaudry a sinister look quick as lightning; his
+features thereupon as quickly reassumed their usual expression, and he
+started to laugh louder than the rest at the awkward blunder of Black
+John. He even went the length of indulging in ironical deference towards
+Gaudry. The latter, long acquainted with the criminal life of the serf
+of St. Vincent, was not surprised at seeing him remain so indifferent to
+the disgrace of his daughter. Nevertheless, yielding to that respect for
+man that even the most depraved characters never succeed in wholly
+stripping themselves of, the bishop silenced the suppressed merriment
+with an imperious gesture and said: "Those giggles are unseemly.
+Thiegaud's daughter came early in the morning, as so many other
+penitents do, to consult me on a case of conscience. After listening to
+her in the confessional, I ordered John to accompany her to the gate."<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a></p>
+
+<p>"That's so true," added Thiegaud with perfect composure, "that, having
+to bring this morning a horse to our seigneur the bishop, I expected to
+return with my daughter. But she left by the vaulted door while I was
+still on the green."</p>
+
+<p>"Friend Ysengrin," resumed the prelate with a mixture a haughtiness and
+familiarity, "my words can dispense with your testimony." And wishing to
+cut off short this incident, which had the archdeacon, silent but
+profoundly indignant, for a witness, Gaudry said to the black slave:
+"Speak! What has happened between you and the communiers, whom may the
+pest carry off and hell confound! May Satan take them all!"</p>
+
+<p>"I was opening the gate for Mussine the Pretty, when three bourgeois,
+coming from the suburbs and bound for the principal entry of the city,
+to assist at the ceremonies announced by the belfry of those rogues,
+passed by the palace. Seeing a veiled woman come out, those scamps set
+up a malicious laugh, and nudged one another in the ribs while keeping
+on their way. I ran after them and asked: 'What are you laughing about,
+you dogs of communiers?' They gave me an insolent answer and called me
+the bishop's hangman. I then drew my dagger and stabbed one of them in
+the arm, and leaving his companions and him loudly threatening to demand
+justice from the Commune, I returned and locked the door after me. By
+Mahomet, I am proud of what I did. I avenged my master for the insults
+of those curs!"</p>
+
+<p>"Black John did well!" cried the domestics of the bishop. "We can no
+longer go out without being shamed by the communiers of Laon."</p>
+
+<p>"The other day," put in one of the falconers, "the butcher of Exchange
+street, one of the Councilmen of the Commune, refused to give me meat on
+credit for the falcons!"</p>
+
+<p>"At the taverns we are compelled to pay before drinking! The shame and
+humiliation of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was not thus three years ago!"<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Those were good days! A retainer of the bishop then took without paying
+whatever he wanted from the merchants; he caressed their wives and
+daughters; and none dared say a word. By the womb of the Virgin Mary, we
+were then masters! But since the establishment of the Commune it is the
+bourgeois who command! The devil take the Commune! Three cheers for the
+good old times!"</p>
+
+<p>"To hell with the communiers, they make us die of shame for our seigneur
+the bishop!" exclaimed one of the young serfs who had been shortly
+before exercising in the use of arms. And resolutely addressing the
+prelate, who, so far from quieting down the excitement of his people,
+seemed delighted at their recriminations, and encouraged them with a
+smile of approval: "Say the word, our bishop! There are here fifty of us
+who have learned to manage the bow and pike! Place a few knights at our
+head, and we will descend upon the city, leaving not a stone upon
+another of the houses of that bourgeois and artisan rabble!"</p>
+
+<p>"Say the word!" cried out Thiegaud, "and I will bring you, my holy
+patron, a hundred woodsmen and colliers from the forest of St. Vincent.
+They will make a bonfire of the houses of those bourgeois and artisans
+fit to roast Beelzebub! Death and damnation to the communiers!"</p>
+
+<p>If the bishop of Laon had entertained any doubt upon the indifference of
+the serf of St. Vincent regarding his daughter's shame, it was removed
+by the man's words. Accordingly, doubly satisfied with the tokens of
+Thiegaud's devotion, the bishop addressed his people in these words: "I
+am glad to find you in such a frame of mind. Remain so. The hour for
+going to work will arrive sooner than you may think. As to you, my brave
+John, you have avenged me on the insolence of those communiers. Fear
+not. Not a hair of your head shall be touched. As to you, friend
+Ysengrin, notify the farmer that I keep the horse, and I shall pay him
+if I choose. Then, see our friends the woodsmen and colliers of the
+forest. I may need them any day. When<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> that day shall come, they shall
+be free, in reward for their good will, to plunder at their pleasure the
+houses of the bourgeois of Laon." Turning thereupon towards the
+archdeacon, who had witnessed this scene without uttering a word, he
+said to him: "Let's go in. What has just taken place under your own eyes
+will have prepared you for the interview we are to have, and for which I
+summoned you hither."</p>
+
+<p>Anselm followed the prelate, and both entered the bishop's apartments.</p>
+
+<p>"Anselm, you have just seen and heard things that, doubtlessly, left a
+disagreeable impression upon your mind. We shall take that up
+presently," said Gaudry to the archdeacon when they were closeted
+together. "I summoned you to the palace because I am aware of your
+foible for the common folks of the bourgeoisie, and in order to afford
+you the opportunity to render a signal service to your favorites. Listen
+to me carefully."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall strive to meet your intentions, seigneur bishop."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall go to the bourgeois and artisans of the city and say to them:
+'Renounce, good people, that execrable spirit of novelty, that
+diabolical passion that drives the vassal to rise against his master.
+Abjure, soon as possible, the brazen and impious pride that persuades
+the artisan and townsman to withdraw from the seignioral authority and
+to govern themselves. Return to your trades, to your shops. The
+administration of public affairs can get along very well without you.
+You quit the Church for the Town Hall; you open your ears to the sound
+of your own belfry, and shut them to the chimes of the church bells.
+That is not good for you. You will end by forgetting the submission you
+owe to the clergy, to the nobles and to the King. Good people, never
+allow the distinctions of the stations in life to be confounded; each to
+his rights, each to his duties. The right of the clergy, of the nobility
+and of the King is to command and to govern; the duty of the serf and
+the bourgeois is to bow before the will of their natural masters. This
+communal<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a> and republican comedy, that you have been playing for now
+nearly three years, has lasted too long. Abdicate willingly your roles
+of Mayor, Councilmen and warriors. People at first laughed at your silly
+pranks, hoping you would return to your senses. But it takes too long;
+one's patience is exhausted. The time has come to put an end to the
+Saturnalia. In order to avoid a just punishment, return of your own
+accord to the humility of your station in life. Cut your Councilmen's
+robes into skirts for your wives; return your arms to people who know
+how to handle them; respectfully surrender to the Church, as an homage
+of atonement, that ear-splitting bell of that belfry of yours; it will
+enrich the chimes of the cathedral. Your superb banner will make a
+becoming altar-cloth, and as to your magnificent silver seal, melt it
+back into money wherewith to purchase some hogsheads of old wine which
+you will empty in honor of the restoration of the seigniory of your
+bishop in Jesus Christ. Do so, and all will be well, good people. The
+past will be forgiven you upon condition that you will henceforth be
+submissive, humble and penitent towards the Church, the noblemen and the
+King, and that of your own accord, you renounce your pestiferous
+Commune.'"</p>
+
+<p>Anselm listened to the bishop with a mixture of amazement, indignation
+and profound anxiety. He did not interrupt the speaker to the end,
+wondering how that man, whom he could not deny either cleverness or
+sagacity, yet could be so untutored upon men and things as to conceive
+such a project. So profound was the emotion of the archdeacon that he
+remained silent for a while. Finally he answered the bishop in a grave
+and clear voice: "You solicit my assistance to advise the inhabitants of
+Laon to give up their charter, that very charter that both you and they
+have agreed to and sworn to uphold by a common accord?"</p>
+
+<p>"That agreement was concluded by the chapter and council of<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> seigneurs
+who governed during my absence, while I was away in England."</p>
+
+<p>"Must I remind you that, upon your return from London, and in
+consideration of a large sum paid by the bourgeoisie, you signed the
+charter with your own hand, that you sealed it with your own seal, and
+that you swore upon your faith that it would be faithfully observed?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was wrong in doing so. The Church holds her seigniories from God
+alone. She may not alienate her rights. I am absolved from such
+engagements."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you returned the money that you received for your consent to the
+Commune? Has restitution been made?"</p>
+
+<p>"The money I received represented, at the most, four years' revenues
+that I habitually drew from the inhabitants of Laon. Three years have
+elapsed since the establishment of this Commune. I am only one year in
+advance of my vassals. My right is to tax at will and mercy. I shall
+double the tax of the current year, and being quits, I shall, if I
+please, demand the tax for the next year."</p>
+
+<p>"Yours would be such a right had you not alienated it. But you cannot
+repudiate your signature, your seal and your oath. Your engagement is
+binding."</p>
+
+<p>"What is there in a signature? One or two words placed at the bottom of
+a parchment! What is a seal? A lump of wax! What is an oath? A breath of
+air that is lost in space, and which the wind carries off!"</p>
+
+<p>Although highly wrought up by the prelate's answer, Anselm restrained
+his indignation and proceeded: "You, then, persist in your purpose to
+break your oath and abolish the Commune of Laon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I intend to smash it."</p>
+
+<p>"You refuse to keep your sacred engagement? Be it so! But the communiers
+of Laon have had their charter confirmed by the present King. They will
+turn to him to compel you to respect<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> its clauses. You will have two
+foes to face&mdash;the people and the King."</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," answered the bishop, "Louis the Lusty will be here at the
+head of a goodly number of knights and men-at-arms,&mdash;all resolved to
+crush those miserable bourgeois if they dare defend their Commune. It is
+all settled between us."</p>
+
+<p>"I can hardly believe what you say, seigneur bishop," replied the
+archdeacon. "The King, who confirmed and swore to the charter for the
+enfranchisement of the bourgeois of Laon, and who received the price
+agreed upon, he surely will not be ready to perjure himself and commit
+such an infamy."</p>
+
+<p>"The King begins to listen to the voice of the Church. He understands
+that, though it be good politics and profitable withal, to sell charters
+of emancipation to the cities that are subject to lay seigniories, his
+rivals and ours, it is to seriously compromise his own power if he were
+to favor emancipation from the ecclesiastical seigniories. The King is
+determined to restore to the episcopal authority all the ecclesiastical
+cities that have been enfranchised, and to exterminate their inhabitants
+if they dare oppose his pleasure. To-morrow, perhaps this very day, the
+King will be in the city at the head of armed men. The nobles of the
+city have been apprised, like myself, of the pending arrival of the
+King. We shall notify our will to the people."</p>
+
+<p>"My presentiments did not deceive me when I urged the communiers to
+redouble their self-control and prudence!"</p>
+
+<p>"You were on the right road. It is, therefore, that, aware of your
+influence with those clowns, I sent for you, to commission you to induce
+them to renounce their hellish Commune of their own free will, if they
+would escape a terrible punishment. We demand absolute submission."</p>
+
+<p>"Bishop of Laon," Anselm answered solemnly and with a tremulous voice,
+"I decline the mission that you charge me with. I do not wish to see the
+blood of my brothers flow in this city. If your projects were but
+suspected, an uprising would break out<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a> on the spot among the people,
+and yourself, the clergy and the knights in the city would be the first
+victims of the rage of the communiers. Your houses would be burned down
+over your heads."</p>
+
+<p>"There is no insurrection to be feared," put in the bishop laughing
+loudly. "John, my negro, will take by the nose the wildest of those
+clowns and will bring him on his knees to my feet, begging for mercy,
+trembling and penitent. I need but to say the word."</p>
+
+<p>"If you dare touch the rights of the Commune, then you, the priests and
+the nobles will all be exterminated by the people in arms. Oh, may
+heaven's curse fall upon me before I shall by a single word help to
+unchain such a storm!"</p>
+
+<p>"So, then, you, Anselm, a subordinate to my authority, you refuse the
+commission that I charge you with?"</p>
+
+<p>"I swear to you upon the salvation of my soul, you are staking your life
+at a terrible game! May I not have to dispute your bleeding remains from
+the popular fury in order to give them Christian burial!"<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_V-c" id="CHAPTER_V-c"></a>CHAPTER V.<br /><br />
+BOURGEOIS AND ECCLESIASTICAL SEIGNEUR.</h3>
+
+<p>The Bishop of Laon had long remained steeped in revery. The tone of
+conviction, the imposing authority of the archdeacon's character, left a
+profound impression upon the man. Though there was no crime he would
+recoil at in the satisfaction of his passions, yet he fervently clung to
+life. Accordingly, his blind contempt for the common people
+notwithstanding, he wavered for a moment in his projects, and, recalling
+to memory the triumphant revolts, that under similar circumstances, had
+in recent years been witnessed in other Communes of Gaul, he was lost in
+sombre, silent perplexity, when the sudden entry of Black John awoke him
+from his quandary.</p>
+
+<p>"Patron," said Black John, breaking into the room with a malefic grin,
+"one of the bourgeois dogs has himself walked into the trap. We are
+holding him, as well as his female, who, by Mahomet, is of the comliest.
+If the husband is a mastiff, the wife is a dainty greyhound, worthy of a
+place in the ecclesiastical kennels!"</p>
+
+<p>"Quit your jokes!" remarked the bishop with impatience. "What is the
+matter now? Speak up!"</p>
+
+<p>"A minute ago there was a rap at the main gate. I was in the yard with
+the serfs who are exercising in arms. I peeped through the wicket and
+saw a burly fellow, with a casque that fell over his nose, and bursting
+in his steel corselet, and as incommoded by his sword as a dog to whose
+tail a kettle has been tied. A young and pretty woman accompanied him.
+'What do you want?' said I to the man. 'To speak with the seigneur
+bishop, and on the spot, too, on grave matters.' To hold one of<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a> these
+dogs of communiers in pawn, struck me as timely. After sending one of
+the men to see through the loopholes in the tower whether the bourgeois
+was alone, I opened the door. Oh, you would have laughed," Black John
+proceeded, "had you seen the good man embrace his wife before crossing
+the threshold of the palace, as though he were stepping into Lucifer's
+house, and heard his wife say: 'I shall wait for you here; my uneasiness
+will be shorter than if I had remained at the Town Hall.' By Mahomet! I
+said to myself, my patron is too fond of receiving pretty penitents to
+leave this charmer outside; and taking her up like a feather I carried
+her into the yard. I had a good mind to shut the gate in the husband's
+face, but I considered it was better to keep him too here. His little
+wife, furious like a cat in love, screamed and scratched my face when I
+took her up in my arms, but after she was allowed to join her gander of
+a husband, she put on airs of bravery and spat in my face. They are both
+in the next room. Shall they be brought in?"</p>
+
+<p>The announcement of the arrival of one of the communiers, the objects of
+the bishop's hatred, revived the anger of the seigniorial ecclesiastic,
+that had been checked for a moment by the words of Archdeacon Anselm.
+The bishop jumped up, crying out: "By heaven! By the Pope's navel! That
+bourgeois arrives in time! Bring him in!"</p>
+
+<p>"His wife too?" asked the negro, opening the door. "She will act as a
+counter-irritant to your worship," and without waiting for his master's
+answer, the negro vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care!" Anselm said, more and more alarmed. "Take care what you are
+about to do! The Councilmen are elected by the inhabitants! To do
+violence to one of their chosen men would be a moral offence!"</p>
+
+<p>"We have had enough remonstrances!" cried out Gaudry with haughty
+impatience. "You seem to forget that I am your superior, your bishop!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is your conduct that would make me forget it. But it is for the sake
+of the episcopacy, for the sake of the salvation of<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> your soul, for the
+sake of your own life that I adjure you not to apply the match to a
+conflagration that neither yourself nor the King might be able to
+extinguish!"</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed the bishop with a wrathful sneer; "What! That
+conflagration could not be extinguished even in the blood of those
+damned dogs, of the revolted clowns, themselves?"</p>
+
+<p>The prelate had just pronounced these execrable words, when Ancel
+Quatre-Mains entered, accompanied by his wife, Simonne, and preceded by
+Black John, who, leaving them at the door of the apartment, withdrew
+again with a smile on his cruel lips. The Councilman was pale and deeply
+moved. The good nature, habitual to his features, had now made place to
+an expression of deliberate firmness. It must, nevertheless, be admitted
+that his casque thrown too far back on his head and his stomach
+protruding below his steel corselet imparted to the townsman an almost
+grotesque appearance that could not fail to strike the Bishop of Laon.
+Accordingly breaking out in a loud guffaw, not unmixed with rage and
+disdain, and pointing to Ancel, he said to the archdeacon: "Here have
+you a bright sample of the gallant men who are to cause bishops, knights
+and kings to tremble and retreat. By the blood of Christ, what a
+grotesque appearance!"</p>
+
+<p>The Councilman and his wife, who drew close to him, looked at each
+other, unable to understand the words of the bishop. No less alarmed
+than her husband, two distinct sentiments seemed to fill Simonne's
+mind&mdash;fear of some danger to Ancel and horror for Gaudry.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, seigneur Councilman, august elective magistrate of the
+illustrious Commune of Laon!" said the prelate in a jeering and
+contemptuous accent. "You wanted to see me. Here I am. What do you
+want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur bishop, I have had no ambition, and so I haven't, of coming
+here. I'm merely fulfilling a duty. This month I'm<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> the judicial
+Councilman. As such, I am charged with the trials. It is in that
+capacity that I have come here to fill my office."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh! Greetings to you, seigneur prosecutor!" replied the prelate
+sneeringly, bowing before the baker. "May we at least know the subject
+of the process?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certes, seigneur bishop, seeing the action is against yourself and
+against John, your African servant, I shall inform you of the charge."</p>
+
+<p>"And while my husband is fulfilling a judicial mission," pertly put in
+Simonne, "he shall also demand justice and indemnity for the insults
+hurled at me by the noble dame of Haut-Pourcin, the wife of one of the
+episcopals of the city, so please your seigneur bishop!"</p>
+
+<p>"By heaven, my negro John was right, I have never seen a prettier
+creature!" observed the dissolute bishop, attentively examining the
+baker's wife, whom until that instant he had taken little notice of; and
+seeming to reflect for a moment he asked: "How long have you been
+married, little darling? Answer your bishop truthfully!"</p>
+
+<p>"Five years, monseigneur."</p>
+
+<p>"My good man," resumed Gaudry addressing the Councilman, "you must have
+ransomed your wife from the right of the first night at the time when
+the canon of Amaury was charged with its supervision?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, seigneur," answered the baker, while his wife, casting down her
+eyes, blushed with shame at hearing the bishop refer to that infamous
+right of the bishop of Laon, who, before the establishment of the
+Commune had the right to demand "first wedding night of the bride"&mdash;a
+galling shame, that, occasionally, the husband managed to redeem with a
+money payment.</p>
+
+<p>"That miserable beggar of old Amaury!" exclaimed the prelate with a
+cynical outburst of laughter. "It was all in vain for me to tell him:
+'When a bride and bridegroom come to announce at church their
+approaching wedding, inscribe on a separate roll the names of the brides
+that are comely enough to<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> induce me to exact from them the amorous tax
+of nature.' But there were none of these according to Amaury; and yet I
+have before my eyes a striking proof of his fraudulence or his
+blindness. Almost all the brides were homely, according to him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Happily, seigneur bishop, those evil days are gone by," answered Ancel,
+hardly able to restrain his indignation. "Those days will never return
+when the honor of husbands and wives was at the mercy of bishops and
+seigneurs!"</p>
+
+<p>"Brother," put in the archdeacon, painfully affected by the words of the
+bishop, and addressing Ancel, "believe me, the Church herself blushes at
+that monstrous right, that prelates enjoy when they are at once temporal
+seigneurs."</p>
+
+<p>"What I do know, Father Anselm," the baker answered with judicial
+deliberateness and raising his head, "is that the Church does not forbid
+the ecclesiastics to use that monstrous right, we see them using it and
+deflowering young brides."</p>
+
+<p>"By the blood of Christ!" cried out the bishop, while the archdeacon
+remained silent, unable to gainsay the baker; "that right proves better
+than any argument how absolutely the body of the serf, the villein or
+the non-noble vassal is the absolute and undisputed property of the lay
+or ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, so far from blushing at that
+right, the Church claims it back for its own seigneurs, and
+excommunicates those who dare contest it."</p>
+
+<p>The archdeacon, not daring to contradict the bishop, seeing the bishop
+spoke the truth, lowered his head in mute pain. The Councilman resumed
+with a mixture of sly good nature and firmness: "I am, seigneur bishop,
+too ignorant in matters of theology to discuss the orthodoxy of a right
+that honorable folks speak of only with indignation in their hearts and
+shame on their brows. But, thanks be to God, since Laon has become an
+enfranchised Commune, that abominable right has been abolished, along
+with many others. Among the latter is the right of demanding goods
+without money, and of taking some one else's<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> horse without paying for
+it. This, seigneur bishop, leads me to the matter that has brought me
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"You, then, mean to start a process against me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am fulfilling my functions. An hour ago, Peter the Fox, tenant farmer
+of Colombaik the Tanner, deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen
+assembled at the Town Hall that you, Bishop of Laon, kept, against all
+right, a horse belonging to the said Colombaik, and that you refuse to
+pay the price demanded by the owner."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all?" the bishop asked laughing. "Have I committed no other
+sin? Have you no other charges to bring against me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Germain the Strong, master carpenter of the suburb of Grande-Cognee,
+supported by two witnesses, has deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen
+that, while passing before the gate of the episcopal palace, he was
+first insulted and then stabbed in the arm by Black John, a domestic of
+your household, which constitutes a grave crime."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, seigneur justiciary," said the bishop still laughing,
+"Condemn me, brave Councilman. Formulate your judgment and sentence."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," coldly answered the baker. "The suit must first be entered;
+then the witnesses must be heard; next comes the judgment; and fourth
+its enforcement. Everything in its order."</p>
+
+<p>"Just see! I am instructed! Let it be, I shall be patient. Yet I am
+curious to see how far your audacity will lead you, communier of Satan.
+Go ahead and to work!"</p>
+
+<p>"My audacity is that of a man who fulfills his duty."</p>
+
+<p>"An honest man, who dares not allow himself to be intimidated," put in
+Simonne with deftness; "a man who will know how to cause the rights of
+the Commune to be respected, who is not troubled by disdain. A man of
+sense and of action."</p>
+
+<p>"I love to see your rogish face," replied the bishop, turning<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> to the
+young woman; "it gives me the necessary humor to listen to this loafer,
+I swear it by your round and plump throat, by your beautiful black eyes,
+and by your secret charms!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I swear by the poor eyes of Gerhard of Soisson, whom you have so
+cruelly deprived of sight, that the sight of you is odious to me, Bishop
+of Laon! You, whose hands are still red with the blood of Bernard des
+Bruyeres, whom you murdered in your own church!" And uttering these
+imprudent words, drawn from her by an impulse of generous indignation,
+the baker's wife brusquely turned her back upon the bishop.</p>
+
+<p>Enraged at hearing himself reproached in such a manner for two of his
+crimes, the Bishop of Laon became livid with rage, and half rising from
+his seat, whose arms he clutched convulsively, he cried out: "Miserable
+serf! I shall teach you to control your viper's tongue!&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Simonne!" said the Councilman to his wife in a tone of earnest reproof,
+interrupting the prelate. "You should not speak that way. Those past
+crimes belong before the bar of God, not of the Commune, as are the
+misdemeanors that I am prosecuting. The bishop is summoned to answer
+only the two charges that I have preferred."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall save you half your trouble!" cried out Gaudry in a towering
+rage, and dropping his jeering tone towards the Councilman. "I declare
+that I am keeping a farmer's horse; I declare that my negro John stabbed
+a clown of the city this morning. Now, then, decide, you stupid brute!"</p>
+
+<p>"Seeing you admit these wrong-doings, seigneur Bishop of Laon, I decide
+that you return the horse to its owner, or that you pay him his price, a
+hundred and twenty silver sous; and I decide that you render justice for
+the crime committed by your black slave John."</p>
+
+<p>"And I shall keep the horse without paying for it; and I hold that my
+servant John did justly punish an insolent communier! Now, pronounce
+your sentence."<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Bishop of Laon, those are very serious words," answered the Councilman
+with emotion. "I conjure you, deign to think that over while I shall
+read to you aloud two clauses from our charter, sworn to by yourself,
+signed with your own hand, and sealed with your own seal; do not forget
+that; and moreover confirmed by our seigneur the King." Whereat the
+Councilman, producing a parchment from his pocket, read as follows: "'If
+anyone injure a man who shall have taken the oath of the Commune of
+Laon, a complaint being lodged with the Mayor and Councilmen, they
+shall, after due trial, enforce justice upon the body and upon the
+property of the guilty party.... If the guilty party takes refuge in a
+fortified castle, the Mayor and Councilmen shall notify the seigneur of
+the castle, or his lieutenant. If in their opinion satisfaction shall
+have been rendered against the guilty party, that will suffice; but if
+the seigneur refuses satisfaction, they shall themselves enforce justice
+upon the property and upon the men of the said seigneur.' That, seigneur
+bishop, is the law of our Commune, agreed and sworn to by yourself and
+us. If, then, you do not return the horse, if you do not give us
+satisfaction for the crime of your servant John, we shall see ourselves
+forced to ourselves enforce justice upon you and upon your men."</p>
+
+<p>Certain of the support of the King, the bishop and the episcopals had
+for some time desired to provoke a conflict with the communiers. They
+felt certain of success, and looked in that way to reconquer by force
+their seigniorial rights, a one-time inexhaustible treasure, but
+alienated by them three years previous, for a considerable sum of money,
+that had by this time been dissipated. By refusing to satisfy the
+legitimate demands of the Councilmen, the bishop was inevitably bound to
+lead to a collision at the very moment when Louis the Lusty would arrive
+at Laon with a numerous troop of knights. Accordingly, making no doubt
+that the people would be crushed in the struggle, and considering
+himself seconded by circumstance, Gaudry,<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> so far from angrily answering
+the baker, now replied with a sarcastic affectation of humility: "Alack,
+illustrious Councilman, poor seigneurs that we are, we shall have no
+choice but to try and resist you, my valiant Caesars, and to prevent you
+from enforcing justice upon our goods and our persons, as you
+triumphantly announce. We shall have to don our casques and cuirasses,
+and await you, lance in hand, mounted on our battle horses! Alack!"</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur bishop," answered the baker, anxiously joining his hands,
+"your refusal to do justice to the Commune, is equivalent to a
+declaration of war between our townsmen and you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Alack!" replied Gaudry ironically imitating Ancel's gesture, "we shall
+then have to resign ourselves to battle. Fortunately the episcopal
+knights know how to manage the lance and sword wherewith they will run
+you through."</p>
+
+<p>"The battle will be terrible in our city," cried out the Councilman
+excitedly. "Why would you reduce us to such extremities, when it depends
+upon you to avert such a calamity by proving yourself equitable and
+faithful to your oath?"</p>
+
+<p>"I implore you, yield to these wise words," now put in the archdeacon
+addressing Gaudry. "Your refusal will unchain all the scourges of civil
+war, and cause torrents of blood to flow. Woe is us!"</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur bishop," the Councilman resumed with insistence and in a sad
+yet firm tone: "What is it that we demand of you? Justice. Nothing more.
+Return the horse or pay for it. Your servant has committed a crime.
+Inflict exemplary punishment upon him. Is that asking too much of you?
+Are you ready by your resistance to hand over our beloved country to
+innumerable calamities, and cause the shedding of blood? Reflect on the
+consequences of the conflict. Think of the women whom you will have
+widowed, the children whom you will have orphaned! Think of the
+calamities that you will conjure over our city!"<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a></p>
+
+<p>"I'm bound to think, heroic Councilman," replied the bishop with a
+disdainful sneer, "that you are afraid of war!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, we are not afraid!" cried out Simonne, unable longer to control her
+impetuous nature. "Let the belfry summon the inhabitants to the defense
+of the Commune, and you will see that, as at Beauvais, as at Noyons, as
+at Rheims, the men will fly to arms and the women will accompany them to
+nurse the wounded!"</p>
+
+<p>"By the blood of Christ, my charming Amazon, if I take you prisoner, you
+will pay the arrears due to your seigneur."</p>
+
+<p>"Seigneur bishop," interposed the Councilman, "such words ill-become the
+mouth of a priest, above all when the issue is bloodshed. We dread war!
+Yes, undoubtedly, we dread it, because its evils are irreparable. I fear
+war as much or more than anyone else, because I wish to live for my
+wife, whom I love, and to enjoy in peace our modest means, the fruit of
+our daily labor. I fear war by reason of the disasters and the ruin that
+follow upon its wake."</p>
+
+<p>"But you will fight like any other!" cried out Simonne almost irritated
+at the sincerity of her husband. "Oh, I know you! You will fight even
+more bravely than others!"</p>
+
+<p>"More bravely than others is saying too much," naively interposed the
+baker. "I have never fought in my life. But I shall do my duty, although
+I am less at home with the lance or the sword than with the poker of the
+furnace in my bakery. Each to his trade."</p>
+
+<p>"Admit it, good man," retorted the bishop laughing uproarously, "you
+prefer the fire of your furnace to the heat of battle?"</p>
+
+<p>"On my faith, that's the truth of it, seigneur bishop. All of us good
+people of the city, bourgeois and artisans that we are, prefer good to
+evil, peace to war. But, take my word for it, there are things we prefer
+to peace, they are the honor of our wives, our daughters and sisters,
+our dignity, our independence, the right of ourselves and through
+ourselves to administering<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> the affairs of our city. We owe these
+advantages to our enfranchisement from the seigniorial rights.
+Accordingly, we shall all allow ourselves to be killed, to the last man,
+in the defence of our Commune and in the protection of our freedom.
+That's why, in the name of the public peace, we implore you to do
+justice to our demand."</p>
+
+<p>"Patron," broke in at this point Black John who entered the room
+precipitately, "a forerunner of the King has just arrived. He announces
+that he precedes his master only two hours, and that he comes
+accompanied with a strong escort."</p>
+
+<p>"The King must have hastened his arrival!" cried out the prelate
+triumphantly. "By the blood of Christ, everything is working according
+to our wishes!"</p>
+
+<p>"The King!" exclaimed the Councilman with joy, "The King in our city!
+Oh, we now have nothing more to fear. He signed our charter, he will
+know how to compel you to respect it, Bishop of Laon. Your wicked
+intentions will now be paralyzed."</p>
+
+<p>"Certes!" answered Gaudry with a sardonic smile. "Count with the support
+of the King, good people. He comes in person, followed by a large troop
+of knights armed with strong lances and sharp swords. Now, then, my
+valiant bourgeois, go and join your shop heroes, and carry my answer to
+them. It is this: 'Gaudry, bishop and seigneur of Laon, certain of the
+support of the King of the French, awaits in his episcopal palace to see
+the communiers come themselves to enforce justice upon his property and
+his men!'" And turning then to Black John: "Order my equerry to saddle
+the stallion that was brought here this morning. I know no more
+mettlesome horse to ride on ahead of the King and in the beard of those
+city clowns. Let the knights of the city be notified, they shall serve
+for my escort. To horse! To horse!" Saying which, the prelate stepped
+off into another room, leaving the baker as stupefied as he was alarmed
+at the sight of his crumbling hopes. He heard the bishop's words
+regarding<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a> the King's intention, yet hesitated to give them credence.
+The townsman remained thunderstruck.</p>
+
+<p>"Ancel," said the archdeacon to him. "There is no doubt about it. Louis
+the Lusty will side with the episcopals. A conflict must be avoided at
+any price. Recommend the other Councilmen to redouble their prudence. I
+shall, on my part, endeavor to conjure off the storm that threatens."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, my poor wife," said the Councilman, whose eyes were filling with
+tears! "Come! Woe is us, the King of the French is against us. May God
+protect the Commune of Laon!"</p>
+
+<p>"As to me," answered Simonne, "upon the faith of a Picardian woman, I
+place my reliance upon the stout hearts of our communiers, upon the
+pikes, the hatchets and the swords in our hands!"<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VI-c" id="CHAPTER_VI-c"></a>CHAPTER VI.<br /><br />
+THE GATHERING STORM.</h3>
+
+<p>Louis the Lusty had made his entry into the city of Laon on the eve of
+Holy Thursday of the year 1112. On the day following the arrival of the
+Prince, Colombaik, his mother and his wife were seated together in the
+basement chamber of their house. Dawn was about breaking. Fergan's son,
+Martine and Joan the Hunchback had watched all night. A lamp threw its
+light upon them. The two women, uneasy in the extreme, were stripping
+old linen into bandages and lint, while Colombaik, together with his
+three apprentices, plying their saws and planes, were actively engaged
+in fashioning pike-shafts, four feet long, of oak and ash branches
+recently lopped off. Colombaik did not seem to share the apprehension of
+his mother and his wife, who silently pursued their work, listening from
+time to time in the direction of the little window that opened on the
+street. They awaited, with as much impatience as anxiety, the return of
+Fergan, absent since the previous evening. What tidings would he bring?</p>
+
+<p>"Lively, my lads," Colombaik was jovially saying to his apprentices,
+"ply your planes and your saws with dispatch! It does not much matter if
+these pike-shafts be rough. They are to be used by hands as callous as
+our own. May there be a chance to use them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, master Colombaik," remarked one of the young apprentices laughing,
+"as to that, these handles will be less smooth to the touch than the
+fine doe skins that we tan for the embroidered gloves of the noble dames
+and their elegant young ladies."</p>
+
+<p>"The ornament of a pike is its iron head," rejoined Colombaik; "but
+little Robin the Crumb-cracker, the apprentice of the<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a> blacksmith, is
+long in fetching us those ornaments. However, with him it will not be as
+with the little apprentice of our friend the baker. There is no fear of
+Robin's nibbling at his goods on the way." The lads laughed at the joke
+of Colombaik. But accidentally turning his eyes in the direction of Joan
+and Martine, he was struck by the increasing uneasiness of their looks.
+"Good mother," said he to Joan in a tender and beseeching voice, "pardon
+me if I have saddened you with jokes that may be out of season at this
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my child," answered Joan, "if I look sad, it is not on account of
+your jokes, but the result of thoughts suggested by the sight of men
+shaping weapons, and women preparing lint for the wounded."</p>
+
+<p>"And when we consider," put in Martine, unable to keep back her tears,
+"that a father, a son, a husband may happen to be among the wounded!
+Confound the people who brought war upon the city! Confound this clergy
+of the devil and their train of churchmen!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Martine, and you, good mother," Colombaik rejoined, seeking to
+calm the two women, "to prepare for war is not to wage it. It is prudent
+to be on one's guard, just in order to secure peace, honorable peace."</p>
+
+<p>"Your father!... Here is your father!" Joan cried out abruptly, hearing
+a rap at the street door. She rose, together with Martine, while one of
+the apprentices ran to open the door. But the expectation of the two
+women was not verified. They heard a childish voice cry out gleefully:
+"It burns!... It burns!... Who wants buns.... It burns!" And Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, the blacksmith's apprentice, a lad about twelve years of
+age, wide awake, but all black with the smoke of the forge, stepped in,
+holding in his little leather apron about twenty pike-heads which he
+dropped on the floor. "Who wants fire-buns!... They are hot!... They
+just come from the furnace!..."<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Master Colombaik feared you had been nibbling the goods on the way,"
+one of the young tanners observed with a laugh. "We hold you quite
+capable of doing so, little Robin!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are right. I took my bite on the way!" laughingly answered the
+urchin. "But in order to chew my pretty piece of pointed iron, I need
+one of your fine ash branches. Let me have one."</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil would you do with a pike?" asked Colombaik, smiling upon
+him. "You are barely twelve years old. That is no toy for urchins."</p>
+
+<p>"I want to use it, if there be blows coming. My master,
+Paynen-Oste-Loup, will tap the backs of the great episcopals; so will I!
+I shall roll over the little noblemen in my best style. Those scamps
+have hurt my feelings quite often, pointing their finger at me and
+calling out: 'Look at the little villain with the black face! He looks
+like a blackamoor!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Hold, my bold lad," said Colombaik to Robin; "here is a good oak handle
+for you. Give us the news. What is doing in the city?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are rejoicing as on Christmas eve. Light is seen at all the
+windows. The forges are shooting up flame. The anvils ringing. They are
+making an infernal racket. One would think that the blacksmiths,
+locksmiths and armorers were all working at their master-pieces; and one
+would think all the shops are smithies."</p>
+
+<p>"This time it is your father!" Joan cried out to her son, hearing a
+second rapping at the door. Fergan soon appeared. He entered at the
+moment when Robin was leaving, brandishing his oak branch and shouting:
+"Commune! Commune! Death to the episcopals!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said the quarryman, following the blacksmith's apprentice with his
+eye. "How could we fear for our cause when even the children&mdash;"; and
+interrupting himself to address his<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> wife, who ran with Martine to meet
+him: "Come, now, dear bundles of timidity! The news makes for peace."</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be true!" exclaimed the two women, folding their hands together.
+"There is to be no war?" And running to Colombaik, on whose neck she
+threw herself, Martine cried out: "Did you hear your father? There is to
+be no war! What happiness! It is over! Let's rejoice!"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my soul, dear Martine, so much the better!" remarked the young
+tanner, returning the embrace of his wife. "We shall not recoil before
+war, but peace is better. So, then, father, everything is adjusted? The
+bishop pays, or surrenders the horse? Justice will be enforced against
+that scamp of a Black John? And the King, true to his oath, backs the
+Commune against the bishop?"</p>
+
+<p>"My friends," answered the quarryman, "we must, all the same, not hope
+for too much."</p>
+
+<p>"But what about what you said just before," replied Joan with returning
+uneasiness, "did you not tell me the news was good?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said, Joan, that the news was favorable to peace. Here is what
+happened last night: You heard the insolent answer of the bishop,
+reported at the meeting of the Councilmen by our neighbor Quatre-Mains,
+the baker, an answer that was rendered all the more threatening by the
+entry of the King into our city at the head of an armed troop of men.
+The Councilmen decided to take measures of resistance and safety. As
+constable of the militia, I ordered watchmen placed at all the towers
+that command the gates of the city, with orders to close them and allow
+none to enter. I likewise issued orders to the guilds of the
+blacksmiths, locksmiths and armorers to turn out quickly a large number
+of pikes, to the end of being able to arm all the male inhabitants.
+Quatre-Mains, like a man of foresight and good judgment, proposed
+sending under a good escort for all the flour in the mills of the
+suburbs, fearing the bishop may have<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> them pillaged by his men to starve
+out Laon. These precautions being taken, they were reported to the
+Council. We did not recoil before war, but did all we could to conjure
+it away. It was agreed that John Molrain was to appear before the King
+and pray him to induce the bishop to do us justice, and to promise
+henceforth to respect our charter. The Mayor went to the house of the
+Sire of Haut-Pourcin, where the King had taken quarters. Unable,
+however, to see the Prince, he conferred long with Abbot Peter de la
+Marche, one of the royal counselors, and showed him that we demanded
+nothing but what was just. The abbot did not conceal from John Molrain
+that the bishop, having ridden ahead with the King, had entertained him
+for a long time, and that Louis the Lusty seemed greatly irritated
+against the inhabitants of Laon. John Molrain had had dealings with the
+Abbot de la Marche on the confirmation of our Commune. Knowing the
+abbot's cupidity, he said to him: 'We are resolved to maintain our
+rights with arms, but before arriving at such extremities we desire to
+try all the means of conciliation. No sacrifice will be too great for
+us. Already have we paid Louis the Lusty a considerable sum to obtain
+his adhesion to our charter, let him deign to confirm it anew and to
+order the bishop to do us justice. We offer the King a sum equal to that
+which he received before. And to you, seigneur abbot, a handsome purse
+as a testimony of our gratitude.'"</p>
+
+<p>"And attracted by such a promise," put in Colombaik, "the abbot surely
+accepted?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without making any promises, the tonsured gentleman agreed to
+communicate our offer to the King when he retired, and he made an
+appointment with John Molrain for eleven in the evening. The Councilmen,
+having approved the proposition of the Mayor, went over the city,
+soliciting each of our friends to contribute according to his power
+towards the sum offered to the King. This last sacrifice was expected to
+roll away from our city the threatened dangers of war. All the
+inhabitants hastened<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> to put in their quota. Those who had not enough
+money, gave some vessel of silver; women and young girls offered their
+trinkets and their collars; finally, towards evening, the sum or its
+equivalent in articles of gold and silver was deposited in the communal
+treasury. John Molrain returned to the King to hear his answer. The
+Abbot de la Marche informed the Mayor that the King did not seem
+indisposed to accept our propositions, but that he desired to wait till
+morning before taking a definite resolution. There is where matters now
+stand. In a hurry to make the rounds of our watchmen, and having no time
+to come here for money, I requested our good neighbor the baker to pay
+for us our share of the contribution. Colombaik shall take to Ancel the
+money he advanced for our family."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely the King will accept the offer of the Councilmen," observed
+Joan, "what interest could he have in refusing to profit by so large a
+sum? He is a greedy prince. He will accept our money."</p>
+
+<p>"What a wretched trader that Louis the Lusty is!" exclaimed Colombaik.
+"He has us pay him to confirm our charter, and he has us pay him a
+second time to re-confirm it. Patient people that we are! We must pay,
+and pay again!"</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter, my child," said Joan; "provided no blood flows,
+let us pay a double tribute, if necessary!"</p>
+
+<p>"'It is with iron that tribute should be paid to kings,' said our
+ancestor Vortigern to that other tonsured representative sent by Louis
+the Pious," rejoined Colombaik, looking almost with regret at the iron
+pikes that his apprentices, who had not intermitted their work, were
+engaged upon. "Oh, those times are long gone by!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan!" suddenly Joan called out, inclining her head towards the
+street; "listen! Is not that the bell, and the voice of a crier. Let's
+find out what is up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At these words the quarryman's family approached the open window. The
+sun had just risen. A crier of the bishop, distinguishable<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> by the arms
+embroidered on the breast of his coat, was seen passing the house. He
+alternately rang his bell and then cried out: "In the name of our
+seigneur the King! In the name of our seigneur the Bishop! Inhabitants
+of Laon assemble in the market-place at the eighth hour of the day!" and
+the crier rang anew his bell, the sound of which was soon lost in the
+distance. For an instant the family of the quarryman remained silent,
+each seeking to guess the object of the King and the bishop in ordering
+the assemblage. Joan, always yielding to hope, said to Fergan: "The King
+probably wishes to assemble the inhabitants in order to announce to them
+that he accepts the money and confirms the charter anew."</p>
+
+<p>"If such was the intention of Louis the Lusty, if he had accepted the
+offer of the Commune, he would have notified the Mayor," the quarryman
+answered, sadly shaking his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he has done that. We may expect him to have done so, father."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case the Mayor would have issued orders to ring the belfry
+bell, in order to assemble the communiers and announce to them the happy
+tidings. I do not like this convocation, made in the name of the King
+and the bishop. It presages nothing good. We have everything to fear
+from our enemies."</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan!" replied Joan alarmed, "must we, then, renounce all hope of an
+accommodation? Is it war? Is it peace?"</p>
+
+<p>"We shall soon be clear upon that. It will not be long before the eighth
+hour will sound," whereupon Fergan resumed his casque and his sword,
+which he had put away upon entering, and said to his son: "Arm yourself
+and let's go to the market-place. As to you, my young ones," said he,
+turning to the apprentices, "continue adjusting the pike-heads to the
+shafts."</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan!" exclaimed Joan anxiously, "you foresee war?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Colombaik," said Martine, weeping and throwing herself upon the
+neck of her husband, "I die with fear, when I think of the dangers that
+you and your father are about to run!"<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Be comforted, dear wife, by ordering these preparations of resistance
+to continue, my father only adopts a measure of prudence," answered
+Colombaik. "The situation is not desperate."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Joan," the quarryman said sadly, "I have seen you bear up more
+bravely on the sands of Syria. Remember what perils you, your child and
+I escaped during our long journey in Palestine, and when we were serfs
+of Neroweg VI&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan," Joan broke in, overcome with anguish, "the dangers of the past
+were terrible, and the future looks menacing."</p>
+
+<p>"We were all so happy in this city!" muttered Martine. "Those wicked
+episcopals, so anxious to turn our joy into mourning, have,
+nevertheless, the same as the communiers, wives, mothers, sisters,
+daughters!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said Fergan bitterly; "but those men of the nobility and
+their families, driven by the pride of station and living in idleness,
+are furious at no longer being able to dispose of our hard labor. Oh! If
+they tire our patience and if they mean to reconquer their hateful
+rights, woe be unto the episcopals! Terrible reprisals await them!" And
+embracing Joan and Martine, the quarryman added: "Good-bye, wife;
+good-bye, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, good mother; good-bye, Martine," Colombaik said in his turn,
+"I accompany my father to the market-place. Soon as we shall have
+definite information, I shall return to let you know. Remain at ease and
+without any apprehensions."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, daughter," said Joan to Martine, after once more embracing her
+husband and her son, who forthwith went out, "let's resume our sad task.
+For a moment I had hoped we could drop it."</p>
+
+<p>The two women began anew to prepare lint and bandages, while the young
+apprentices, resuming their work with renewed ardor, continued shafting
+the iron pikes.<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VII-c" id="CHAPTER_VII-c"></a>CHAPTER VII.<br /><br />
+"TO ARMS, COMMUNIERS!"</h3>
+
+<p>An ever increasing crowd flowed into the market-place. Not now, as on
+the previous day, did joy and the breath of security brighten the faces
+of men, women and children gathering to celebrate the inauguration of
+the communal Town Hall and belfry, the symbol of the emancipation of the
+inhabitants. No; neither women nor children assisted at this gathering,
+so different from the first. Only the men met, sombre, uneasy, some
+determined, others crestfallen, and all foreseeing the approach of a
+public danger. Assembled in large groups around the pillars of the
+market-place, the communiers discussed the latest tidings&mdash;not yet known
+by Fergan at the time when, in the company of his son, he left his
+house&mdash;significant and alarming tidings. The watchmen on the towers,
+between which one of the gates of the city opened on a promenade that
+extended between the ramparts and the episcopal palace, had seen a large
+troop of woodmen serfs and colliers, with Thiegaud, the bandit and
+favorite of Bishop Gaudry, march into the palace at daybreak. A short
+time after daybreak, the King, accompanied by his knights and
+men-at-arms, had also retired into the fortified dwelling of the
+prelate, leaving Laon by the south gate, which the sentinels had not
+dared to refuse to open to the royal cavalcade. The courtiers of the
+King having warned him that the inhabitants of the city had been up all
+night, and that the blacksmiths' and locksmiths' anvils had constantly
+rung under the hammer in the manufacture of a large number of pikes,
+such preparations of defence, such a nocturnal excitement, all so
+contrary to the peaceful habits of the townsmen, awoke the royal
+suspicions and fears,<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> and he had hastened to transfer his quarters to
+the episcopal palace, where he considered himself safer. Instructed on
+the departure of the Prince, the Mayor, John Molrain had himself run to
+the episcopal palace, where admission was refused him. Foreseeing as
+much, the Mayor had provided himself with a letter to the abbot
+counselor of the King, in which Molrain repeated his propositions of the
+previous day, and implored the King to accept them in the name of public
+peace. Molrain added that the Commune held the promised sum at the
+disposal of the King. To a letter so wisely framed and so conciliating,
+the King sent for answer that in the morning the inhabitants of Laon
+would be apprized of his pleasure. During that same night, it had been
+noticed in the city that the episcopals, entrenched in their fortified
+and solidly barricaded houses, had frequently exchanged signals among
+themselves by means of torches placed at their windows and alternately
+lighted and extinguished. These alarming tidings demolished almost
+completely the hope of an accommodation, and threw the communiers into a
+state of increasing anxiety. The Councilmen had been the first to appear
+at the market-place, where they were soon joined by the Mayor. The
+latter, grave and resolute, ordered silence, mounted one of the stands
+in the deserted stalls and said to the crowd:</p>
+
+<p>"The eighth hour of the day will soon sound. I have ordered the
+messenger of the King to be allowed into the city when he presents
+himself at the gate. The King and the bishop have ordered us to meet
+here, at the market-place, to hear their pleasure. We prefer to receive
+the royal message at our Town Hall. That is the seat of our power. The
+more that power is contested from us, all the more zealous should we
+show ourselves in holding it high."</p>
+
+<p>The Mayor's proposition was received with acclamation, and while the
+crowd followed the magistrates, Fergan and his son, commissioned to wait
+for the King's messengers, saw Archdeacon Anselm approaching with
+hurried steps. Thanks to his goodness and his uprightness, the prelate
+was beloved and venerated by all.<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> Making a sign to the quarryman to
+draw near, he said to him in an agitated voice: "Will you join me in an
+endeavor to avert the frightful misfortunes that this city is threatened
+with?"</p>
+
+<p>"The King has not, then, been moved even by the last sacrifice that we
+imposed upon ourselves? He refused the offer of John Molrain?"</p>
+
+<p>"The bishop, learning that the Mayor had offered the King a considerable
+sum for the re-confirmation of your charter, offered Louis the Lusty
+twice as much to abolish the Commune, and promised rich presents to the
+King's counselors."</p>
+
+<p>"And the King gave ear to such an infamous auction sale?"</p>
+
+<p>"He gave ear to the suggestions of his own cupidity. He listened to the
+counselors that surround him, and he accepted the bishop's offer."</p>
+
+<p>"The oath that Louis the Lusty took, his signature, his seal affixed to
+our charter&mdash;all that is then nullified?"</p>
+
+<p>"The bishop absolved the King of his oath, by virtue of his episcopal
+power of binding and unbinding here on earth. A sacredotal chicanery."</p>
+
+<p>"The King is in error if he expects to receive the price of that
+infamous traffic. The treasure of the bishop is empty. How could the
+King, so astute a trader, rely upon the promises of Gaudry?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once the bishop's seigniorial power is restored, he will clap upon the
+townsmen, who will have again become taxable and subject to any imposts
+at his mercy, a tax to pay the sum promised to the King, and the latter
+himself will lend armed assistance to the bishop to levy the new
+contributions."</p>
+
+<p>"Fatality!" cried out Fergan in an outburst of rage. "We shall,
+accordingly, have paid to obtain our enfranchisement, and are to pay
+over again to fall back into servitude!"</p>
+
+<p>"The projects of the bishop are as criminal as insane. But if you desire
+to ward off even greater dangers, you will try to allay the popular
+effervescence when the decision of the King shall be announced to the
+Councilmen."<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You advise a cowardly act! No, I shall not seek to pacify the people,
+when the insolent challenge shall have been thrown in their faces! You
+will hear me the first to cry out: 'Commune! Commune!' and I shall march
+at the head of my forces against the bishop. It will be a battle to the
+knife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you promise me not to precipitate so bloody a solution, that I may
+make new efforts to lead the bishop back to more equitable sentiments?"</p>
+
+<p>Anselm had hardly finished speaking when a man on horseback, preceded by
+a sergeant-at-arms, covered with iron and the visor of his casque up,
+appeared at the entrance of the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is the royal messenger," said the quarryman to the archdeacon,
+advancing towards the two cavaliers; "if the resolution of the King and
+the bishop is such as you have just informed me of, let the blood that
+is to run fall upon them!" Addressing then the royal messenger:</p>
+
+<p>"The Mayor and the Councilmen are awaiting you in the large reception
+room of the Town Hall of the Commune."</p>
+
+<p>"Monseigneur the King and monseigneur the Bishop commanded the
+inhabitants to assemble here at the market-place, in order to hear the
+rescript that I bring," answered the messenger; "I must obey the orders
+given me."</p>
+
+<p>"If you wish to fulfil your mission, follow me," replied the quarryman.
+"Our magistrates, representing the inhabitants of the city, are
+assembled at the Town Hall. They have not chosen to wait here." Fearing
+some trap, the King's messenger hesitated to follow Fergan, who,
+surmising his thoughts, added: "Fear nothing; your person will be
+respected; I answer for you with my head."</p>
+
+<p>The sincerity that breathed through the words of Fergan reassured the
+envoy, who, from greater prudence, ordered the knight, by whom he was
+escorted, to accompany him no further, lest the sight of an armed man
+should irritate the crowd. The royal messenger then followed the
+quarryman.</p>
+
+<p>"Fergan," the archdeacon called in a penetrating voice, "a<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> last time I
+conjure you, seek to curb the popular anger. I return to the King and
+the bishop to renew my endeavors against the fatal course they are
+starting on."</p>
+
+<p>With that the archdeacon precipitately left the quarryman, who, leaving
+the market-place, reached the Town Hall, and stepping ahead of the
+messenger into the crowd repeated several times, while elbowing his way
+through: "Room and respect for the envoy; he is alone and unarmed!"</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the threshold of the Town Hall, the envoy left his horse in
+charge of Robin the Crumb-cracker, who pressed forward offering to guard
+the palfrey; and accompanied by the quarryman he went up to the large
+reception hall where were gathered the Mayor and the Councilmen, some in
+arms, others merely in the robes of their office. The faces of the
+magistrates were at once grave and uneasy. They misgave the approach of
+events disastrous to the city. Above the Mayor's seat stood the Communal
+banner; on a table before him, lay the official silver seal. The
+gathering was silent and wrapt in thought.</p>
+
+<p>"Mayor and Councilmen! Here is the royal envoy who wishes to make a
+communication to you."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall listen to him," answered the Mayor, John Molrain; "let him
+communicate to us the message he is charged with."</p>
+
+<p>The King's man seemed embarrassed in the fulfillment of his errand. He
+drew from his breast a parchment scroll, sealed with the royal seal, and
+unfolding it he said in a tremulous voice: "This is the pleasure of our
+seigneur the King. He has ordered me to read this rescript to you aloud,
+and to leave it with you, to the end that you may not remain in
+ignorance upon its contents. Listen to it with respect."</p>
+
+<p>"Read," said John Molrain; and turning to the Councilmen: "Above all, my
+friends, whatever our sentiments, let us not interrupt the envoy during
+the reading."</p>
+
+<p>The King's man then read aloud:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Louis, by the Grace of God, King of the French, to the Mayor and
+inhabitants of Laon, Greeting:&mdash;<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a></p>
+
+<p>"We order and command you strictly to render, without contradiction
+or delay, to our well-beloved and trusty Gaudry, Bishop of Laon,
+the keys of this city, which he holds under us. We likewise order
+and command you to forward to our well-beloved and trusty Gaudry,
+Bishop of the diocese of Laon, the seal, the banner and the
+treasury of the Commune, which we now declare abolished. The tower
+of the belfry and the Town Hall shall be demolished, within the
+space of one month at the longest. We order and command you, in
+addition, to henceforth obey the bans and orders of our
+well-beloved and trusty Gaudry, Bishop of Laon, the same as his
+predecessors and himself have always been obeyed before the
+establishment of the said Commune, because we may not fail to
+guarantee to our well-beloved and trusty bishops the possession of
+the seigniories and rights which they hold from God as
+ecclesiastics and from us as laymen.</p>
+
+<p>"This is our will.</p>
+
+<p class="r">"L<small>OUIS</small>."</p></div>
+
+<p>The recommendation of John Molrain was religiously observed. The King's
+envoy read his message in the midst of profound silence. In the measure,
+however, as he proceeded with the reading of the act, every word of
+which conveyed a threat and was an outrage, an iniquity, a perjury
+towards the Commune, the Mayor and Councilmen exchanged looks
+successively expressive of astonishment, rage, pain and consternation.
+Overwhelming, indeed, was the astonishment of the Councilmen, to whom
+Fergan had not yet had time to communicate his conversation with the
+archdeacon. However, aware of the evil intentions of the King, yet they
+had not been able to imagine such a flagrant violation of the rights
+that had been granted, acknowledged and solemnly sworn to by the Prince
+and the bishop. Great, indeed, was the anger that seized the Councilmen;
+the least bellicose among them felt his heart stirred with indignation
+at the insolent challenge hurled at the Commune, at the brazen robbery
+contemplated by the King and bishop in the attempt to restore their
+odious rights, the permanent abolition of which was proclaimed by a
+charter sold for heavy money. Great was also the pain felt by the
+Councilmen at the royal order to surrender to the bishop their banner,
+their seal and their treasury, and to tear down their Town Hall and its
+belfry. That belfry, that seal, that banner, such dear symbols of an
+emancipation obtained<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> after so many years of oppression, of servitude
+and of shame,&mdash;all were to be renounced by the communiers. They were to
+fall back under the yoke of Gaudry, when, in their legitimate pride,
+they expected to bequeath to their children a freedom so painfully
+acquired. Tears of rage and despair rolled down from all eyes at the
+bare thought of such a disgrace. Great was the consternation of the
+Councilmen; even the more energetic of them, while caring little for
+their own lives, determined to defend the communal franchises unto
+death, nevertheless anticipated with profound pain the disasters that
+their flourishing city was threatened with, the torrents of blood that
+civil war was about to shed. Victory or defeat, what distress, what
+ravages, what a number of widows and orphans in prospect!</p>
+
+<p>At that supreme moment, some of the Councilmen, they later admitted it
+themselves, after having first triumphed over a transitory feeling of
+faintness, felt their resolution waver. To enter into a struggle with a
+King of the French was, for the city of Laon, an act of almost insane
+foolhardiness. It was to expose the inhabitants to almost certain deeds
+of retribution. Moreover, these magistrates&mdash;all of them husbands and
+most of them fathers, men of peaceful habits&mdash;were not versed in war.
+Undoubtedly, to submit to bear the yoke of the bishop and of the
+nobility meant abysmal degradation; it meant to submit for all future
+time themselves and their descendants to indignities and incessant
+exploitation. Life, it is true, would be safe, and by virtue of tame
+submission to the bishop some concessions might be obtained to render
+life less miserable. Fortunately, the instances where such unworthy
+wavering in the face of peril was experienced, had the advantage of
+unrolling before the shaken hearts the abysmal infamy that fear might
+drive them to. Promptly returning to their senses, these men realized
+that the fatal choice was between degradation and servitude on the one
+side, and, on the other, the dangers of a resistance sacred as justice
+itself; that they had to choose between shame or a glorious death. Their
+self-respect soon regained the upper hand, and they<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> blushed at their
+own weakness. When the envoy of Louis the Lusty had finished reading the
+royal message, none of the Councilmen who had just been a prey to cruel
+perplexities raised the voice to advise the relinquishment of the
+franchises of the Commune.</p>
+
+<p>The reading of the King's rescript being ended, John Molrain said to the
+envoy in a solemn voice: "Are you authorized to listen to our
+objections?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no room for objections to an act of the sovereign will of our
+seigneur the King, signed by his own hand and sealed with his own seal,"
+answered the messenger. "The King commands in the fullness of his power;
+his subjects obey with humility. Bend your knees, bow down your
+foreheads!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is the will of Louis the Lusty irrevocable?" resumed the Mayor.</p>
+
+<p>"Irrevocable!" answered the envoy. "And as a first proof of your
+obedience to his orders, the King herein orders you, Councilmen, to hand
+over to me the keys, the seal and the banner of the city. I have orders
+to take them to the bishop, in token of submission to the abolition of
+the Commune."</p>
+
+<p>These words of the messenger carried the exasperation of the Councilmen
+to its pitch. Some bounded from their seats or raised to heaven their
+threatening fists; others covered their faces in their hands. Threats,
+imprecations, moans, escaped from all lips. Dominating the tumult, John
+Molrain ordered silence. All the Councilmen resumed their seats. Then,
+rising full of dignity, calmness and firmness, the Mayor turned to the
+banner of the Commune, that stood behind his seat, pointed towards it
+with his hand and said to the messenger of the King: "On this banner,
+that the King commands us to give up like cowards, are traced two towers
+and a sword: The towers are the emblem of the city of Laon, the sword is
+the emblem of the Commune. Our duty is inscribed upon that banner&mdash;to
+defend with arms the franchises of our city. That seal, which the King
+demands as a token of relinquishment of our liberties," John Molrain<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a>
+proceeded, taking up from the table a silver medal, "this seal
+represents a man raising his right hand to heaven in witness of the
+sacredness of his oath; in his left hand he holds a sword, with the
+point over his heart. This man is the Mayor of the Commune of Laon. This
+magistrate is swearing by heaven to rather die than betray his oath.
+Now, then, <i>I, Mayor of the Commune of Laon, freely elected by my fellow
+townsmen, I swear to maintain and to defend our rights and our
+franchises unto death</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"To that oath we shall all be faithful!" cried the Councilmen with
+frantic enthusiasm. "We swear sooner to die than to renounce our
+franchises!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard the answer of the Mayor and Councilmen of Laon," said
+John Molrain to the King's man when the tumult was appeased. "Our
+charter has been sworn to and signed by the King and by Bishop Gaudry in
+the year 1109. We shall defend that charter with the sword. The King of
+the French is all-powerful in Gaul, the Commune of Laon is strong only
+in its rights and in the bravery of its inhabitants. It has done
+everything to avoid an impious war. It now awaits its enemies."</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had John Molrain pronounced these last words when a deafening
+uproar rose outside the Town Hall. Colombaik had joined his father to
+accompany the royal messenger to the council hall. But after hearing the
+rescript of the King, he was not able longer to restrain his
+indignation. Hastily descending to the street, packed with a dense mass,
+he announced that the King abolished the Commune and re-established the
+bishop in the sovereignty of his so justly abhorred rights. While the
+news spread like wild-fire from mouth to mouth through the whole city,
+the crowd, massed upon the square, began to make the air resound with
+imprecations. The more exasperated communiers invaded the hall, where
+the council was gathered, and cried, inflamed with fury: "To arms! To
+arms! Down with the King, the bishop and the episcopals!"<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a></p>
+
+<p>Sufficiently uneasy before now, the royal messenger grew pale with fear,
+and ran for protection behind the Mayor and Councilmen, saying to them
+in a trembling voice: "I have only obeyed orders; protect me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fear nothing!" called Fergan. "I have answered for you with my head. I
+shall see you safe to the gates of the city."</p>
+
+<p>"To arms!" cried John Molrain, addressing himself to the inhabitants who
+had invaded the hall. "Ring the belfry bell to convoke the people to the
+market-place. From there we shall march to the ramparts! To arms,
+communiers! To arms!"</p>
+
+<p>These words of John Molrain caused the King's messenger to be forgotten.
+While several inhabitants climbed to the tower of the belfry to set the
+big bell ringing, others descended quickly to the street and spread
+themselves over the city crying: "To arms!" "Commune!" "Commune!" And
+these cries, taken up by the crowds, were soon joined by the clangor
+from the belfry.</p>
+
+<p>"Molrain," Fergan said to the Mayor, "I shall accompany the envoy of
+Louis the Lusty to the city's gate that opens opposite the episcopal
+palace, and I shall remain on guard at that postern, one of the most
+important posts."</p>
+
+<p>"Go," answered the Mayor; "we of the Council shall remain here in
+permanence to the end of deciding upon the measures to be taken."</p>
+
+<p>Fergan and Colombaik descended from the council hall. The King's man
+walked between them. The people, running home for their arms, had
+cleared the square; only a few groups were left behind. Little Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, who had been charged with the care of the messenger's
+palfrey, had hastened to profit by the opportunity of straddling a horse
+for the first time in his life, and was carrying himself triumphantly in
+the saddle. At sight of the quarryman, he quickly came down again and
+said, while placing the reins into his hands: "Master Fergan, here is
+the horse; I prefer the infantry to the cavalry. I shall now run for my
+pike. Let the little episcopals look out. If I meet any, I'll massacre
+them."<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a></p>
+
+<p>The bellicose ardor of the stripling seemed to strike the royal envoy
+even more forcibly than anything he had yet seen. He remounted his horse
+escorted by Fergan and his son. The redoubled peals from the belfry
+resounded far into the distance. In all the streets that the King's man
+traversed on his way to the city gate, shops were hastily closing, and
+soon the faces of women and children appeared at the windows, following
+with anxious mien the husband, father, son or brother, who was leaving
+the house to meet in arms at the call of the belfry. The King's
+messenger, sombre and silent, could not conceal the astonishment and
+fear produced in him by the warlike excitement of that people of
+bourgeois and artisans, all running with enthusiasm to the defence of
+the Commune. "Before you arrived at the gate of the city," Fergan said
+to him, "you surely expected to meet here with a craven obedience to the
+orders of the King and the bishop. But you see it for yourself, here, as
+at Beauvais, as at Cambrai, as at Noyons, as at Amiens, the old Gallic
+blood is waking up after centuries of slavery. Report faithfully to
+Louis the Lusty and to Gaudry what you have witnessed while crossing the
+city. Perchance, at the supreme moment, they may recoil before the
+iniquity that they are contemplating, and they may yet save grave
+disasters to this city that asks but to be allowed to live peacefully
+and happy in the name of the faith that has been plighted."</p>
+
+<p>"I have no authority in the councils of my seigneur the King," answered
+the envoy sadly, "but I swear in the name of God, I did not expect to
+see what I have seen, and hear what I have heard. I shall faithfully
+report it all to my master."</p>
+
+<p>"The King of the French is all-powerful in Gaul, the city of Laon is
+strong only in its right and the bravery of its inhabitants. It now
+awaits its enemies! You see it is on its guard," added Fergan, pointing
+to a troop of bourgeois militia that had just occupied the ramparts
+contiguous to the gate by which the King's envoy made his exit.<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_VIII-c" id="CHAPTER_VIII-c"></a>CHAPTER VIII.<br /><br />
+RETRIBUTION.</h3>
+
+<p>The episcopal palace, fortified with towers and thick walls, was
+separated from the city by a wide space, lined with trees and that
+served as a promenade. Fergan and his son were busy organizing the
+transport of materials destined for the defence of the walls in case of
+an attack, when the quarryman saw the outer gate of the episcopal palace
+thrown open. Several of the King's men came out, looked around
+cautiously, as if to make sure that the promenade was clear, re-entered
+the palace in hot haste, and almost immediately a strong escort of
+knights rode out, and took the road that led to the boundary of Picardy.
+This vanguard was closely followed by a few warriors, clad in brilliant
+armor, one of them, notable for his enormous stomach; two ordinary men
+could have been easily held in this one's cuirass. The rider's casque
+was topped with a golden crown engraved with fleur-de-lis. The long
+scarlet saddle-cloth, that covered his horse almost wholly, was likewise
+embroidered in gold fleur-de-lis. These insignias, coupled with the
+extraordinary corpulence of the rider, designated Louis the Lusty to
+Fergan. A few steps behind the Prince the quarryman recognized the
+messenger, whom, shortly before, he had himself accompanied to the gate
+of the city, and who, now was engaged in an animated conversation with
+the Abbot de la Marche. The train closed with several baggage mules and
+servants; the rear was brought up by another squad of knights. The whole
+cavalcade soon fell into a gallop, and Fergan saw the King at a distance
+turning towards the ramparts of Laon, whose belfry bell did not cease
+ringing, and menace the city with a gesture of rage by shaking at it his
+closed<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a> fist, covered with a mailed gauntlet. Giving then the spurs to
+his horse, Louis the Lusty soon disappeared at the turning of the road
+in the midst of a cloud of dust.</p>
+
+<p>"You flee before the insurgent communiers, oh, King of the Franks, noble
+descendant of Hugh Capet!" cried out Colombaik in the passionate heat of
+his age. "Old Gaul is waking up! The descendants of the kings of the
+conquest flee before the popular uprisings! The day predicted by
+Victoria has arrived!"</p>
+
+<p>Ripened with age and experience, Fergan said to his son in a grave and
+melancholic voice: "My son, let us not take the first glimmerings of the
+approaching dawn for the light of the midday sun." At that very moment,
+the sound of the great bell of the cathedral, never rung but at certain
+great holidays, was suddenly heard. Instead, however, of ringing slowly
+and in measured ryhthm, as usual, its clang now was alternately rapid
+and then again at long intervals. The tolling lasted only a short time;
+soon the bell was silent. "To arms!" Fergan cried out in a thundering
+voice. "This must be a signal agreed upon between the knights of the
+city and the episcopal palace. While waiting for the re-inforcements
+that, undoubtedly, the King is gone after, the episcopals deem
+themselves able to overcome us. To arms! Cover the ramparts! Death to
+the episcopals!"</p>
+
+<p>At the call of Fergan and his son, the latter of whom ran to rally the
+insurgents, the communiers hastened near, some armed with bows, others
+with pikes, hatchets and swords&mdash;all ready to repel an attack. Others
+again lighted fires under caldrons full of pitch, while their companions
+rolled with great effort towards the ramparts certain engines of war,
+which, by means of turning pallets, fastened in the middle of a twisted
+rope, hurled enormous stones more than a hundred paces off. Suddenly a
+great noise, in which shouts were mixed with the clatter of arms,
+sounded from afar in the center of the city. As Fergan had forseen, the
+episcopals sallying forth from their fortified dwellings at the signal
+given by the great bell of the cathedral, had fallen upon the bourgeois
+in the city at the same time that, as<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> agreed upon, the serfs of the
+episcopal palace, led by several knights, were to begin the siege of the
+ramparts. The communiers were, accordingly, to find themselves between
+two enemies, one within, the other without. In fact, Fergan saw the gate
+of the episcopal palace swing open once more, and there issued forth
+from it a huge four-wheeled wagon, pushed from behind with feet and
+hands. The wagon was filled with straw and faggots, heaped so high, that
+the mass of combustibles, raised twelve or fifteen feet above the rails
+of the wagon, completely hid and covered those who shoved it, serving
+them as a shelter against the projectiles that might be hurled at them
+from the walls. The assailants figured upon setting fire to the
+combustibles in the wagon, with the object of pushing it near enough to
+the gate so as to communicate its fire to the latter. The move, although
+skilfully planned, was baffled by the quick wit of Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, the blacksmith's apprentice. Armed with his pike, he was
+one of the first at the ramparts, and had noticed the chariot advancing
+slowly and always pushed from behind. Several insurgents, armed with
+bows, yielded to a thoughtless impulse, and hastened to shoot their
+arrows at the wagon. These, however, fastened themselves uselessly in
+the straw or the wood. Robin pulled off his shirt, tore it in shreds,
+and sighting a tall militiaman, who, seduced by the example of his
+fellows was also about to shoot uselessly upon the straw, the
+blacksmith's apprentice brusquely disarmed the townsman, seized the
+arrow, wrapped it in one of the shreds of his shirt, ran and plunged it
+into a caldron of pitch, already liquid, lighted it at the fire, and
+quickly placing it on the cord of the bow, fired the flaming arrow into
+the middle of the chariot filled with combustibles, and then but a short
+distance from the walls. Overjoyed at his own inspiration, Robin clapped
+his hands, turned somersaults, and while returning the bow to the
+astonished militiaman, set up the shout: "Commune! Commune! The
+episcopals prepare the bonfires,<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> the communiers light them!" And the
+blacksmith's apprentice ran to pick up his pike.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had the firebrand dropped upon that load of straw and fagots than
+it took fire, and offered to the eyes one mass of flames, overtopped by
+a dense cloud of smoke that the wind drove towards the episcopal palace.
+Noticing the circumstance, Fergan hastened to profit by it. "My
+friends!" cried he, "let's finish the work begun by little
+Crumb-cracker! That cloud of smoke will mask our movements from the
+episcopals. Let's make a sortie. Form into a column of armed men, and
+let's take the episcopal palace by storm. Death to the episcopals!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fall to!" was the insurgents' response. "To the assault! Commune!
+Commune!"</p>
+
+<p>"One-half of our troops will remain here with Colombaik to guard the
+walls," Fergan proceeded. "They are fighting in the village. The
+episcopals might try to attack the ramparts from behind. Let those
+follow me who are ready to storm the episcopal palace. Forward, march!"</p>
+
+<p>A large number of communiers hastened upon the heels of Fergan. Among
+them was Bertrand, the son of Bernard des Bruyeres, the ill-starred
+victim of Gaudry's murderous nature. Bertrand was silent, almost
+impassible in the midst of the seething effervescence of the people. His
+only thought was to avoid dropping his heavy axe that weighed down his
+shoulder. Fergan had cleverly led the sortie of the insurgents. Masked
+for a sufficient space of time to the eyes of the enemy by the flames
+and smoke of the burning wagon and its load, they soon reached the walls
+of the episcopal palace, found the gate open, and a crowd of armed serfs
+standing under the arch. Under the lead of several knights, they were
+preparing to march on the assault of the postern, their chief, as well
+as Fergan, having relied upon masking their attack behind the burning
+chariot. At the unexpected sight of the insurgents, the episcopals only
+thought of barring the entrance to the palace. It was too late. A bloody
+hand-to-hand encounter took place under the arch that joined<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a> the two
+towers on either side of the gate. The communiers, warming to the
+conflict, fought with fury. Many were killed, others wounded. Fergan
+received from a knight a blow with an axe that broke his casque and
+struck his forehead. After a stubborn struggle, the inhabitants of Laon
+threw the episcopals back and entered the vast yard where the combat
+proceeded with redoubled fury. Fergan, still in the hottest of the
+fight, despite his wound, for a moment thought himself and his men lost.
+Just as the fight was at its hottest, Thiegaud came in from the green of
+the bishopric at the head of a large body of woodmen serfs, armed with
+stout hatchets, and threw himself into the fray. The re-inforcement was
+intended to crush the insurgents. What was not the surprise of these,
+when they heard the serf of St. Vincent and his men set up the cry:
+"Death to the bishop! To the sack of the palace! To the sack! Commune!"</p>
+
+<p>The combat changed its aspect on the spot. The larger number of the
+bishop's serfs who had taken part in the struggle, hearing the woodmen
+cry: "Commune! Death to the bishop! To the sack of the palace!" dropped
+their arms. Deserted by a part of their men, the knights redoubled their
+efforts of valor, but in vain; they were all killed or disabled. Soon
+masters of the palace, the insurgents spread in all directions, yelling:
+"Death to the bishop!"</p>
+
+<p>Thiegaud approached Fergan with a mien of triumphant hatred brandishing
+his cutlass. "I answered Gaudry for the faithfulness of the woodmen of
+the abbey," cried the serf of St. Vincent, "but in order to revenge
+myself upon the wretch for having debauched my daughter, I caused our
+men to mutiny against him and his tonsured fellow devils!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the bishop?" the insurgents shouted, brandishing their
+weapons. "To death with him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Friends, your vengeance shall be satisfied, and mine also. Gaudry will
+not escape us," replied Thiegaud. "I know where the holy man lies in
+hiding. The moment you forced the gate of the palace, and fearing the
+issue of the fight, Gaudry put on<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a> the coat of one of the servants, in
+the hope of fleeing under cover of the disguise. But I advised him to
+lock himself up in his storeroom, and to crawl into the bottom of one of
+the empty hogsheads. Come, come!" he proceeded with savage laughter, "We
+shall stave in the head and draw red wine." Saying which, the serf of
+St. Vincent, followed by the mob of the insurgents who were exasperated
+at the bishop, wended his way to the storeroom. Among the furious crowd
+was the son of Bernard des Bruyeres. Having by the merest chance escaped
+unscathed from the melée, the frail youth marched close behind Thiegaud,
+endeavoring, despite the smallness of his stature and his feebleness,
+not to lose the post he had taken. His pale and sickly features were
+rapidly regaining their color; a feverish ardor illumined his eyes and
+imparted to him fictitious strength. No longer did his heavy battle axe
+seem to weigh on his puny arm. From time to time he lovingly
+contemplated the weapon, while he passed his finger along its sharp
+edge. At such times he would emit a sigh of repressed joy, while he
+raised his flashing eyes to heaven. Guiding the communiers, the serf of
+St. Vincent, threaded his way to the storeroom, a spacious chamber
+located at one of the corners of the first yard. Before reaching it, the
+inhabitants of Laon, having stumbled against the corpse of Black John
+that lay riddled with wounds, they threw themselves in a paroxysm of
+fury upon the lifeless body of the savage executor of Gaudry's
+cruelties. In the tumult that ensued upon these acts of reprisal, the
+son of Bernard des Bruyeres was, despite all stubborn resistance on his
+part, separated from Thiegaud, at the moment when the latter, helped by
+several of the insurgents, broke down and forced the door of the
+storeroom, that, for greater precaution, the prelate had bolted and
+barred from within. The mass emptied itself into the vast chamber that
+was barely lighted by narrow skylights and crowded with full and empty
+vats. A kind of alley wound its way between the numerous hogsheads.
+Thiegaud made a sign to the insurgents to halt and stay at a distance.
+Wishing to prolong the bishop's agony, he struck with<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> the flat of his
+cutlass the head of several vats, calling out each time: "Anyone
+inside?" Of course he received no answer. Arriving finally near a huge
+hogshead that stood on end he turned his head to the communiers with the
+slyness of a wolf, and removing and throwing down the cover that had
+been lightly placed upon it, asked again: "Any one inside?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is here an unhappy prisoner," came from the trembling voice of
+the bishop. "Have mercy upon him in the name of Christ!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oho! my friend Ysengrin!" said Thiegaud, now taking his turn in giving
+the nickname to his master. "Is it you who are cowering down in that
+barrel? Come out! Come out! I want to see whether, perhaps, my daughter
+is there in hiding with you." Saying which, the serf of St. Vincent
+seized the prelate by his long hair with a vigorous clutch, and forced
+him, despite his resistance, to rise by little and little from the
+bottom of the ton into which he had crawled. It was a frightful
+spectacle. For a moment, always holding the bishop by the hair as the
+latter rose on his feet in the barrel, Thiegaud seemed to hold in his
+hand the head of a corpse, so livid was Gaudry's face. For a moment
+Gaudry stood upon his legs inside of the barrel, with his head and
+shoulders above the edge. But his limbs shook so that, wishing to
+support himself inside of the barrel, it tumbled over and the Bishop of
+Laon rolled at the feet of the serf. Stooping down, while the prelate
+was painfully trying to rise, Thiegaud affected to look into the bottom
+of the barrel, and cried out: "No, friend Ysengrin, my daughter is not
+there. The jade must have stayed in your bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Beloved sons in Jesus Christ!" stammered Gaudry, who, upon his knees,
+extended his hands towards the communiers. "I swear to you upon the
+gospels and upon my eternal salvation, I shall uphold your Commune! Have
+pity upon me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Liar, renegade!" yelled back the enraged communiers. "We know what your
+oath is worth. Swindler and hypocrite!"<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a></p>
+
+<p>"You shall pay with your life for the blood of our people that has
+flowed to-day! Justice! Justice!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, justice and vengeance in the name of the women, who this morning
+had husbands, and this evening are widows!"</p>
+
+<p>"Justice and vengeance in the name of the children, who this morning had
+fathers, and this evening are orphans!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Gaudry, you and yours have by dint of perjuries and untold outrages
+tired the patience of the people! Your hour has sounded!"</p>
+
+<p>"Which of us is it that wanted war, you or we? Did you listen to our
+prayers? Did you have pity for the peace of our city? No! Well, then,
+neither shall there be pity for you! Death to the bishop!"</p>
+
+<p>"My good friends ... grant me my life," repeated the bishop, whose teeth
+chattered with terror. "Oh! I pray you!... Grant me my life! I ... I
+shall renounce the bishopric.... I shall leave this city.... You shall
+never see my face again.... Only leave me my life!"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you show mercy to my brother Gerhard, whose eyes were put out by
+your orders?" cried a communier, seizing the prelate by the collar and
+shaking him with fury. "Infamous criminal! Did you have pity for him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you have mercy for my friend Robert of the Mill, who was stabbed to
+death by Black John?" added another insurgent. And the two accusers
+seized the prelate, who quietly allowed himself to be dragged upon his
+knees, "You shall die in the face of the sun that has witnessed your
+crimes!"</p>
+
+<p>Overwhelmed with blows and insults, Gaudry was pushed out of the
+storeroom. In vain did he cry: "Have pity upon me!... I shall restore
+your Commune!... I swear to you!... I swear!&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you restore their husbands to the widows, their fathers to the
+orphans you have made?"</p>
+
+<p>"After having lived the life of a traitor and a homicide; after
+exasperating an inoffensive people that only asked to be allowed<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> to
+live in peace in accordance with the pledge that was sworn, it is not
+enough to cry 'Pity!' in order to be absolved."</p>
+
+<p>"Clemency is holy, but impunity is impious! Death to the bishop!"</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven and earth!" cried Fergan. "The justice of the people is the
+justice of God! Death to the bishop! Death!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes! To death with the bishop!"</p>
+
+<p>The prelate was dragged in the midst of these furious cries outside of
+the storeroom. Suddenly a tremulous voice dominated the uproar: "What,
+shall not the son of Bernard des Bruyeres be allowed to avenge his
+father!" Immediately, by a simultaneous movement, the insurgents opened
+a path to the son of the victim. His face radiant, his eyes flashing,
+Bertrand rushed upon the prostrate bishop, and raising his heavy axe
+with his weak hands, cleaved the skull of Gaudry; then, casting off the
+blood-stained weapon, he cried: "You are avenged, my father!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well done, my lad! The death of your father and the dishonor of my
+daughter are avenged at one blow!" cried Thiegaud; and seeing the
+episcopal ring on the bishop's finger, he added: "I take my daughter's
+token of marriage!" Unable, however, to tear the ring off the prelate's
+finger, the serf of St. Vincent cut it off with a blow of his cutlass
+and stuck both finger and ring in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>So legitimate was the hatred that Gaudry inspired the communiers, that
+it survived even the man's death. His corpse was riddled with wounds and
+covered with curses. The insurgents were in the act of throwing his
+lifeless body into a sewer close to the storeroom, when from another
+side the cry fell upon their ears: "Commune! Commune! Death to the
+episcopals!"<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a></p>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_IX-c" id="CHAPTER_IX-c"></a>CHAPTER IX.<br /><br />
+RESTING ON THEIR ARMS.</h3>
+
+<p>While this tragic scene was enacting, another body of the people of
+Laon, led by Ancel Quatre-Mains and his sprightly wife, invaded the
+episcopal palace from another side. Fergan was running to meet them the
+moment he saw them enter the green, when he caught sight of Archdeacon
+Anselm, who, having so far kept aloof from the theater of the conflict,
+was now hastening to the spot, informed of the bishop's fate by one of
+his domestics. The archdeacon succeeded in inducing the communiers to
+refrain from submitting the remains of their enemy to the idle and last
+disgrace contemplated by them. Helped by two servants, the worthy priest
+of Christ was carrying the corpse of the bishop, when he noticed Fergan,
+and said to him in a voice deeply moved, with the tears running down his
+cheeks: "I wish to bury the body of this unfortunate man, and to pray
+for him. My sad forecasts have been verified. Only yesterday, warning
+him in the midst of his braggart and fatal illusion of security, I
+expressed the hope that I may not soon have to pray over his grave. Oh,
+Fergan, civil war is a terrible scourge!"</p>
+
+<p>"A curse upon those who provoke these execrable strifes, that carry
+mourning into the camp of both the vanquishers and the vanquished!"
+answered the quarryman, and leaving the archdeacon to fulfil his pious
+office, he proceeded to join Quatre-Mains, who commanded the other troop
+of the invaders.</p>
+
+<p>The worthy Councilman, ever hampered and incommoded by his military
+equipment, had rid himself of it in the moment of battle. Replacing his
+iron casque with a woolen cap and keeping on his leather jerkin only,
+with his coat sleeves rolled back, as<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> he was wont when kneading his
+dough, he had armed himself with the poker of his oven, a long and heavy
+iron implement, bent at one end. His stout-hearted little wife Simonne,
+her cheeks in a glow and her eyes aflame, carried in her skirt a bundle
+of lint and bandages ready for use, together with a wicker-covered
+flask, containing a decoction, pronounced marvelous by her for checking
+the flow of blood. Joy and the excitement of triumph radiated from the
+charming features of the baker's wife. At the sight of Fergan, however,
+whose face was clotted with the blood of the wound he had received on
+his head, she cried out sadly: "Neighbor Fergan, you are wounded! Let me
+tend you, the fight is over; be not alarmed about your son; we have just
+seen him at his post on the ramparts; he is safe and sound, although
+there was a sharp encounter at that spot; sit down on this bench, I
+shall nurse you the same as I would have done Ancel, had he been
+wounded. Upon the faith of a Picardian woman, if he escaped being hurt,
+it was not his fault; he merited anew his surname of Quatre-Mains, the
+way he belabored the heads and backs of the episcopals."</p>
+
+<p>Fergan accepted Simonne's offer and sat down upon a bench, while the
+young woman looked for the lint in her pockets. The baker himself
+stopped a few steps behind to gather the details of the capture of the
+bishop. He then approached his wife, and seeing her engaged upon Fergan,
+hastened his steps, asking with deep interest: "What, neighbor, wounded?
+Nothing serious?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was struck with an axe on my casque," and raising his head which he
+had inclined to facilitate the nursing of Simonne, Fergan noticed the
+rather unmilitary accoutrement of his friend: "Why did you take off your
+armor in the middle of the fight?"</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my faith, the casque kept dropping on my nose, the corselet took
+the breath from me, the sword encumbered my legs. Accordingly, when the
+fight started, I made myself comfortable, just as I do when I am
+kneading dough. I rolled up my sleeves, and instead of that devil of a
+sword, which I cannot handle, I<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a> armed myself with my iron poker, the
+use of which is familiar to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But what could you do with a poker? It is a rather singular implement
+of war."</p>
+
+<p>"What could he do with it?" put in Simonne, saturating a bandage with
+the contents of the wicker-covered flask, and applying the same to the
+quarryman's wound. "Oh, Ancel is quick with his hands. If a nobleman on
+horseback came near, armed to the teeth, my husband grappled his throat
+with the hook of his long poker and then pulled with all his might; I
+helped when necessary. In almost every instance we unhorsed the knight,
+and throwing him to the ground he was at our mercy."</p>
+
+<p>"After which," added the baker calmly, "and after beating my man with
+the hook of my poker, I dispatched him with the handle. I settled more
+than one of them. One does what he can!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, neighbor!" Simonne proceeded with enthusiasm; "it was especially at
+the siege of the house of the knight of Haut-Pourcin that Ancel made a
+famous use of his poker. Several episcopals and their servants,
+entrenched upon a crenelated terrace, fired down upon us with
+cross-bows. They had killed or wounded so many communiers, that none
+dared come near the accursed house, and our people had retired to the
+end of the street. Presently, we saw the wicked knight of Haut-Pourcin,
+cross-bow in hand, leaning half over the battlement of the terrace, to
+see if there was any of ours that he could hit. At that instant&mdash;," but
+interrupting herself, Simonne said to her husband: "Tell your own story,
+Ancel; while I speak I cannot pay proper attention to the bandage of our
+neighbor."</p>
+
+<p>While Simonne finished attending to Fergan, the baker continued the
+narrative that his wife had commenced: "Noticing that the knight of
+Haut-Pourcin leaned over the terrace several times, I profited by a
+moment when he had withdrawn; I slided along the wall to the foot of the
+house; as the projection of the balcony prevented him from seeing me, I
+watched for my man;<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> the instant he again put out his head I snatched
+him up with the hook of my poker exactly at the jointure of his casque
+and his cuirass with might and main; Simonne came and helped; and we had
+the satisfaction of making that noble personage turn a somersault from
+the height of the terrace down to the street; our communiers ran by; the
+episcopals rushed out of the knight's house to deliver him; they were
+driven back and we stormed the building!"</p>
+
+<p>"And lo!" cried Simonne heroically, "I, who did not leave the heels of
+Ancel, find myself face to face with that old hag of the dame of
+Haut-Pourcin, who was yelling like a fury: 'Kill! Kill! No quarter for
+those vile clowns! Exterminate them!' I was seized with rage, and
+recalling the insults that the harpy had poured upon me shortly before I
+threw her down, grabbed her by the throat, and, as true as Ancel is
+called Quatre-Mains, I slapped her face as thoroughly as if I was
+endowed with six hands, all the while saying to her: 'Take this! and
+that! you proud dame of Haut-Pourcin. Take this, and that, and still
+another, you wicked old hag! Oh, my gallants pay for my skirts, do they!
+Very well, I pay cash, and in round sums for the insults I receive!'
+Upon the faith of a Picardian woman, had her hair not been gray, like my
+mother's, I would have strangled the she-devil!"</p>
+
+<p>Fergan could not help smiling at the exaltation of Simonne. He then said
+to Ancel: "When I heard the large bell of the cathedral ringing in a
+peculiar way, I concluded it was the signal agreed upon between the
+bishop and his partisans to attack our people simultaneously from within
+and from without the city."</p>
+
+<p>"You were not mistaken, neighbor. At that signal, the episcopals, who
+had laid their plans and gathered their forces over night, sallied forth
+from their houses crying: 'Kill, kill the communiers!' Other noblemen
+also were besieged in their houses. The fight was going on with the same
+vigor on the streets and squares, while a troop of episcopals betook
+itself to the ramparts on the side of the bishop's gate."<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a></p>
+
+<p>"Expecting to fall from the rear upon our people who they thought were
+being attacked in front," said Fergan. "For that reason I ordered my son
+to be on his guard. You assure me he is not wounded? God be praised!"</p>
+
+<p>"If he is wounded, neighbor Fergan," replied Simonne, "it can only be
+slightly. He called out to us from the top of the ramparts: 'Victory!
+Victory! Our people are masters of the bishop's palace!'"</p>
+
+<p>"And now," said Quatre-Mains, "meseems the Mayor and Councilmen should
+meet at the Town Hall to consider what is to be done."</p>
+
+<p>"I think so, too, Ancel. We shall leave here a sufficient force to keep
+the palace. Watch shall continue to be held on the ramparts of the city,
+whose gates shall be closed and barricaded. Let's not deceive ourselves.
+However legitimate our insurrection, we must be prepared to see Louis
+the Lusty return to lay siege to the city at the head of the
+re-inforcements that he has gone to fetch. The Princes are on the side
+of the clergy."</p>
+
+<p>"I think so, too," replied the Councilman with resignation and
+fortitude: "John Molrain said to the royal messenger: 'The King of the
+French is all-powerful in Gaul; the Commune of Laon is strong only in
+its right and the courage of its inhabitants.' We shall fight as well as
+we may against Louis the Lusty and his army; and we shall, if need be,
+be killed to the last man."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you for your kind nursing, good neighbor," Fergan said to
+Simonne; "I now feel in good trim. My poor Joan will be jealous."</p>
+
+<p>"It is rather I who should be jealous," retorted Simonne. "Crossing our
+street, we saw the basement room of your house full of wounded men, at
+whom your wife and Martine were busy. The good souls!"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear souls! How uneasy they must feel!" said Fergan. "I must hasten to
+ease their minds, and I shall return to superintend our defence."<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a></p>
+
+<p>The conversation between Fergan and Ancel was here interrupted by cries
+and shouts mingled with cheers that went up from one of the yards of the
+palace, which was given up to pillage and devastation. The insurgents
+sought vengeance not only for the perjury of Gaudry, but also for the
+odious exactions and cruelties that they had suffered before the
+establishment of the Commune. Some, staving in the vats in the
+storeroom, were getting drunk on the bishop's precious wines, a rich
+tithe, once collected by him on the vineyards of the villeins; others,
+making a heap of the tapestry and furniture which they dragged from his
+rooms into the yard, set fire to the pile; finally, and it was the
+shouts of these last that reached the quarryman and the baker, yet
+others, seizing the sacerdotal robes and insignia of the prelate,
+organized themselves into a grotesque procession, of which little Robin
+the Crumb-cracker was the hero. The blacksmith's apprentice, carrying on
+his head the episcopal mitre that almost completely hid his face, and
+robed in a cape of gold cloth that trailed at his heels, held in his
+hands a vermillion cross studded with precious stones. He scattered to
+the right and left grotesque benedictions, while the communiers, now
+half drunk, as well as the bishop's serfs, who, after the fight had
+joined the vanquishers, sang at the top of their voices a parody of
+church hymns, interspersed ever and anon with cheers of "Long live Robin
+the Crumb-cracker!"</p>
+
+<p>Leaving these rolicking youngsters to amuse themselves at their pleasure
+on the bishop's premises, Fergan and his neighbors betook themselves to
+the city. Night was approaching. Bidding good-bye to the baker and his
+wife and requesting them to hasten ahead of him to his house and set
+Joan and Martine's minds at ease, Fergan mounted the rampart to meet his
+son. The latter, considering it prudent to keep watch, even after the
+victory of the day, was busy with the measures for the night. At sight
+of his father with his head bandaged, Colombaik uttered a cry of alarm,
+but soon was set at ease by Fergan. After providing for additional
+measures of security, both returned home.<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a></p>
+
+<p>Night had set in. Everywhere the fight had long ended. The communiers
+were collecting their dead and wounded by the light of torches. Women,
+bathed in tears, ran to the places where the fight had been hottest, and
+looked for a father, a husband, a son, or a brother, in the midst of the
+corpses that the streets were strewn with. At other places, exasperated
+at the chiefs of the episcopal party, the communiers were demolishing
+their fortified houses. Finally, at a distance, a brilliant gleam
+crimsoned the sky, and cast its reflection hither and thither on the
+gables of the taller houses. It was the glare of a conflagration. The
+fire was devouring the dwelling of the bishop's treasurer, one of the
+most execrated of the episcopals. Neither did the cathedral of Laon
+escape the avenging torch of the insurgents.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, my child, blot this terrible spectacle from your memory. Such
+are the fruits of civil war," said Fergan to his son, stopping in the
+middle of the Exchange square, one of the most elevated spots of the
+city, and whence the burning cathedral could be seen at a distance.
+"Look at the flames of the conflagration that is devouring the
+cathedral; hark to the sound of the seigniorial towers crashing down
+under the hammer blows of the communiers; listen to the moaning of
+yonder children, now become orphans, of their mothers, now become
+widows; contemplate these wounded men, these bleeding corpses carried
+away by their relatives and by friends in tears; behold at this hour,
+everywhere in the city, mourning, consternation, vengeance, disaster,
+fire and death! Then recall the happy and peaceful aspect that this same
+city offered only yesterday, when the people, in the fullness of their
+joy, inaugurated the symbol of their enfranchisement, bought, agreed and
+sworn to by our oppressors! It was a beautiful day. How our hearts
+leaped at every peal from our belfry! How all eyes shone with pride at
+the sight of our communal banner! All of us, bourgeois and artisans,
+rejoicing in the present and confident of the future, wished to continue
+to live under a charter sworn to by the nobles, the bishop and the King.
+But it happened that nobles, bishop and King, having<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a> dissipated the
+money with which we paid for our franchises, said to themselves: 'What
+does a signature or an oath matter; we are powerful and numerous; we are
+used to wielding the lance and the sword; those artisans and bourgeois,
+vile clowns all, will flee before us. To horse, noble episcopals, to
+horse! High the sword! High the lance! Kill, massacre the communiers!'"</p>
+
+<p>"But the communiers made the King of the French take to his heels, and
+have exterminated the knights!" cried Colombaik with enthusiasm. "The
+son of one of the victims of that infamous bishop cleaved his skull in
+two with a blow of his axe! The cathedral is on fire, and the
+seigniorial towers are crumbling down! Such is the price of perjury!
+Such is the terrible and just chastisement of the people who unchained
+the furies of war against this city, so tranquil but yester night! Oh,
+let the blood that has been shed fall upon the criminals! Their turn has
+come to tremble! Old Gaul is waking up after six centuries of torpor!
+The day of the rule of might and clerical chicanery is over! The hour of
+deliverance has sounded!&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet, my son!"</p>
+
+<p>"What! The King is fleeing; the bishop killed; the episcopals
+exterminated or in hiding; the city ours!"</p>
+
+<p>"Have you given a thought to the morrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"The morrow? We shall preserve our conquest, or shall fight other
+battles, equally victorious!"</p>
+
+<p>"No illusions, dear boy! Louis the Lusty fled before an insurrection
+that he did not think himself equal to cope with. But ere long he will
+be back to the walls of Laon with considerable forces, and he will then
+dictate his will."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall resist unto death!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, that despite all our heroism, we shall succumb in the fray."</p>
+
+<p>"What! These franchises, paid for with our good money and now sealed
+with our blood,&mdash;shall they be torn from us? Are our children to fall
+back under the abhorred yoke of the lay and<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> ecclesiastical seigneurs?
+Oh, father, are we to despair of the future?"</p>
+
+<p>"To despair? Never! Thanks to the communal insurrections, that were
+provoked by the feudal atrocities, our worst days are over. The
+legitimate and terrible reprisals of Noyon, Cambrai, Amiens and
+Beauvais, just as these fresh ones of Laon, will inspire the seigneurs
+with a wholesome fear. These holy insurrections have proved to our
+masters that the 'clowns, artisans and bourgeois' will no longer allow
+themselves to be taxed at mercy, robbed, tortured and killed with
+impunity. Our darkest days are over. But our descendants will still have
+bloody battles to fight before the arrival of the radiant day predicted
+by Victoria the Great!"</p>
+
+<p>"And yet all has gone our way on this day."</p>
+
+<p>"Rely upon my experience and foresight. Louis the Lusty will presently
+return at the head of redoubtable forces. The death of this infamous
+Gaudry, just though it was, will unchain against our city the fury of
+the clericals. The bolts of excommunication will second the royal arms.
+We are bound to go down&mdash;not before the excommunication; people laugh at
+that&mdash;but under the blows of the soldiers of Louis the Lusty. Our
+bravest men will be killed in battle, banished or executed after the
+King's victory. Another bishop will be imposed upon the city of Laon.
+Our belfry will be torn down, our seal will be broken, our banner torn
+and our treasury pilfered. The episcopals, supported by the King, will
+take vengeance for their defeat. Torrents of blood will flow in the
+city. That's what's before us."</p>
+
+<p>"Then all is lost!"</p>
+
+<p>"Child," proceeded Fergan with a melancholy smile, "men are killed; the
+principle of freedom never, after it has once penetrated the popular
+heart. Will Louis the Lusty, the new bishop, the nobles, however cruel
+their vengeance may be, massacre all the inhabitants of Laon? No. They
+are bound to leave alive the larger part of the communiers, if for no
+other purpose than to have whom to levy taxes on. The mothers, sisters,
+wives, the<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a> children of those who will have died for liberty, will
+continue to live. Oh, no doubt, for a while, the terror will be intense;
+the recollection of the disasters, of the massacres, of the banishments,
+and of the executions that will have followed upon the struggle, will at
+first paralyze all thought of insurrection. But none of that will last."</p>
+
+<p>"Accordingly, the new bishop and the nobles will redouble their
+audacity? Their oppression will become more frightful than before?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, the new bishop, however insensate he may be, will never forget the
+terrible fate of Gaudry; the nobles will not forget the death of so many
+of their people, who fell under the blows of the people's justice. That
+valuable example will be useful to us. The first thirst for vengeance on
+the part of the episcopals, once slaked, they will ease the yoke out of
+fear for new revolts. Nor is that all. Those of us who will have
+survived the struggle, will gradually forget those evil days and recall
+the happy ones when the Commune, free, peaceful, flourishing, exempt
+from all crushing imposts, and wisely governed by a magistracy of its
+own choice, was the pride and bulwark of its inhabitants. Those who will
+have witnessed those happy days will speak of them to their children
+with enthusiasm. They will tell their little ones how one day the King
+and the bishop having leagued themselves against the Commune, the latter
+valiantly rose in arms, forced Louis the Lusty to flee, and exterminated
+the bishop and his episcopals. The glory of the triumph will cause the
+disaster of the subsequent defeat to be forgotten. The feeling will take
+hold of revenging the overthrow of the Commune by restoring it. By
+little and little the enthusiasm will gain ground, and, when the moment
+shall have come, the insurrection will break out anew. Just reprisals
+will once more be exercised against our enemies, and our franchises will
+be proclaimed again. Mayhaps that again that second step towards freedom
+is followed by a savage re-action. But the step will have been taken.
+Some franchises will continue in force. And thus, step by step,
+painfully, by dint<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> of struggles, of courage, of perseverance, our
+descendants, alternately vanquishers and vanquished, halting at times
+after battle to tend their wounded and recover breath, but never
+retreating an inch, will in the course of time arrive at the goal of
+that laborious and bloody journey. Then will the radiant sun of the day
+of Gaul's enfranchisement rise in all its glory!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, father," said Colombaik, overpowered with sorrow, "woe is us, if
+Victoria's prediction is not to be verified, according to her prophetic
+visions, but across heaps of ruins and torrents of blood!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you imagine freedom is gained without struggle? We are the
+vanquishers. Our cause is holy like justice, sacred like right. And yet,
+look around!" answered the quarryman, pointing his son to the dismal
+spectacle presented by Exchange square, encumbered with the dead and
+dying, and lighted by the glamor of the torches and the lingering gleams
+of the fire of the Cathedral. "Look around, what streams of blood, what
+heaps of ruins!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why this terrible fatality!" resumed Colombaik in tones almost of
+despair. "Why must the conquest of such legitimate rights cost so dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"The insurrection of the communal bourgeois is but the symptom of an
+enfranchisement, universal, but still far away. That day of deliverance
+will arrive, but it will arrive only when all the oppressed in city and
+field will rise in a body against their masters. <a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a>Yes, that great day
+will come ... it may take centuries ... but I shall at least have caught
+the glamour of its dawn ... and I shall die happy!"</p>
+
+<h3><a name="EPILOGUE" id="EPILOGUE"></a>EPILOGUE.</h3>
+
+<p>Two months after the victory of the Commune of Laon over its seigniorial
+suzerain, the Bishop of Laon, and its episcopals, Fergan the Quarryman
+died on the ramparts of the city, defending them against the troops of
+Louis the Lusty. The quarryman's apprehensions had been verified, fully
+and promptly.</p>
+
+<p>The day after the victory the Mayor, Councilmen and several other
+leading citizens, convened to consider the dangers of the situation. An
+attack by Louis the Lusty was expected any moment, nor did any give
+themselves up to illusions concerning the issue. Left to fight the King
+single-handed, the citizens of Laon realized that they would be crushed.
+They decided to seek an ally. One of the most powerful seigneurs of
+Picardy, Thomas, seigneur of the castle of Marle, known for his bravery,
+as well as for his ferocity, in which he equalled Neroweg VI., was a
+personal enemy of the King. Shortly before, in 1108, he had leagued
+himself with Guy, seigneur of Rochefort, and several other knights, to
+prevent the King's being consecrated at Rheims. Despite the iniquitous
+character of Thomas de Marle, and against the advice of Fergan, the
+Commune of Laon, pressed by danger, made propositions to that seigneur,
+who was known to have a large force at his command, for an alliance
+against the King. Thomas de Marle, unwilling to affront the royal power,
+refused to declare war against the King, but consented, in consideration
+of a money payment, to receive on his lands all the communiers who stood
+in fear of the royal vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>A considerable number of insurgents, foreseeing the consequences of a
+struggle with the King, accepted the offer of Thomas de Marle, and,
+carrying their valuables with them, left Laon with wife and children.
+Others, Fergan among them, preferred staying in the city and defending
+themselves against the King<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a> unto death. Although the number of the
+communiers was reduced by the migrations to the surrounding regions,
+nevertheless, generous and credulous, the remaining inhabitants of Laon
+had entered into the pacific overtures of the surviving episcopals, who
+were laboring under the demoralizing effect of their recent defeat.
+Soon, however, as the latter realized how greatly the ranks of the
+communiers were thinned by death, and, above all, by the migrations,
+they picked up courage. They ordered the serfs of the abbey to meet in
+the market-place on a given day, and, taking them in command, fell upon
+the communiers in their own houses. Whoever fell into their hands was
+put to the sword. Thus, civil war broke out afresh. The serfs pillaged
+and set on fire all the houses of the bourgeois that they succeeded in
+capturing. Fergan and Joan, Colombaik and Martine, together with the
+apprentices of the tanner, entrenched themselves in their house, which,
+happily fortified, enabled them to sustain victoriously more than one
+siege to which they were subjected.</p>
+
+<p>During these internal disturbances that decimated still further the
+ranks of the remaining communiers, Louis the Lusty was busily engaged
+gathering his forces. Learning that Thomas de Marle was giving asylum on
+his domains to the inhabitants of Laon, the King first marched against
+him, ravaged his lands, besieged him in his fortress of Couchy, took him
+prisoner, and mulcted him with a heavy ransom. As to the people of Laon,
+found within the territory of Thomas de Marle, the King had them all
+sabred or hanged, and their bodies long served as pasture to the birds
+of prey. A rich butcher of Laon, Robert the Eater, was tied to the tail
+of a fiery horse, and died the frightful death of the Queen Brunhild,
+five hundred years before. Through with these bloody executions, Louis
+the Lusty marched upon Laon. The Mayor and Councilmen, faithful to their
+oaths of defending the Commune with their lives, ran to the ramparts,
+together with Fergan, Colombaik and several others of the citizens, to
+oppose the entrance of the King. At the last battle a large number of
+the communiers fell on the field, dead or wounded.<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> Fergan was killed,
+Colombaik was wounded in two places. The defeat of the communiers was
+inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>The King took the city and placed a new bishop in the seigniory. But
+here also the forecast of Fergan proved correct. Thanks to the
+remembrance of the insurrection and of the just reprisals of the
+insurgents, the exorbitant privileges of the bishop and noblemen were
+modified.</p>
+
+<p>Colombaik was not allowed to taste these limited sweets of the heroic
+defence of Laon. Himself and others, among whom were the Mayor and the
+Councilmen, too deeply compromised in the insurrection, were banished
+from the place, and all their property confiscated. But young and full
+of life as well as of hope for the future and of pride at the past,
+though ruined, the quarryman's son settled down with his mother and
+wife, and resumed his trade as a tanner at Toulouse in Languedoc, where,
+thanks to the local advantages of industry and intelligence, commerce
+then flourished and, at that season, thought enjoyed freedom.</p>
+
+<p class="c">(The End.)</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> A Gallic heroine of the second century.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> A Norse chieftain who led a piratical invasion of France in
+the eighth century, and was pacified with the fief of Normandy where he
+and his followers in arms settled.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> William, Archbishop of Tyre, reports this frightful address
+in his history of the Crusaders.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Baudry, Archbishop of Dole, says: "It was not imputed a
+crime to eat up the Saracens; it was considered to be a waging of war
+against them with the teeth."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> Four-handed.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the
+Quarryman, by Eugène Sue
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the Quarryman, by
+Eugene Sue
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the Quarryman
+       A Tale from the Feudal Times
+
+Author: Eugene Sue
+
+Translator: Daniel De Leon
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34531]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PILGRIM'S SHELL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chuck Greif, Michigan University Libraries and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+   THE PILGRIM'S SHELL
+
+      : : OR : :
+
+   FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN
+
+  A Tale from the Feudal Times
+
+      By EUGENE SUE
+
+  TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH BY
+      DANIEL DE LEON
+  NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY, 1904
+
+    Copyright 1904, by the
+   NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
+
+
+In my introduction to "The Silver Cross; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth,"
+I said:
+
+"Eugene Sue wrote in French a monumental work--the _Mysteries of the
+People; or, History of a Proletarian Family_. It is a 'work of fiction';
+yet it is the best universal history extant. Better than any work,
+avowedly on history, it graphically traces the special features of the
+several systems of class-rule as they succeeded each other from epoch to
+epoch, together with the nature of the struggle between the contending
+classes. The 'Law,' 'Order,' 'Patriotism,' 'Religion,' etc., etc., that
+each successive tyrant class, despite its change of form, hysterically
+has sought refuge in in order to justify its criminal existence whenever
+threatened; the varying economic causes of the oppression of the
+toilers; the mistakes incurred by these in their struggles for redress;
+the varying fortunes of the conflict;--all these social dramas are
+therein reproduced in a majestic series of 'historic novels,' that cover
+leading and successive episodes in the history of the race."
+
+The present story--_The Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman_--is
+one of that majestic series, among the most majestic of the set, and,
+with regard to the social period that it describes--its institutions,
+its classes, its manners, its virtues and its crimes, and the characters
+that it builds--the most instructive treatise on feudalism, at the very
+time when the bourgeois or capitalist class was struggling for a
+foot-hold, and beginning to break through the thick feudal incrustation
+above. More fully than Moliere's plays, and strangely supplemental of
+the best passages on the subject in the novels of George Eliot, _The
+Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman_ chisels the struggling
+bourgeois on the feudal groundwork and background, in lines so sharp and
+true that both the present fully developed and ruling capitalist,
+inheritor of the feudal attribute of plundering, is seen in the historic
+ancestor of his class, and his class' refuse, the modern middle class
+man, is foreshadowed, now also struggling like his prototype of feudal
+days, to keep his head above water, but, differently from his prototype,
+who had his future before him, now with his future behind. This double
+development, inestimable in the comprehension of the tactical laws that
+the Labor or Socialist Movement demands, stands out clear with the aid
+of this work.
+
+Eugene Sue has been termed a colorist, the Titian of French literature.
+It does not detract from his merits, it rather adds thereto, that his
+brush was also photographic. The leading characters in the
+story--Fergan, the type of the physically and mentally clean workingman;
+Bezenecq the Rich, the type of the embryonic bourgeois, visionary,
+craven and grasping; Martin the Prudent, the type of the "conservative
+workingman"; the Bishop of Laon, the type of usurping power in the
+mantle of religion; the seigneur of Plouernel, the type of the ingrain
+stupidity and prejudices that characterize the class grounded on might;
+a dazzling procession of women--Joan the Hunchback and Azenor the Pale,
+Perrette the Ribald and the dame of Haut-Pourcin, Yolande and Simonne,
+etc.--types of the variations in the form of woman's crucifixion under
+social systems grounded on class rule; Walter the Pennyless, the type of
+dispositions too indolent to oppose the wrongs they perceive, and crafty
+enough to dupe both dupers and duped; Garin, the type of the master's
+human sleuth--are figures, clad in historic garb, that either hurry or
+stalk imposingly over the boards, followed by mobs of their respective
+classes, and presenting a picture that thrills the heart from stage to
+stage, and leaves upon the mind rich deposits of solid information and
+crystalline thought.
+
+As a novel, _The Pilgrim's Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman_ pleases,
+entertains and elevates; as an imparter of historic information and
+knowledge, it incites to thought and intelligent action. Whether as
+literature of pleasure or of study, the work deserves the broader field
+of the Socialist or Labor Movements of the English-speaking world,
+hereby afforded to it; and inversely, the Socialist or Labor Movements
+of the English-speaking world, entitled to the best, and none too good,
+that the Movements in other languages produce, can not but profit by the
+work, hereby rendered accessible to them.
+
+DANIEL DE LEON.
+
+New York, January 1, 1904.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Translator's Preface                                                 iii
+
+
+Part I.   The Feudal Castle.
+
+Chapter 1.   The Serfs of Plouernel                                    3
+
+Chapter 2.   Fergan the Quarryman                                     13
+
+Chapter 3.   At the Cross-road                                        22
+
+Chapter 4.   The Manor of Plouernel                                   32
+
+Chapter 5.   Azenor the Pale                                          36
+
+Chapter 6.   Feudal Justice                                           44
+
+Chapter 7.   Abbot and Monk                                           55
+
+Chapter 8.   The Chamber of Torture                                   66
+
+Chapter 9.   The Rescue                                               82
+
+Chapter 10. Cuckoo Peter                                              90
+
+
+Part II.   The Crusade.
+
+Chapter 1.    The Syrian Desert                                      109
+
+Chapter 2.    Serf and Seigneur                                      118
+
+Chapter 3.    The Emir's Palace                                      132
+
+Chapter 4.    Orgies of the Crusaders                                141
+
+Chapter 5.    The King of the Vagabonds                              151
+
+Chapter 6.    The Market Place of Marhala                            156
+
+Chapter 7.    The Fall of Jerusalem                                  169
+
+
+Part III.   The Commune of Laon.
+
+Chapter 1.   The Rise of the Communes                                185
+
+Chapter 2.   The Charter of Laon                                     189
+
+Chapter 3.    Episcopals and Communiers                              206
+
+Chapter 4.    The Ecclesiastical Seigniory of Gaudry                 214
+
+Chapter 5.   Bourgeois and Ecclesiastical Seigneur                   227
+
+Chapter 6.   The Gathering Storm                                     239
+
+Chapter 7.   "To Arms, Communiers!"                                  247
+
+Chapter 8.    Retribution                                            258
+
+Chapter 9.    Resting on Their Arms                                  267
+
+Epilogue                                                             278
+
+
+
+
+PART I.
+
+THE FEUDAL CASTLE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE SERFS OF PLOUERNEL.
+
+
+The day touched its close. The autumn sun cast its last rays upon one of
+the villages of the seigniory of Plouernel. A large number of partly
+demolished houses bore testimony to having been recently set on fire
+during one of the wars, frequent during the eleventh century, between
+the feudal lords of France. The walls of the huts of the village, built
+in pise, or of stones held together with clayish earth, were cracked or
+blackened by the flames. There were still in sight, half burnt out, the
+rafters of the roofings, replaced by a few poles wrapped in bundles of
+furze or reed-grass.
+
+The aspect of the serfs, just returned from the fields, was no less
+wretched than that of their hovels. Wan, emaciated, barely dressed in
+rags, they huddled together, trembling and uneasy. The bailiff,
+justiciary of the seigniory, had just arrived at the village,
+accompanied with five or six armed men. Presently, to the number of
+about three hundred, the serfs gathered around him, a fellow so ill
+disposed towards the poor, that, to his name of Garin, the nick-name
+"Serf-eater" had been attached. This dreaded man wore a leather casque
+furnished with ribs of iron, and a coat of goatskin like his shoes. A
+long sword hung by his side. He was astride a reddish-brown horse, that
+looked as savage as its master. Men on foot, variously armed, who made
+up the escort of Garin the Serf-eater, kept watch over several serfs,
+bound hands and feet, who were brought in prisoners from other
+localities. Not far from them lay stretched on the ground a wretched
+fellow, fearfully mutilated, hideous and horrible to behold. His eyes
+were knocked in, his feet and hands cut off--a common punishment for
+rebels. This unfortunate being, hardly covered in rags, the stumps of
+his arms and legs wrapped in dirty bandages, was waiting for some of his
+companions in misery, back from the fields, to find time to transport
+him upon the litter which he shared with the beasts of burden. Blind,
+and without hands or feet, he found himself thrown upon the charity of
+his fellows, who now ten years helped him to eat and drink. Other serfs
+of Normandy and Brittany, had, at the time of the revolt against their
+lords, been blinded, mutilated like this wretched fellow, and left upon
+the spot of their punishment to perish in the tortures of hunger.
+
+When the people of the village were gathered on the place, Garin the
+Serf-eater pulled a parchment out of his pocket and read as follows:
+
+"Witness the order of the very high and very mighty Neroweg VI, lord of
+the county of Plouernel, by the grace of god. All his serfs and
+bondsmen, subject to mortmain and taille at his pleasure and mercy, are
+taxed by the will of the said lord count to pay into his treasury four
+copper sous per head before the last day of this month at the latest."
+The serfs, threatened with this fresh exaction, could not restrain their
+lamentations. Garin the Serf-eater rolled over the assemblage a wrathful
+eye and proceeded: "If the said sum of four copper pieces per head is
+not paid before the expiration of the time fixed, it will please the
+said high and mighty lord Neroweg VI, Count of Plouernel, to cause
+certain serfs to be seized, and they will be punished, or hanged by his
+prevost from his seigniorial gibbets. Neither the annual tax, nor the
+regular dues, is to be lowered in the least by this extraordinary levy
+of four sous of copper, which is intended to indemnify our said lord for
+the losses caused by the recent war which his neighbor, the Sire of
+Castel-Redon, declared against him."
+
+The bailiff descended from his horse to speak to one of the men in his
+escort. Several serfs muttered to one another: "Where is Fergan? He
+alone would have the courage to humbly remonstrate with the bailiff
+that we are wretched, that the taxes, the services, the regular and the
+extraordinary dues are crushing us, and that it will be impossible for
+us to pay this tax."
+
+"Fergan must have remained behind in the quarry where he cuts stone,"
+remarked another serf.
+
+Presently, the bailiff continued to read as follows: "Lord Gonthram,
+eldest son of the very noble, very high and very mighty Neroweg VI,
+Count of Plouernel, having attained his eighteenth year, and being of
+knight's age, there shall be paid to him, according to the custom of
+Plouernel, one denier by each serf and villein of the domain, in honor
+and to the glory of the knighthood of the said Lord Gonthram. Payment to
+be made this month."
+
+"Still more!" murmured several of the serfs with bitterness; "it is
+fortunate that our lord has no daughter, we would some day have to pay
+taxes in honor of her marriage, as we shall have to pay them in honor of
+the knighthood of the sons of Neroweg VI. May God have mercy upon us."
+
+"Pay, my God! but wherewith?" interjected another serf in a low voice.
+"Oh, it is a great pity that Fergan is not around to speak for us."
+
+The bailiff having finished his reading, beckoned to a serf named Peter
+the Lame. Peter was not lame; but his father, by reason of that
+infirmity had received the nick-name which his son preserved. He
+advanced trembling before Garin the Serf-eater. "This is the third
+Sunday that you have not brought your bread to be baked at the
+seigniorial oven," said the bailiff; "nevertheless you have eaten bread
+these three weeks, seeing you are alive."
+
+"Master Garin ... my misery is such...."
+
+"You have had the impudence to have your bread baked under the ashes,
+you scurvy beggar!"
+
+"Oh, good Master Garin, our village was set on fire and sacked by the
+men of the Sire of Castel-Redon; the little clothing that we had has
+been burnt or pillaged; our cattle stolen or driven off; our crops
+devastated during the war. Have mercy upon us!"
+
+"I am talking to you about oven and not about war! You owe three deniers
+oven-dues; you shall pay three more as a fine."
+
+"Six deniers! Poor me! Six deniers! And where do you expect me to find
+so much money?"
+
+"I know your tricks, knaves that you are! You have hiding places, where
+you bury your deniers. Will you pay, yes or no, you earth-worm? Answer
+immediately!"
+
+"We have not one obole ... the people of the Sire of Castel-Redon have
+left us only our eyes to weep over our disaster!"
+
+Garin raised his shoulders and made a sign to one of the men in his
+suite. This one then took from his belt a coil of rope, and approached
+Peter the Lame. The serf stretched out his hands to the man-at-arms:
+"Take me prisoner, if it pleases you to, I do not own a single denier.
+It will be impossible for me to satisfy you."
+
+"That's just what we are about to ascertain," replied the bailiff; and,
+while one of his men bound the hands of Peter the Lame without his
+offering the slightest resistance, another took from a pouch suspended
+from his belt some touch-wood, a tinderbox and a sulphurated wick, which
+he lighted. Garin the Serf-eater, turning to Peter the Lame, who, at the
+sight of these preparations began to grow pale, said: "They will place
+this lighted wick between your two thumbs; if you have a hiding place
+where you bury your deniers, your pain will make you speak. Go ahead."
+
+The serf answered not a word. His teeth chattered with fear. He fell
+upon his knees before the bailiff, stretching out to him his two bound
+hands in supplication. Suddenly a young girl jumped out of the group of
+the villagers. Her feet were bare, and for only cover she had a coarse
+skirt on. She was called Pierrine the Goat because, like her sheep, she
+was savage and fond of rugged solitudes. Her thick black hair half hid
+her savage face, burnt by the sun. Approaching the bailiff without
+lowering her eyes, she said bluntly to him: "I am the daughter of Peter
+the Lame; if you want to torture someone, leave my father and take me."
+
+"The wick!" impatiently called out Garin the Serf-eater to his men,
+without either looking at or listening to Pierrine the Goat. "The wick!
+And hurry up! Night approaches." Peter the Lame, despite his cries,
+despite the heart-rending entreaties of his daughter, was thrown upon
+the ground and held down by the men of the bailiff. The torture of the
+serf was conducted in sight of his companions in misery, who were
+brutified with terror, and by the habit of serfdom. Peter uttered
+fearful imprecations; Pierrine the Goat no longer screamed, no longer
+implored the tormentors of her father. Motionless, pale, sombre, her
+eyes fixed and drowned with tears, she alternately bit her fists in mute
+rage, and murmured: "If I only knew where his hiding-place was, I would
+tell it."
+
+At last, Peter the Lame, vanquished by pain, said to his daughter in a
+broken voice: "Take the hoe, run to our field; rake up the earth at the
+foot of the large elm; you will there find nine deniers in a piece of
+hollow wood." Then, casting upon the bailiff a look of despair, the serf
+added: "That's my whole treasure, Sire Garin; I'm now ruined!"
+
+"Oh, I was certain that you had a hiding place"; and turning to his men:
+"Stop the torture; one of you follow this girl and bring back the money.
+Let her not be lost sight of."
+
+Pierrine the Goat went off quickly, followed by one of the men-at-arms,
+after having cast upon Garin a furtive and ferocious look. The serfs,
+terrified, silent, hardly dared to look at one another, while Peter,
+uttering plaintive moans, despite his punishment having ceased, murmured
+while he wept hot tears: "Oh, how shall I be able to till the ground
+with my poor hands wounded and sore!"
+
+Accidentally the bailiff caught sight of the blind serf, mutilated of
+his four limbs. Pointing at the unhappy being, he cried out in a
+threatening voice:
+
+"Profit by that example, ye people of the glebe! Behold how they are
+treated who dare rebel against their lords. Are you, or are you not
+subject to taille at the pleasure and mercy of your lord?"
+
+"Oh, yes, we are serfs, Master Garin," replied the wretches, "we are
+serfs at the mercy of our master!"
+
+"Seeing you are serfs, you and your race, why always stingying, cheating
+and pilfering on the taxes? How often have I not caught you in fraud and
+at fault. The one sharpens his plow-share without notifying me, that he
+may purloin the denier due to the seigniory every time he sharpens his
+sock; the other pretends he is free from the horn-dues under the false
+claim that he owns no horned cattle; others carry their audacity to the
+point of marrying in a neighboring seigniory; and so on, any number of
+enormities! Must you, then, miserable fellows, be reminded that you
+belong to your lord in life and death, body and goods? Must it be
+repeated to you that all there is of you belongs to him--the hair on
+your heads, the nails on your fingers, the skin on your vile carcasses,
+everything, including the virginity of your daughters?"
+
+"Oh, good Master Garin," an old serf, named by reason of his subtlety,
+Martin the Prudent, ventured without daring to raise his eyes, "oh, we
+know it; the priests repeat to us incessantly that we belong, soul, body
+and goods, to the lords whom the will of God sets over us. But there are
+those who say ... oh, it is not we who dare to say aught ... things
+contrary to these declarations."
+
+"And who is it dares contradict our holy priests? Give me the name of
+the infidel, the rashling."
+
+"It is Fergan the Quarryman."
+
+"Where is that knave, that miscreant? Why is he not here among you?"
+
+"He must have remained cutting stone at his quarry," put in a timid
+voice; "he never quits work until dark."
+
+"And what is it that Fergan the Quarryman says? Let's see how far his
+audacity goes," replied the bailiff.
+
+"Master Garin," the old serf went on to say, "Fergan recognizes that we
+are serfs of our lord, that we are compelled to cultivate for his
+benefit the fields where it has pleased him to settle us forever, us and
+our children. Fergan says that we are bound to labor, to plant, to
+gather in the harvests on the lands of the castle, to mount guard at the
+strongholds of the seigniory and to defend it."
+
+"We know the rights of the seigniory. But what else does Fergan say?"
+
+"Fergan pretends that the taxes imposed upon us increase unceasingly,
+and that, after having paid our dues in products, the little we can draw
+from our harvests is insufficient to satisfy the ever new demands of our
+lord. Oh, dear Master Garin, we drink water, we are clad in rags, for
+only nourishment we have chestnuts, berries, and, when in luck, a little
+bread of barley or oats."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the bailiff in a threatening voice, "you have all the
+good things, and yet you dare complain!"
+
+"No, no, Master Garin," replied the frightened serfs; "no, we do not
+complain! We are on the road to Paradise!"
+
+"If, occasionally, we suffer a little, it is all the better for our
+salvation, as the parish priest tells us. We shall enjoy the pleasures
+of the next world."
+
+"We do not complain. It is only Fergan who spoke that way the other day.
+We listened to him, but without approving his words."
+
+"And we even found great fault with him for holding such language,"
+added old Martin the Prudent, all in a tremble. "We are satisfied with
+our lot. We venerate, we love our lord, Neroweg VI, and also his helpful
+bailiff, Garin. May God preserve them long."
+
+"Yes, yes," exclaimed the serfs in chorus, "that's the truth, the pure
+truth!"
+
+"Vile slaves!" roared the bailiff in a rage mixed with disdain,
+"cowardly knaves! You basely lick the hand that scourges you. Don't I
+know that, among yourselves, you call the noble Lord Neroweg VI 'Worse
+than a Wolf,' and me, his helpful bailiff, 'Serf-eater!' These are our
+nick-names."
+
+"Upon our eternal salvation, Master Garin, it is not we who have given
+you that nick-name, Master Garin."
+
+"By my beard! We propose to deserve our surnames. Yes, Neroweg VI will
+be 'worse than a wolf' to you, you pack of idlers, thieves and traitors!
+And, as for me, I will eat you to the bone, villeins or serfs, if you
+try to cheat your lord of his rights. As to Fergan, that smooth talker,
+I'll come across him some other day, and I feel it in my bones that he
+will yet make acquaintance with the gibbet of the seigniory of
+Plouernel. He will be hanged high and dry!"
+
+"And we will not pity him, dear and good Master Garin. Let Fergan be
+accursed, if he has dared to speak ill of you and of our venerated
+lord!" answered the frightened serfs.
+
+At this moment, Pierrine the Goat returned, accompanied by the
+man-at-arms, who had been charged by the bailiff to disinter the
+treasure of Peter the Lame. The young serf had a somberer and wilder
+look, her tears had dried, but her eyes shot lightning. Twice she threw
+her thick black hair back from her forehead with her left hand, as she
+held her right hand behind her. She drew nearer to the bailiff step by
+step, while the man-at-arms, delivering to Garin a round piece of hollow
+wood, said: "It contains nine copper deniers, but four of them are not
+of the mintage of our Lord Neroweg VI."
+
+"Foreign coin in the seigniory! And yet I have forbidden you to accept
+any under penalty of the whip!"
+
+"Oh, Master Garin," explained Peter the Lame, still lying on the ground,
+and crying at the sight of his lacerated hands, "the foreign merchants
+who pass, and who occasionally buy a pig, a calf or a sheep, frequently
+have none but coin minted in other seigniories. What are we to do? If we
+refuse to sell the little we have, where are we to find the money to pay
+the taxes with?"
+
+The bailiff placed the deniers of Peter the Lame in a large leather
+pouch, and answered the serf: "You owe six deniers; among these nine
+pieces there are four of foreign coinage; I confiscate them. There
+remain five deniers of this seigniory. I take them on account. You will
+give me the sixth when you pay the next taxes. If you don't, look out!"
+
+"I propose to pay now!" shrieked Pierrine the Goat, striking the bailiff
+full in the face with a large stone that she had picked up on the road.
+Garin lost his balance with the violence of the blow, and the blood ran
+down his face; but he promptly recovered from the shock, and, rushing
+furiously upon the young serf, threw her down, trampled her under foot,
+and, half drawing his sword, was on the point of dispatching her, when,
+recollecting himself, he said to his men: "Bind her fast; take her to
+the castle; her eyes will be put out to-night; and, at dawn to-morrow,
+she shall be hanged from the patibulary forks."
+
+"The punishment of Pierrine the Goat will be well merited," exclaimed
+the serfs, hoping to turn away from themselves the wrath of Garin the
+Serf-eater. "Bad luck to the accursed girl! She has spilled the blood of
+the good bailiff of our glorious seigneur! Let her be punished as she
+deserves!"
+
+"You are a set of cowards!" cried Pierrine the Goat, her face and breast
+bruised and bleeding from the blows that Garin had given her while
+trampling on her. Then, turning to Peter the Lame, who was sobbing but
+dared not defend his daughter, or raise his voice to implore mercy for
+her, she said: "Adieu; to-morrow you will see ravens circling on the
+side of the seigniorial gibbet; they will be the living shroud of your
+daughter"; and showing her fists to the dismayed serfs, she went on:
+"Cowards! you are three hundred, and you are afraid of six men-at-arms!
+There is among you all but one man truly brave; that's Fergan!"
+
+"Oh!" yelled the bailiff, exasperated by the bold words of Pierrine the
+Goat, and staunching the blood that flowed from his face, "if I meet
+that Fergan on my route, he shall be your gibbet mate, the infamous
+blasphemer!" With that, Garin the Serf-eater remounted, and followed by
+his men, together with the serfs whom he had arrested, Pierrine the Goat
+among them, was soon lost to sight, leaving the inhabitants of the
+village struck with such terror, that on that evening they forgot to
+carry away the poor blind and mutilated old man, who was left to spend
+the night in the open.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN.
+
+
+It was long after the bailiff had led away his prisoners. The night grew
+rapidly darker. A young woman, pale, lean and deformed, clad in a
+tattered smock, her feet bare, her head half covered with a hood from
+which her hair escaped, held her face hidden in her hands, as she sat on
+a stone near the hearth of the hut which Fergan inhabited at the
+extremity of the village. A few chips of brush-wood were burning in the
+fire-place. Above rose the blackened walls, cracked by the recent
+conflagration; bunches of brush fastened on poles replaced the roof,
+through which here and there some brilliant star could be seen. A litter
+of straw in the best protected corner of the hovel, a trunk, a few
+wooden vessels--such was the furnishing of the home of a serf. The young
+woman, seated near the fire-place, was the wife of Fergan, Joan the
+Hunchback. Her forehead in her hands, crouching upon the stone which
+served her as a seat, Joan remained motionless. Only at intervals a
+slight tremor of the shoulders announced that she wept. A man entered
+the hut. It was Fergan the Quarryman. Thirty years of age, robust and
+large of frame, his dress consisted of a goat-skin kilt, of which the
+hair was almost worn off; his shabby hose left his legs and feet bare;
+on his shoulder he carried an iron pick and the heavy hammer which he
+used to break and extract the stones from the quarry. Joan the Hunchback
+raised her head at the sight of her husband. Although homely, her
+suffering and timid figure breathed an angelic kindness. Advancing
+quickly towards Fergan, her face bathed in tears, Joan said to him with
+an inexpressible mixture of hope and anxiety, while she interrogated
+him with her eyes: "Have you learned anything?"
+
+"Nothing," answered the serf in despair, throwing down his pick and
+hammer; "nothing, nothing!"
+
+Joan fell back upon the stone sobbing. She raised her hands to heaven
+and murmured: "I shall never again see Colombaik! My poor child is lost
+for ever!"
+
+Fergan, no less distressed than his wife, sat down on another stone
+placed near the fire-place, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his
+hands. Thus he remained for a long spell, gloomy, silent. Suddenly
+rising, he started to walk uneasily, muttering in a muffled voice: "That
+cannot remain so--I shall go--Yes, I shall! I must find him!"
+
+Joan, hearing the serf repeat: "I shall go! I shall go!" raised her
+head, wiped her tears with the back of her hand and asked: "Where is it
+you want to go?"
+
+"To the castle!" roared the serf, continuing his agitated walk, his arms
+crossed over his chest. Trembling from head to foot, Joan clasped her
+hands, and tried to speak. In her terror, she could not at first utter a
+word; her teeth chattered. At last she said in a faint voice:
+"Fergan--you must have lost your wits when you say you will go to the
+castle."
+
+"I shall go after the moon has set."
+
+"Oh! I have lost my poor child," rejoined Joan moaning, "I am going to
+lose my husband also." She moaned again. The imprecations and the
+foot-falls of the serf alone interrupted the silence of the night. The
+fire went out in the fire-place, but the moon, just risen, threw her
+pale rays into the interior of the hut through the open spaces left by
+the pole and bunches of brush that took the place of the burnt-out roof.
+The silence lasted long. Joan the Hunchback taking courage anew, resumed
+in an accent that was almost confident: "You propose to go to-night--to
+the castle--fortunately that's impossible." And seeing that the serf did
+not intermit his silent walk, Joan took his hand as he moved toward her:
+"Why do you not answer? That frightens me." He roughly withdrew his
+hand, and thrusting his wife back, exclaimed in an irritated voice:
+"Leave me alone, woman, leave me alone."
+
+The feeble creature fell down a few steps beyond among some rubbish, and
+her head having struck against a piece of wood, she could not hold back
+a cry of pain. Fergan walked back, and by the light of the moon he saw
+Joan rising painfully. He ran to her, helped her to sit down on one of
+the stones of the fire-place, and asked anxiously: "Did you hurt
+yourself falling?"
+
+"No, no, my dear husband."
+
+"My poor Joan!" exclaimed the serf alarmed, having placed one of his
+hands on the forehead of his wife, "you bleed!"
+
+"I have been weeping," she replied sweetly, staunching her wound with a
+lock of her long disheveled hair.
+
+"You suffer? Answer me, dear wife!"
+
+"No, no, I fell because I am feeble," answered Joan with her angelic
+mildness; "let's not think about that," and she added, smiling sadly and
+alluding to her deformity, "I need not fear being made ugly by a scar."
+
+Fergan imagined that Joan the Hunchback meant he would have treated her
+with less rudeness if she had been handsome, and he felt deeply grieved.
+In a tone of kind reproach he replied: "Apart from the hastiness of my
+temper, have I not always treated you as the best of wives?"
+
+"That's true, my dear Fergan, and my gratitude is great."
+
+"Have I not freely taken you for wife?"
+
+"Yes, notwithstanding you could have chosen from the serfs of the
+seigniory a companion who would not have been deformed."
+
+"Joan," replied the quarryman with sad bitterness, "if your countenance
+had been as beautiful as your heart is good, whose would have been the
+first night of our wedding? Would it not have belonged to Neroweg 'Worse
+than a Wolf,' or to one of his whelps?"
+
+"Oh, Fergan, my ugliness saved us this supreme shame."
+
+"The wife of Sylvest, one of my ancestors, a poor slave of the Romans,
+also escaped dishonor by disfiguring herself," was the thought that
+flashed through the quarryman's mind while he sighed, and pondered: "Oh,
+slavery and serfdom weigh upon our race for centuries. Will the day of
+deliverance, predicted by Victoria the Great,[A] ever come."
+
+Joan, seeing her husband plunged in meditation, said to him: "Fergan, do
+you remember what Pierrine the Goat told us three days ago on the
+subject of our son? She had, as was her custom, led her sheep to the
+steepest heights of the great ravine, whence she saw one of the knights
+of the Count of Plouernel rush on a gallop out of a copse where our
+little Colombaik had gone to gather some dead wood. Pierrine was of the
+opinion that that knight carried off our child under his cloak."
+
+"The suspicions of Pierrine were well founded."
+
+"Good God! What is it you say?"
+
+"A few hours ago, while I was at the quarry, several serfs, engaged in
+repairing the road of the castle which was partly destroyed during the
+last war, came for stone. For the last three days I have been like
+crazy. I have been telling everybody of the disappearance of Colombaik.
+I spoke about it to these serfs. One of them claimed to have seen the
+other evening, shortly before nightfall, a knight holding on his horse a
+child about seven or eight years, with blonde hair--"
+
+"Unhappy we! That was Colombaik."
+
+"The knight then climbed the hill that leads to the manor of Plouernel,
+and went in."
+
+"But what can they do to our child?"
+
+"What will they do!" exclaimed the serf shivering, "they'll strangle
+him, and use his blood for some infernal philter. There is a sorceress
+stopping at the castle."
+
+Joan uttered a cry of fright, but rage swiftly followed upon her fright.
+Delirious and running to the door she cried out: "Fergan, let's go to
+the manor--we shall enter even if we have to tear up the stones with our
+nails--I shall have my child--the sorceress shall not throttle him--no!
+no!" The serf, holding her by the arm, drew her back. Almost immediately
+she fainted away in his arms. Still, in a muffled voice, the poor woman
+muttered: "It seems to me I see him die--if my heart were torn in a vice
+I could not suffer more--it is too late--the sorceress will have
+strangled the child--no--who knows!" Presently seizing her husband by
+the hand, "You meant to go to the castle--come--come!"
+
+"I shall go alone when the moon is down."
+
+"Oh, we are crazy, my poor man! Pain leads us astray. How can one
+penetrate into the lair of the count?"
+
+"By a secret entrance."
+
+"And who has informed you of it?"
+
+"My grandfather Den-Brao accompanied his father Yvon the Forester in
+Anjou during the great famine in 1033. Den-Brao, a skillful mason, after
+having worked for more than a year in the castle of a lord of Anjou
+became his serf, and was exchanged by his master for an armorer of
+Neroweg IV, an ancestor of the present lord. My grandfather, now a serf
+of the lord of Plouernel, was engaged in the construction of a donjon
+which was attached to the castle. The work lasted many a year. My
+father, Nominoe, almost a child at the commencement of the structure,
+had grown to manhood when it was finished. He helped his father in his
+work, and became a mason himself. After his day's work, my grandfather
+used to trace upon a parchment the plan of the several parts of the
+donjon which he was to execute. One day my father asked him the
+explanation of certain structures, the purpose of which he could not
+understand. 'These separate stone works, connected by the work of the
+carpenter and the blacksmith,' answered my grandfather, 'will constitute
+a secret staircase made through the thick of the wall of the donjon, and
+it will ascend from the lowest depth of this edifice to the top, while
+it furnishes access to several reducts otherwise invisible. Thanks to
+this secret issue, the Lord of Plouernel, if besieged in his castle, and
+unable to resist his enemies, will be able to escape, and reach a long
+subterraneous gallery which comes out at the rocks that stretch to the
+north, at the foot of the mountain, where the seigniorial manor-house
+rises.' Indeed, Joan, during those days of continual wars, similar works
+were executed in all the strongholds: their owners always looked to
+preserving the means of escape from their enemies. About six months
+before the completion of the donjon, and when all that was left to do
+was the construction of the staircase and the secret issue, traced upon
+the plan of my grandfather, my father broke both of his legs by the fall
+of an enormous stone. That grave accident became the cause of a great
+piece of good fortune."
+
+"What say you, Fergan!"
+
+"My father remained here, at this hovel, unable to work by reason of his
+wounds. During that interval the donjon was finished. But the artisan
+serfs, instead of returning every evening to their respective villages,
+no longer left the castle. The seigneur of Plouernel wished, so it was
+said, to hasten the completion of the works and to save the time lost in
+the morning and evening by the traveling of the serfs. For about six
+months the people of the plain saw the movement of the workingmen
+gathered upon the last courses of the donjon, which rose ever higher.
+After that, when the platform and the turrets which crown it were
+finished, nothing more was seen. The serfs never re-appeared in their
+villages, and their bereaved families are still awaiting them."
+
+"What became of them?"
+
+"Neroweg IV, fearing they might reveal the secret issue constructed by
+themselves, had them locked up in the subterraneous place, that I stated
+to you. It is there that my grandfather, together with his fellow
+workingmen, twenty-seven in number, perished, a prey to the tortures of
+hunger."
+
+"That's horrible! What barbarity!"
+
+"Yes, it is horrible! My father, kept at home by his injuries, alone
+escaped this fearful death, overlooked, no doubt, by the seigneur of
+Plouernel. Trying to fathom the mystery of my grandfather's
+disappearance, my father recalled the information he had received from
+his father on the plan of the donjon and its secret issue. One night,
+accordingly, my father betook himself to that secluded spot, and
+succeeded in discovering an airhole concealed amid brushwood. He slid
+down this opening, and after walking long in a narrow gallery, he was
+arrested by an enormous iron grating. Seeking to break it, he passed his
+arm through the bars. His hand touched a mass of bones--human bones and
+skulls--"
+
+"Good God! Poor victims!"
+
+"It was the bones of the serfs, who, locked up in this subterraneous
+passage with my grandfather, had died of hunger. My father did not try
+to penetrate further. Certain of the fate of my grandfather, but lacking
+the energy to avenge him, he made to me this revelation on his
+death-bed. I went--it is a long time ago--to inspect the rocks. I
+discovered the subterraneous issue. Through it, to-night, will I enter
+the donjon and look for our child."
+
+"Fergan, I shall not try to oppose your plan," observed Joan after a
+moment of silence and suppressing her apprehensions; "but how will you
+clear that grating which prevented your father from entering the
+underground passage? Is it not above your strength?"
+
+"That grating has been fastened in the rock, it can be unfastened with
+my iron pick and hammer. I have the requisite strength for that job."
+
+"Once in the passage, what will you do?"
+
+"Last evening I took from the wooden casket, hidden yonder under the
+rubbish, a few strips of the parchment where Den-Brao had traced the
+plan of the buildings; I have posted myself on the localities. The
+secret gallery, in its ascent towards the castle, comes out, on the
+other side of the donjon, upon a secret staircase built in the thick of
+the wall. That leads, from the lowest of the three rows of subterranean
+dungeons, up to the turret that rises to the north of the platform."
+
+"The turret," queried Joan, growing pale, "the turret, whence
+occasionally strange lights issue at night?"
+
+"It is there that Azenor the Pale, the sorceress of Neroweg, carries on
+her witchcraft," answered the quarryman in a hollow voice. "It is in
+that turret that Colombaik must be, provided he still lives. It is there
+I shall go in search of our child."
+
+"Oh, my poor man," murmured Joan, "I faint at the thought of the perils
+you are about to face!"
+
+"Joan," suddenly interjected the serf, raising his hands towards the
+starry sky, visible through rifts in the roof, "before an hour the moon
+will have set; I must go now."
+
+The quarryman's wife, after making a superhuman effort to overcome her
+terror, said in a voice that was almost firm: "I do not ask to accompany
+you, Fergan; I might be an encumbrance in this enterprise. But I
+believe, as you do, that at all costs we must try to save our child. If
+in three days you are not back--"
+
+"It will mean that I have encountered death in the castle of Plouernel."
+
+"I shall not be behind you a day, my dear husband. Have you weapons to
+defend yourself?"
+
+"I have my iron pick and my hammer."
+
+"And bread? You must have some provisions."
+
+"I have still a big piece of bread in my wallet; you will fill my gourd
+with water; that will suffice me."
+
+While his wife was attending to these charges, the serf provided himself
+with a long rope which he wound around him; he also placed a tinder-box
+in his wallet, a piece of punk, and a wick, steeped in resin, of the
+kind that quarrymen use to light their underground passages. These
+preparations being ended, Fergan silently stretched his arms towards his
+wife. The brave and sweet creature threw herself into them. The couple
+prolonged this painful embrace a few moments, as if it were a last
+adieu. The serf then, swinging his heavy hammer on his shoulder and
+taking up his iron pick, started towards the rocks where the secret
+issue of the seigniorial manor ran out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+AT THE CROSS-ROAD.
+
+
+The day after Fergan the Quarryman decided to penetrate into the castle
+of Plouernel, a considerable troop of travelers, men of all conditions,
+who had left Nantes the day before, were journeying towards the frontier
+of Anjou. Among them were found pilgrims, distinguishable by the
+cockle-shell attached to their clothes, vagabonds, beggars, peddlers
+loaded with their bundles of goods. Among the latter a man of tall
+stature, with light blonde hair and beard, carried on his back a bundle
+surmounted with a cross and covered with coarse pictures representing
+human bones, such as skulls, thighs, arms, and fingers. This man, named
+Harold the Norman, devoted himself, like many other descendants of the
+pirates of old Rolf,[B] to the trade of relics, selling to the faithful
+the bones which they stole at night from the seigniorial gibbets. By the
+sides of Harold marched two monks, who called each other Simon and
+Jeronimo. The cowl of the frock of Simon was pulled over his head and
+completely concealed his face; but that of Jeronimo, thrown back over
+his shoulder, exposed the monk's dark and lean visage, whose thick
+eye-brows, as black as his beard, imparted to it a savage hardness.
+
+A few steps behind these priests, mounted on a fine white mule, of
+well-fed form and skin sleek and shining like silver, came a merchant of
+Nantes, named from his great wealth, Bezenecq the Rich. Still in the
+vigor of years, of open, intelligent and affable mien, he wore a hood of
+black felt, a robe of fine blue cloth, gathered around his waist by a
+leathern belt, from which hung an embroidered purse. Behind him, and on
+a part of the saddle contrived for such service, rode his daughter
+Isoline, a lass of about eighteen years, with blue eyes, brown hair,
+white teeth and a face like a rose of May, as pretty as she was
+attractive. Isoline's long pearl-grey robe hid her little feet; her
+traveling cloak, made of a soft green fabric, enveloped her elegant and
+supple waist; under the hood of the mantle, lined in red, her fresh
+visage was partially seen. The feelings of tender solicitude between
+father and daughter could be divined by the looks and smiles of
+affection that they often exchanged, as well as by the little attentions
+that they frequently bestowed upon each other. The serenity of unalloyed
+happiness, the sweet pleasures of the heart, could be read upon their
+visages, which bore the impress of radiant bliss. A well-clad servant,
+alert and vigorous, led on foot a second mule, loaded with the baggage
+of the merchant. On either side of the saddle hung a sword in its
+scabbard. In those days, one never traveled unarmed. Bezenecq the Rich
+had conformed to the usage, although that good and worthy townsman was
+of a nature little given to strife.
+
+The travelers had arrived at a cross-road where the highway of Nantes to
+Angers forked off. At the juncture of the two roads there rose a
+seigniorial gibbet, symbol and speaking proof of the supreme
+jurisdiction exercised by the lords in their domains. That massive pile
+of stones bore at its top four iron forks fastened at right angles,
+gibbet-shaped. From the gibbet that rose over the western branch of the
+road three corpses hung by the neck. The first was reduced to the
+condition of a skeleton; the second was half putrified. The crows,
+disturbed in their bloody quarry by the approach of the travelers, still
+circled in the air over the third corpse, that of a young girl,
+completely stripped, without even the shred of a rag. It was the body of
+Pierrine the Goat, tortured and executed in the early morning of that
+day, as threatened by Garin the Serf-eater. The thick black hair of the
+victim fell over her face, pinched with agony and furrowed with long
+traces of clotted blood that had flowed from her eyeless sockets. Her
+teeth still held a little wax figure, two or three inches long, clad in
+a bishop's gown with a miniature mitre on its head, made out of a bit of
+gold foil. The witches, to carry out their diabolical incantations,
+often had several of these little figures placed between the teeth of
+the hanged at the moment when they expired. They called this magic
+"spell throwing." Beside this gibbet rose the seigniorial post of
+Neroweg VI, lord and count of the lands of Plouernel. The post indicated
+the boundaries of the domain traversed by the western road, and was
+surmounted by a red escutcheon, in the middle of which were seen three
+eagle's talons painted in yellow--the device of the Nerowegs. Another
+post, bearing for emblem a dragon-serpent of green color painted on a
+white background, marked the eastern route which traversed the domains
+of Draco, Lord of Castel-Redon, and flanked another gibbet with four
+patibulary forks. Of these only two were furnished; from one hanged the
+corpse of a child of fourteen years at the most, from the other the
+corpse of an old man, both half pecked away by the crows. Isoline, the
+daughter of Bezenecq the Rich, uttered a cry of horror at the sight of
+these bodies, and huddling close to the merchant, behind whom she was on
+horseback, whispered in a low voice: "Father! oh, father! Look at those
+bodies. It's a horrible spectacle!"
+
+"Look not in that direction, my child," answered sadly the townsman of
+Nantes, turning around to his daughter. "More than once on our road
+shall we make these mournful encounters. The patibulary forks are found
+on the confines of every seigniorial estate. Often even the trees are
+decked out with hanging bodies!"
+
+"Oh, father," replied Isoline, whose face, so full of smiles a minute
+before, had painfully saddened, "I fear this encounter may be of sad
+omen to our voyage!"
+
+"Beloved daughter," the merchant put in with suppressed agony, "be not
+so quick to take alarm. No doubt we live in days when it is impossible
+to leave the city and undertake a long trip with safety. It is that
+that kept me from paying a visit in the city of Laon to my good brother
+Gildas, whom I have not seen for many years. It is unfortunately a long
+way to Picardy, and I have not dared to venture on such a ride. But our
+trip will hardly take two days. We should not apprehend a sad issue to
+this visit to your grandmother, who wishes to see and embrace you before
+she dies. Your presence will sweeten her sorrow at the loss of your
+mother, whom she mourns as grieviously to-day as when my beloved wife
+was taken from me. Pick up courage and calm your mind, my child."
+
+"I shall pick up courage, father, as you wish. I shall surmount my idle
+terrors and my childish fears."
+
+"Were it not for the imperious duty that made us undertake this journey,
+I would say to you: 'Let's return to our peaceful home in Nantes, where
+you are happy and gay from morning to evening.' If your smile cheers my
+soul," Bezenecq added in a voice deeply moved, "every tear you drop
+falls upon my heart!"
+
+"Behold me," said Isoline. "Would you say I look apprehensive, alarmed?"
+And saying this she pressed against the merchant her charming face, that
+had recovered its serenity and confidence. The townsman contemplated for
+a moment in silence the beloved features of his daughter. A tear of joy
+then gathered in his eye, and endeavoring to subdue his emotion, he
+cried out: "The devil take these crupper saddles! They prevent one even
+from embracing his own child with ease!" Whereupon the young girl, with
+a movement full of gracefulness, threw her arms on her father's
+shoulders, and drew her rosy face so close to Bezenecq's that he had but
+to turn his head to kiss the lassie on her forehead and cheeks, which he
+did repeatedly with ineffable happiness.
+
+During this tender exchange of words and carresses between the merchant
+and his daughter, the other travelers, before proceeding upon either of
+the two routes that opened before them, had gathered in the middle of
+the crossing to consider which to take. Both roads led to Angers. One of
+them, that marked by the post surmounted with a serpent-dragon, after
+making a wide circuit, traversed a sombre forest; it was twice as long
+as the other. Each of the two roads having its own advantages and
+disadvantages, several of the travelers insisted upon the road of the
+post with the three eagle's talons. Simon, the monk whose face was
+almost wholly concealed under his cowl, strove, on the contrary, to
+induce his companions to take the other road. "Dear brothers! I conjure
+you;" cried Simon, "believe me ... do not cross the territory of the
+seigneur of Plouernel.... He has been nick-named 'Worse than a Wolf' and
+the reprobate but too well justifies the name.... Every day stories are
+heard of travelers whom he arrests and plunders while crossing his
+grounds."
+
+"My dear brother," put in a townsman, "I can testify, like you, that the
+keeper of Plouernel is a wicked man, and his donjon a terrible donjon.
+More than once from the ramparts of our city of Nantes have we seen the
+men of the Count of Plouernel, bandits of the worst stripe, pillage,
+burn, and ravage the territory of our bishop, with whom Neroweg was at
+war over the possession of the ancient abbey of Meriadek."
+
+"Is that the abbey where the prodigious miracle of about four hundred
+years ago happened?" inquired another bourgeois. "Saint Meroflede,
+abbess of the monastery, summoned by the soldiers of Charles Martel to
+surrender the place, invoked heaven, and the miscreants, overwhelmed by
+a shower of stones and fire, were asphyxiated in the fumes of burning
+sulphur and pitch, whither they were dragged by horned, clawed and hairy
+demons, frightful to behold. And so it happened that the venerable
+abbess died in the odor of sanctity."
+
+"An ineffable odor that has lasted down to our own days. The common
+people entertain a particular devotion for the chapel of Saint
+Meroflede, which has been raised on the borders of a large lake, close
+by the very place where the miracle was accomplished."
+
+"The chapel is never empty of the faithful. The offerings furnish a
+large revenue to the incumbent. As the abbess was of the house of the
+Nerowegs, the seigneur of Plouernel laid claim to, and sought to
+reacquire the property of the chapel. Hence the wars between the count
+and the Bishop of Nantes. Those were fearful wars, my friends. They
+happened at the season when the bishop was marrying his last daughter,
+whom he gave for a dower the benefice of Saint Paterne. It was a
+beautiful wedding. The wife and the daughter of his grace the bishop
+were beautifully ornamented. The young bride wore a necklace of
+inestimable value."
+
+The moment the name of the Bishop of Nantes was mentioned, Simon the
+monk pulled down the cowl of his cloak, trying to hide his face
+completely.
+
+"Sure enough, my beloved companions," interjected another townsman, "we
+know that the Sieur 'Worse than a Wolf' is a brigand. But do you imagine
+that the Sieur Draco, seigneur of Castel-Redon, is a lamb? It is as
+perilous to cross the territory of the one as of the other, and yet
+there is no other way out. The road to the east, barred by a river, runs
+out upon a bridge that is guarded by the men of the seigneur of
+Castel-Redon; the road to the west, bordered by vast swamps, runs out
+upon a path guarded by the men of the seigneur of Plouernel. By taking
+the shorter of the two routes we reduce by one-half the chances of
+danger."
+
+"This worthy man is right," said several voices. "Let's follow his
+advice."
+
+"Dear brothers, look out what you do!" cried Simon the monk. "The
+seigneur of Plouernel is a monster of ferocity. He is given up to
+sorcery with a female magician, his concubine ... a Jewess! He stands
+excommunicated; he is a pagan."
+
+"To the devil with the Jews!" exclaimed Harold the Norman, merchant of
+relics. "The Jews have all been hanged, burned, drowned, strangled,
+quartered, when they were hunted down in all the provinces, like wild
+beasts. There can not be one of them left alive in our land of Gaul."
+
+"Since the execution of the Orleans heretics, who perished by fire,"
+resumed the monk Jeronimo, "never was an extermination of unclean
+animals more meritorious than that of those accursed Jews, who
+instigated the Saracens of Palestine to destroy the Temple of Solomon at
+Jerusalem. Death to the Jews!"
+
+"What say you, dear brother?" inquired a townsman. "Did the Jews of this
+land of Gaul instigate the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem?"
+
+"Yes, my brother. The abominable mischiefs of those Jews defy time and
+space. But patience! Soon will the day come when, by divine will, no
+longer will it be isolated pilgrims that will travel to Jerusalem to
+there mourn and pray at the tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will be
+Christianity in mass that will march under arms to the Holy Land, in
+order to exterminate the infidels and deliver the sepulchre of the
+Saviour of the world from their sacrilegious presence. Death to all
+miscreants!"
+
+Bezenecq the Rich, who had just approached the group of debating
+travelers, and ascertained the subject of their discussion, apprehensive
+lest his daughter take new alarm, suggested: "Meseems we had better take
+the shorter route. As to your fears, they are exaggerated. When we shall
+have paid the toll-collectors of the seigneur of Plouernel for the right
+to travel over his roads and cross his burgs and villages, what else can
+he demand of us? We are neither his serfs nor his villeins.'
+
+"Can you, a grey beard, talk like that?" interjected Simon the monk. "Do
+you imagine these devilish seigneurs care aught for justice or
+injustice?"
+
+"But I do care a deal about that!" replied Bezenecq the Rich. "If the
+seigneur of Plouernel should do me violence, me a bourgeois of Nantes, I
+would appeal to William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, of whom the seigneur of
+Plouernel stands seized, the same as William IX holds of Philip I, King
+of the Franks. Each of these seigneurs has his suzerain."
+
+"Which would be like appealing from the wolf to the tiger," replied
+Simon, shrugging his shoulders. "You can not know William, Duke of
+Aquitaine. That sacrilegious criminal sought to force Peter, the Bishop
+of Poitiers, to give him absolution for his crimes by putting a dagger
+to his throat. William abducted Malborgiane, the wife of the Viscount of
+Castellerault, a shameless creature, whose picture he dares to carry
+painted on his shield. William had the effrontery to answer Gerard, the
+Bishop of Angouleme, who reproached him with this new act of adultery:
+'Bishop, I shall return Malborgiane when you frizzle your hair!' The
+prelate was bald. Such is the man to whom you would appeal from the
+violent acts of the seigneur of Plouernel."
+
+"That William is certainly a deep-dyed criminal;" put in Jeronimo, "but
+that much justice must be done him that he approved himself the most
+implacable exterminator of the Jews. Not one of those who lived on his
+domains escaped death!"
+
+"It is said that the mere sight of a Jew makes him pale with horror; and
+that, libertine though he is, a Jewess, be she never such a beauty, be
+she a maid like the Virgin Mary, would make him run away from her."
+
+"But that does not prevent," insisted Simon the monk, "that if you rely
+upon the Duke of Aquitaine for redress against the seigneur of
+Plouernel, you will be acting like a lunatic. On that subject your
+judgment is at fault."
+
+"If William IX does not do us justice," rejoined Bezenecq the Rich, "we
+shall appeal to King Philip. Oh! oh! we townsmen do not allow ourselves
+to be tyrannized without protest! We know how to draw up a petition!"
+
+"And what will King Philip care for your petition? That Sardanapalus!
+that glutton! that idler! that double adulterer! and what's worse, that
+dullard, whom the seigneurs, his large vassals, laugh at openly! It is
+to him you will go for justice, if refused by the Duke of Aquitaine?
+Moreover, even if the latter were so inclined, as the suzerain of the
+seigneur of Plouernel, to punish him for wrongs done to you, would he
+have the power?"
+
+"Certainly!" exclaimed Bezenecq. "He would enter the domain of the
+seigneur of Plouernel and besiege him in his castle."
+
+Simon the monk shook his head sadly. "The seigneurs reserve their forces
+to round up their domains and to revenge their own wrongs. Never do they
+protect the cause of small folks, however just it be."
+
+"We live, I know, in sad times; nor were the previous centuries much
+better," observed the townsman with a sigh, casting an uneasy look upon
+his daughter, who seemed again alarmed. "All the same, we should not
+exaggerate to ourselves the dangers of the situation. We have to choose
+between the two routes. Let's suppose the dangers of crossing them are
+equal. Common sense bids us to take the shorter, and that we hurry our
+steps."
+
+"The shorter route is the more perilous," repeated Simon the monk, who,
+more than anyone else, seemed to dread crossing the territory of the
+seigneur of Plouernel.
+
+"Oh! father," asked Isoline of the merchant, "have we really so many
+dangers to fear?"
+
+"No, no, my dear child. That poor monk's mind is upset with fear."
+
+The Norman dealer in relics, having overheard the last words of Isoline,
+approached her and said with much unction: "Pretty lassie, I have here
+in my box of relics a superb tooth, that comes from the blessed jaw of a
+holy man, who died in Jerusalem, a martyr to the Saracens. I shall let
+you have that tooth for three silver deniers. This sacred relic will
+protect you from all perils of the road." Saying which, Harold the
+Norman was about to exhibit the marvellous tooth, when Bezenecq said
+smiling to him, so as to reassure his daughter; "Not now, my friend; we
+shall look at your relic later on. Do you claim that it protects one
+against all the dangers of the road?"
+
+"Yes, worshipful townsman. I swear it upon my eternal salvation; upon my
+share of Paradise."
+
+"Seeing that you carry about you that holy relic, you will not be
+exposed to any accident; and seeing that we go with you, and are of your
+company, we shall profit by the miraculous protection. All of which
+should not hinder us, if you follow my advice, dear companions, to take
+the shorter route. Let those who share my views follow me," he added
+giving the spurs to his mule so as to put an end to the discussion, and
+with that he took the road that led over the territory of the seigneur
+of Plouernel. The majority of the travelers followed the example of
+Bezenecq, because, for one thing, he spoke wisely; then also, he was
+known to be rich, his daughter accompanied him, and he had too much at
+stake to take an imprudent resolution. Those who shared the
+apprehensions of the monk Simon, being reduced to a small number, dared
+not separate from the bulk of the troop, and joined it after a moment's
+hesitation. Likewise Simon the monk and Jeronimo, who feared risking
+themselves alone on the other road. Harold the Norman remained behind an
+instant, drew near one of the gibbets, pulled off the two legs and hands
+of a corpse, that was reduced to a mere skeleton, and placed them in his
+bag, counting upon selling them to the faithful for holy relics. He then
+rejoined the travelers, who were proceeding along the road of the
+seigniory of Plouernel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE MANOR OF PLOUERNEL.
+
+
+The castle of Neroweg VI--a somber retreat, situated, like the eyrie of
+a bird of prey, on the brow of a steep mountain--dominated the country
+for many miles around. The moment the watchman, posted on the platform
+of the donjon, espied from afar a troop of travelers, he sounded his
+horn. Immediately the band of the count, thievish and ferocious, would
+sally from the manor. These bandits, not satisfied with demanding the
+dues of passage and traffic, habitually pillaged the travelers, often
+even massacred them, or took them to the castle to be tortured and
+compelled to pay ransom. The face of Gaul bristled with similar haunts,
+raised by the Frankish seigneurs under the reign of Charles the Great.
+They were impregnable fortresses, from the heights of which barons,
+counts, marquises and dukes defied the royal authority, and desolated
+the country. The history of the Count of Plouernel is that of all these
+seigneurs who issued from the race of the first conquerors of Gaul. In
+the year 818, a Neroweg, second son of the head of this Frankish family
+that had been richly endowed in Auvergne since Clovis, was one of the
+chieftains in the army of Louis the Pious, when he ravaged Brittany,
+then in revolt at the call of Morvan and Vortigern. That Neroweg, in
+reward for his services during that war, received from the King a fief
+of the lands and county of Plouernel, which had reverted to the crown by
+the death of its last beneficiary, who left no heirs. Neroweg, in return
+for the cession of the county of Plouernel, was to own himself a vassal
+of Louis the Pious, render him fealty and homage as to his king and
+suzerain seigneur, pay him tribute, and support him in his wars by
+marching at the head of the men of his seigniory. In the country of
+Plouernel, as in the other provinces of Gaul, certain colonists named
+villeins had succeeded in emancipating themselves and again became
+owners of parcels of land. Neroweg I. (the first of the name of this
+second branch of the family) did not revolt against the authority of the
+King. His son, however, Neroweg II., had a strong castle built on the
+summit of the mountain of Plouernel, assembled there a numerous band of
+determined men, and then, with most of the other seigneurs, he said to
+the King of the Franks: "I do not recognize your sovereignty; I will no
+longer be your vassal; I declare myself sovereign on my domain, like you
+are on yours. The serfs, villeins and townsmen of my county become my
+men; they, their lands, their property belong to me only; I shall tax
+them at my will and impose upon them tributes, rent and taille which
+they shall pay to me only; they will go to war for me alone, and against
+you, should you dare come and besiege me in my fortress of Plouernel."
+The King did not go, seeing that most of the seigneurs held the same
+language to the descendants of Charles the Great or of Hugh le Capet,
+whose kingdom was gradually reduced to the possession of the bare
+provinces that he was able to defend and preserve, arms in hand. Neroweg
+III. and Neroweg IV. did as their ancestor and remained independent,
+masters, absolute and hereditary, of the country of Plouernel. A large
+number of Frankish seigneurs seized in the same way other parts of the
+territory of Gaul. Robert thus became Count of (the country of) Paris;
+Milo, Count of (the country of) Tonnerre; Hugh, Count of (the country
+of) Maine; Burcharth, Sire of (the country of) Montmorency; Landry, Duke
+of (the country of) Nevers; Radulf, Count of (the country of) Beaugency;
+Enghilbert, Count of (the country of) Ponthieu; etc. These and a number
+of other seigneurs, descendants of the leudes of Clovis or of the
+chieftains of the bands of Charles Martel, dropping their Frankish
+names, or joining to them the Gaulish names of the regions that they
+took possession of, had themselves called "seigneurs," "sires," "dukes"
+or "counts," of Paris, of Plouernel, of Montmorency, of Nevers, of
+Tonnerre, of Ponthieu, etc., etc. During those centuries of wars and
+brigandage the Nerowegs had fortified their castle, while they lived on
+rapine and on the extortion of their villeins and their serfs. Neroweg
+V., surnamed "Towhead," from the color of his hair, and Neroweg VI.,
+surnamed "Worse Than a Wolf" by the wretched people of his domains on
+account of his cruelty, proved themselves worthy of their ancestors.
+
+The manor of Plouernel raises its front on the summit of a rocky and
+arid mountain, washed on its western slope by a swift running stream,
+while on the east it beetles over a narrow path constructed over immense
+marshes, drained by a canal that feeds the vast ponds of the abbey of
+Meriadek, located several leagues off, and one time part of the large
+holdings of the diocese of Nantes. If a traveler follows the overland
+route he is compelled to cross this jetty on his way from Angers to
+Nantes, unless he be willing to make a wide detour by journeying over
+the domains of the seigneur of Castel-Redon. The vessels that sail into
+the Loire through the river of Plouernel, whose waters bathe the foot of
+the hills, pass close under the castle. The location of the lair is
+skilfully chosen. It dominates the two only routes of communication
+between the most important towns of the region. A stockade half bars the
+river of Plouernel, and serves as a shelter for the barges of the
+seigneur. Merchant vessels being signaled from the top of the donjon,
+men in arms immediately embark, board the trader, collect navigation
+dues, and not infrequently pillage the cargo. No less dangerous is the
+overland route. A palisade, into which a gate is cut, bars the passage.
+It can be crossed only upon paying a toll, arbitrarily imposed upon the
+travelers by the count's men, who, moreover, sack the baggages at their
+ease. If they suspect a traveler of being able to pay ransom they drag
+him to prison and there torture him until he consents to ransom himself.
+The ill-starred ones who may be too poor to pay the toll demanded are,
+both men and women, forced to submit to obscene affronts, ridiculous or
+cruel, to the great amusement of the men of the seigneur. On one of the
+gentler slopes of the mountain, towards the north, the little city of
+Plouernel rises in tiers, built in a semi-circle and equidistant from
+the manor and the valley, where lie scattered the villages that the
+villeins and serfs inhabit. A narrow path, winding and steep, and
+bordered here and yonder by precipices, leads up to the first fortified
+enclosure, whose ramparts, thirty feet high by two feet thick and
+flanked with large towers of brick, constitute one mass with the rock
+that serves as their foundation, a rock hewn with the pick and
+surrounded by abysses. The dizzy path that winds above the precipices
+ends in a massive door covered with iron sheets and enormous nails. It
+is the only access to the interior of the first enclosure, a somber
+court, where the sun penetrates only at noon, being otherwise kept out
+by the height of the numerous structures that lean from within upon the
+ramparts. These structures are intended for the lodgement of the
+men-at-arms, for the masons, the chapel, the bakery, the forge and
+several other workshops--a mint among them. The Count of Plouernel
+coined money like the other feudal seigneurs, and, like them, he minted
+it to his liking. In the center of the court rises the principal donjon.
+That building, square, over a hundred feet high, crowned with a platform
+from which the country is far away disclosed, rests upon three tiers of
+subterraneous cells, surrounded by a ditch full of water furnished from
+springs that also serve as cisterns. The donjon seems to rise from the
+midst of a deep pit, in which half of this massive structure appears
+hidden, its upper part rising merely above the skirt of the ditch, over
+which falls a draw bridge. Few and narrow windows, irregularly cut into
+the four sides, and almost as narrow as mere loop-holes, yielded a
+gloomy light to the several stories and to the ground floor. The
+stonework of all these buildings, blackened by the inclemencies of the
+weather and by age, rendered still more dismal the aspect of this
+fortress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AZENOR THE PALE.
+
+
+A narrow spiral staircase, built of stone, led from the bottom of the
+basement to the platform that surmounted the donjon of the manor of
+Plouernel. The men at arms, charged with the lookout on the platform,
+never failed to cross themselves when passing the door of an alcove,
+situated on the last story of the donjon, that had for its annex one of
+the turrets that rose from the four corners of the platform. It was
+whispered that the narrow window of that turret seemed internally
+illuminated at night by a glow of the color of blood, and these sinister
+lights were attributed to the sorceries of Azenor the Pale, the
+concubine of Neroweg VI. The seigneur of Plouernel had gathered in the
+chamber of his mistress a mass of precious objects, the fruits of his
+raids. A passage, concealed by a purple curtain, fringed with gold, gave
+admission to another turret, whose upper part, roofed on a level with
+the platform, served as the post for the lookout. Azenor the Pale, about
+twenty-five years of age, was of a perfect beauty. Her face was pale and
+her sensuous lips were the color of her skin, whence her surname. A
+turban of rich purple silk fabric in the shape of a chin-cloth, served
+as a frame for the visage of the sorceress, while it left exposed the
+strands of her hair, black like her eyebrows and her large eyes. Her
+tunic of silver cloth was negligently thrown over her shoulders. Her
+bosom and arms were worthy of figuring beside that beautiful Greek
+statue that has survived the centuries, and which, rumor has it, is
+still admired in the palace of the Dukes of Aquitaine. The tunic of
+Azenor, reaching only to her knees, left exposed below its silver folds
+the skirt of her dress, purple like her turban. The woman was at this
+moment engaged in molding a bit of pliable wax into two little figures
+similar to the one inserted that very morning between the teeth of
+Pierrine the Goat at the moment of her death agony. One of the puppets
+wore a bishop's robe, the other a species of armor represented by a
+dull-colored bit of cloth resembling iron. Azenor the Pale was inserting
+a certain number of needles, disposed in cabalistic order, on the left
+side of the breast of the two puppets, when the door of the alcove
+opened behind her. Neroweg VI. entered his mistress' retreat, carefully
+closing the door after him.
+
+The Count of Plouernel, surnamed "Worse than a Wolf," and at that time
+about fifty years of age, was of athletic frame. His hair no longer was
+dressed after the fashion of his ancestor, the Neroweg, leude of Clovis,
+nor after that of Neroweg, the "Terrible Eagle," savage chief of a
+savage tribe. The red hair of Neroweg VI., already grizzled, was shaven
+smooth to the middle of the temples and the skull, and then fell square
+down his neck and behind his ears. The men of war had themselves thus
+shaven in front to prevent their hair from interfering with their casque
+and standing in the way of the visor. Instead of cultivating long
+moustaches, like his ancestors, Neroweg VI. allowed to grow at full
+length only his thick and coarse beard, which thus framed in his savage
+countenance and his hooked nose. His heavy eyebrows met over his falcon
+eyes, round and piercing. Always ready for war upon his neighbors, or
+upon those troops of travelers that, at times, attempted to offer
+forcible resistance to the brigandage of the seigneurs, Neroweg VI. wore
+a casque, which he laid by on entering. His jacket and buff hose
+disappeared under a hauberk or iron coat of mail, held to his waist by a
+leathern belt, from which hung two swords, the shorter one at his right,
+the longer at his left. The hauberk guarded his arms down to the
+gauntlets, and fell slightly below his knees, which, like his legs, were
+protected by iron greaves, held together with leathern thongs. The face
+of Neroweg VI. betrayed a gloomy and troubled mind. Azenor the Pale,
+still engaged in inserting the needles into the left sides of the wax
+figures, was murmuring certain words in a strange tongue, and seemed not
+to notice the arrival of the Count. He drew slowly near, and said in a
+hollow voice: "Well, now, Azenor, is the philter ready?"
+
+Without answering, the sorceress continued her magic incantations, at
+the conclusion of which, holding up to Neroweg VI. the two puppets,
+representing a bishop and a warrior, she said: "Tell me again, which are
+the enemies whom you dread and hate the most?"
+
+"The Bishop of Nantes and Draco, Sire of Castel-Redon. These are my
+worst enemies."
+
+"Yesterday I shaped a figure like this. Has it been placed as I ordered,
+between the teeth of one about to expire on the gallows?"
+
+"One of my serfs struck my bailiff. She was hanged this morning from my
+seigniorial forks. At the moment when she gave up the ghost, the
+executioner placed the wax puppet between her teeth. Your orders have
+been carried out."
+
+"In keeping with my promise, your enemies will soon be in your power.
+Nevertheless, in order to complete the charm, these other two little
+figures will have to be buried under the root of a tree, that grows at
+the bank of a river, in which some man or woman was drowned."
+
+"That's easily done. There are large old willows growing on the banks of
+my river, and often do my men drown in it the stubborn sailors, or the
+men or women who refuse to pay the toll for my rights of navigation."
+
+"That magic spell must be cast by yourself. You will have to place these
+little figures in the designated place to-night, when the moon goes
+down, and you will pronounce three times the names of Jesus, of Astaroth
+and of Judas. The charm will then be at its full."
+
+"I do not like to see the name of Christ mixed up in all this. Are you,
+perchance, seeking to lead me into some sacrilege?"
+
+A sardonic smile played over the white lips of Azenor the Pale. "So far
+from that, I have placed the magic charm under the invocation of Christ;
+I pronounced a verse from the gospels with each needle that I buried in
+these puppets. The Lord will thus be our protector."
+
+"Had you not driven me to kill my chaplain, I might have been able to
+consult him and learn from him whether I would be committing sacrilege."
+
+"You killed the tonsured fellow because you suspected that holy man of
+improper relations with your wife, and of probably being the father of
+Guy----"
+
+"Hold your tongue!" cried Neroweg, with a voice full of anger. "Hold
+your tongue, accursed woman! Since that murder I have had no chaplain.
+No priest, consents to dwell here. Enough of that. Is the philter
+ready?"
+
+"Not yet. Have patience, seigneur Count."
+
+"What else do you want to concoct it? You wanted the blood of a young
+child; the young son of one of my serfs has been delivered to you----"
+
+"The child must be prepared for the sacrifice by magic formulas."
+
+"In a word, can you tell me when will that marvelous philter, that you
+have promised me, be ready?"
+
+"I shall work upon it this very night, during the hours between the
+rising and the going down of the moon; that's to say, for several
+hours."
+
+"That's another delay! My ailment grows apace! I suspect you of having
+cast upon me the evil spell under which I struggle, and which drives me
+to deeds of furious folly."
+
+"You are wrong in attributing to me such an influence over your fate."
+
+"Was it not you who incited me to kill my eldest son Gonthram?"
+
+"Your son tried to violate me. Of course I had to appeal to your
+intervention for protection against fresh outrages."
+
+"Had not my equerry Eberhard the Tricky thrown himself between me and
+Gonthram, I would have killed my son on his return from the hunt. He has
+insisted that you offered to yield yourself to him if he consented to
+stab me to death."
+
+"That was a dastardly calumny!"
+
+"Perhaps I should have plunged my dagger in your heart and be done with
+you."
+
+"And why did you not?"
+
+"Because you read in the stars that our lives were bound together, and
+that your death would precede mine by only three days. But if I am to
+die of the distemper that oppresses me, a curse upon you, sorceress! You
+shall not survive me. Garin the Serf-eater is charged with my vengeance.
+Oh, you will not leave this castle alive!" Neroweg pressed his forehead
+with both hands and proceeded in a spirit more and more dejected as he
+spoke: "The philter--Will it heal me? Since you cast your diabolical
+spell upon me, the days seem endless. I am indifferent to everything.
+After I make the rounds of my domains, shut in among the seigniories of
+my neighbors, all of them my enemies; after I have ravaged their lands,
+burned their houses, killed their serfs; after I have levied ransom on
+the travelers, had justice executed by my bailiff, my provost and my
+hangman; after all that I feel sadder, wearier, more than ever tired of
+life. I have even surprised myself wishing for death!"
+
+"You wage war, you eat, you drink, you hunt, you sleep and you take your
+female serfs to your bed when they marry. What is it you lack?"
+
+"I am tired, cloyed with gross enjoyments. Wine tastes sour to me. I
+feel uneasy when I hunt in my forests, fearful of some ambush prepared
+by my neighbors. I find my donjon sepulchral like a tomb. I choke under
+its stone vaults. If I leave the manor, I have ever under my eyes the
+same saddening landscape."
+
+"Leave the country, you stupid and savage wolf!"
+
+"Whither shall I go and be happier? Here I am master. What would my fate
+be elsewhere? During my absence, my neighbors would descend upon my
+domains like a flock of vultures. The devil! I am bound to my seigniory
+like my serfs to the glebe!"
+
+"Your fate is that of all the nobles, your peers."
+
+"But they are not weighed down by their existence like I. Only a few
+years ago, during the life of my wife Hermengarde, I attacked my
+neighbors as much for the pleasure of it as to appropriate their lands
+and to sack their castles. I went on the hunt for caravans of merchants
+with joy and spirit. I put the prisoners to the torture and delighted at
+their grimaces. In short, I felt that I lived; I was happy; I ate and
+drank enormously, and then fell asleep in the arms of one of my female
+serfs. The next morning I attended mass and departed for the chase, to
+battle or on a pillaging expedition; that is, on a new round of
+pleasures." After a moment's silence the seigneur of Plouernel added,
+with a sigh: "Those days I was a good Catholic! I practiced the faith of
+my fathers, and every morning, after mass, the chaplain gave me
+absolution for the deeds of the previous day! To-day, thanks to your
+wicked contrivances, all my beliefs are overthrown. I have become a
+pagan!--Aye, a pagan!"
+
+"You, poor imbecile, who carry under your hauberk four relics blessed by
+the Pope!"
+
+"Will you dare to mock me for my faith in relics?" bellowed Neroweg in a
+towering rage. "Without the relics that I carry about me you might by
+this time have dragged me to the bottom of hell, you worthy wife of
+Satan!"
+
+"Maychance you speak truth, seigneur Count!"
+
+"There is nothing human about you! Your lips are cold as marble; your
+kisses are frozen!"
+
+"When a reciprocal love shall inflame my veins, then my lips will grow
+purple, and my kisses will be of fire!"
+
+"Oh, I know it; you never loved me!"
+
+"As well love a wolf of the forest as a Neroweg. You carried me off by
+force, and I have had to submit to your lust. The man whom I adore, whom
+I have long loved, even without seeing him, is William the Ninth, the
+handsome Duke of Aquitaine."
+
+"William!" exclaimed Neroweg in an accent of ferocious jealousy. "That
+sacrilegious wretch, who carries on his shield the portrait of
+Malborgiane, his mistress!"
+
+"William is a poet; he is young, handsome, bold, bright and gay. All
+women dream of, and all men dread him. You are his vassal. Woe unto you
+should you dare cross him! He would leave not one stone on the other in
+your castle. He would make you grovel on the ground on hands and knees;
+he would clap a saddle on you and ride on your back a hundred steps at a
+stretch, agreeable to the right of a sovereign over his revolted vassal.
+You are as far removed from the handsome Duke of Aquitaine as the dull
+buzzard is from the noble falcon that darts towards the sun making its
+golden bells tinkle!"
+
+Neroweg uttered a cry of rage, and, drawing his dagger, rushed upon
+Azenor. But her marble figure remained impassive, her white lips curled
+in disdainful smile. "Kill me, coward knight, assassin!"
+
+After a moment of savage irresolution, Neroweg returned his dagger to
+the scabbard: "Oh, damned be the day I captured you on the road to
+Angers. It is you who brought down the curse that rests upon this
+castle. But will ye, nill ye, you shall yourself break the spell you
+have thrown upon me and my children, who, like their father, are
+becoming somber and silent."
+
+"That's the business of the philter, which I am preparing."
+
+The conversation was at this point interrupted by two raps on the door
+from without. Neroweg asked roughly: "Who's that?"
+
+"Seigneur Count," a voice answered, "you are waited to open the session
+of the court in the stone hall!"
+
+Neroweg made a gesture of impatience, and, donning the iron casque which
+he had laid on a settee, replied: "Once the homage of my vassals pleased
+my vanity. To-day everything annoys, everything is irksome to me. Oh,
+sad is my life!"
+
+"To-morrow, thanks to my philter, nothing more will weigh upon you--nor
+upon yours," observed Azenor, and, placing in the Count's hands the two
+little wax images, she added: "Your two enemies--the Sire of
+Castel-Redon and the Bishop of Nantes--will soon fall into your hands,
+provided you yourself place these magic figures where I have told you,
+while you pronounce three times the names of Judas, of Astaroth and of
+Jesus."
+
+"It is hard for me to pronounce the name of Jesus in connection with
+this sorcery," remarked Neroweg, raising his head and receiving almost
+fearfully the two little figures. "To-night the philter; if not, you die
+to-morrow!" Then, bethinking himself, "Where is the child?"
+
+"In that alcove," answered Azenor.
+
+Neroweg walked towards the turret, raised the curtain and saw little
+Colombaik, the son of Fergan the Quarryman, lying on the floor. The
+innocent creature was sound asleep at the foot of a stand loaded with
+vases of bizarre form. The walls of the turret, paneled with marble
+slabs, rose bare to the ceiling, the floor of whose upper story was on a
+level with the platform of the donjon. Neroweg, after contemplating the
+child for an instant, stepped out of the donjon, double-locking the door
+after him, and taking care to withdraw the key and place it in his
+jerkin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+FEUDAL JUSTICE.
+
+
+Eberhard the Tricky, one of the equerries of the seigneur of Plouernel,
+awaited his master outside of the retreat of Azenor, in company with
+Thiebold, justiciary provost of the seigniory. The latter addressed
+Neroweg, who was slowly descending the stone staircase.
+
+"The chatelain of the fort of Ferte-Mehan signed the relinquishment of
+his fief of Haut-Menil at the third wedge struck into his knee by the
+gaoler. The Sire of Breuil-le-Haudoin died of the results of the
+torture. The Abbot Guilbert offers three hundred silver sous for his
+ransom. But he has not yet been put to the torture, and such offers mean
+nothing. We shall proceed in order."
+
+"And then? What other cases are there?"
+
+"That's all. There is to-day nothing else on hand."
+
+While carrying on this conversation the Seigneur of Plouernel, his
+provost and his equerry, descended to the basement of the donjon-keep,
+at the corner where the staircase landed. A narrow window, guarded with
+enormous iron bars, alone lighted this vast hall, bare, somber and
+vaulted. In the inside yard several men-at-arms held themselves ready to
+mount their horses. Near the center of the hall, which served as a court
+of pleas, stood, according to custom, a large stone table, behind which
+ranged themselves the officers of the house of the Count--the master of
+the horse, the master of the chamber, the master of the dogs, of the
+falcons, of the table, and several other dignitaries. These people,
+instead of being paid by the seigneurs, bought from them these
+hereditary offices in their families, an inheritance that at times
+became odd by the contrast it presented between the function and the
+incumbent. It happened that a post of runner, sold in fief to an agile
+and vigorous man, often descended as the inheritance of a son, as unfit
+for the post as a broken-winded ox. The seigneurs, with an eye to
+revenue, multiplied these offices all they could, and the purchasers
+yielded, not so much to the pride of belonging to the seigniorial
+households as to the desire of sheltering themselves from the master's
+lawlessness, and of sharing the fruits of his brigandage. In those dark
+days, the choice was between oppressing or being oppressed; submitting
+to the horrors of serfdom, or becoming the instruments of the feudal
+tyrants; joining them in doing violence, robbing and torturing one's
+fellows, or resigning oneself to undergo all these sufferings himself.
+Such were the sad results of the Frankish conquest. The seigneurs
+imposed servitude, the friars preached resignation, and the people of
+Gaul became cowardly, selfish and cruel. They rent themselves with their
+own hands by turning accomplices to their gaoler.
+
+Besides the head domestics of Neroweg, present at these law
+courts,--which took the place of the Germanic "malhs" of the reign of
+Clovis--there was also the provost, the bailiff and the scribe of the
+seigniory. The latter, seated on a stool, his parchment rolls on his
+knees, his desk beside him, his pen between his teeth, awaited the
+opening of the session. The first domestics of the Count, respectful and
+timid, remained standing in a semi-circle behind their master. Since
+four of five centuries back, the class of the leudes, who, in the early
+days of the Frankish conquest, lived in common with and as equals of
+their chiefs, had ceased to exist. In the measure that the conquest
+became more firmly fixed, the titulary and beneficiary seigneurs of the
+soil of Gaul, shocked at the idea of equality contracted by their old
+companions in arms, evicted them little by little from the domains where
+chiefs and leudes had lived in common. The descendants of these obscure
+Frankish warriors, sacrificed to the pride and cupidity of the
+beneficiaries, soon fell into misery, and from misery into a servitude
+equal to that of the Gauls. Since then, Franks and Gauls--the former
+disinherited by ingratitude, the latter by conquest, and now joined in
+misery and servitude--felt a common hatred towards the church and the
+seigneurs. There were then but two classes--the _common people_, serfs,
+peasants and bourgeois or townsmen; and _nobles_, knights and seigneurs.
+The latter, isolating themselves ever more, lived like absolute
+sovereigns in their strongholds, having no equals, but only menials, the
+accomplices of their acts of brigandage; or serfs, stupefied by terror
+or besotted by the friars.
+
+Gonthram and Guy, the two sons of Neroweg, the younger at the left, the
+elder at the right of their father, attended the court. The latter had
+just reached the age of knighthood, a glorious event, so dearly paid for
+by the serfs of the seigniory. Gonthram resembled his father greatly. A
+look at the whelp told what he would be when age would have made of him
+a wolf. Guy, the younger, seventeen years of age, recalled the sardonic
+and vindictive features of his mother, Hermangarde. These two youths,
+brought up in the midst of this life of strife, of rapine and of
+debauchery, left to the violence of their passions, disposing as masters
+over an abject population, had none of the charms that are the attribute
+of adolescence. Away in a corner of the hall stood several bourgeois of
+the little town of Plouernel, who had come to complain of the exactions
+of the Count's men; or to excuse themselves for failure to pay the
+imposts in money and goods that it had pleased their seigneur to lay
+upon them; or to plead that the dues credited to the seigneur had long
+been met or exceeded; or yet to announce that they had removed from
+their roofs the weather-vanes, placed there in ignorance of the
+seigniorial rights, and taken down the pigeon houses they had started to
+raise in violation of the prescriptions of the feudal law.
+
+The court was also attended by noble vassals of Neroweg, owners of
+smaller fortified places or of manors, held under the Count of
+Plouernel, the suzerain of these fiefs, the same as Neroweg, a vassal of
+William IX., Duke of Aquitaine, held under that suzerain, who, as vassal
+of Philip I., in turn held of that French King, the supreme sovereign.
+This hierarchy of all feudal seigniories existed in name only, never in
+fact. The great vassals, veritable sovereigns, entrenched in their
+duchies, laughed at the impotent authority of the King. In turn, the
+sovereignty of the dukes was almost despised, contested or attacked by
+their vassals, who were absolute masters in their seigniories, as the
+dukes in their duchies. The immediate vassalage, however, such as rested
+on the vassals of the seigniory of Plouernel, was ever enforced in all
+its fullness and tyrannic severity. There, at any time, the implacable
+vengeance of the suzerain could reach directly the goods and chattels of
+the recalcitrant vassal. Among the people who had come from the city,
+from the fortified cities or from their manors, was a handsome young
+girl, accompanied by her mother. Sad and uneasy, the two exchanged
+alarmed looks when the seigneur of Plouernel, entering the law court
+with a somber mien, sat down on a throne, one son at his right, the
+other at his left, and ordered Garin the Serf-eater to call the roll of
+cases entered for the session.
+
+The bailiff bore no further mark of the wound he had received from
+Pierrine the Goat than a plaster on his forehead. He took up a scroll
+and commenced calling up the list of cases:
+
+"Gerhard, son of Hugh, who died last month, succeeds his father in the
+fief of Heute-Mont, held under the Count of Plouernel. He comes to
+acquit the right of relief, and to pledge fealty and homage to his
+suzerain."
+
+Thereupon, a man still young, covered with a leather casque and carrying
+at his side a long sword, stepped forth from the group of persons who
+had come to the session of the court. He came forward holding in his
+hand a large purse filled with money, and placed it on the stone table,
+thus acquitting the right of relief due the seigneur by all vassals who
+take possession of their inheritance. Then, upon a sign of the bailiff,
+the new castellan of Heute-Mont, taking off his casque and unbuckling
+the belt of his sword, placed himself humbly on both knees before the
+seigneur of Plouernel. The bailiff, however, noticing that the country
+squire, having come on horseback, retained his spurs, addressed him in
+an angry tone: "Vassal, dare you take the pledge of fealty and homage to
+your seigneur with the spurs at your heels?"
+
+The young castellan repaired the incongruity by removing his spurs and
+dropping back upon his knees at the feet of Neroweg, with hands joined
+and head lowered, he humbly waited for his seigneur to pronounce the
+consecrated formula: "You acknowledge yourself my liege as the holder of
+a fief in my seigniory?"
+
+"Yes, my seigneur."
+
+"You swear upon your soul never to carry arms against me, and to serve
+and defend me against my enemies?"
+
+"I swear it, my seigneur."
+
+"Keep thy oath. At the first felonious infraction thy fief reverts to
+me!"
+
+Gerhard rose, replaced his spurs and buckled on the belt of his sword,
+while casting a sad look upon the purse of money with which he had paid
+his right of relief.
+
+After the lord of Heute-Mont, a richly dressed young girl stepped
+forward, uneasy, trembling and her eyes full of tears. Her mother, not
+less moved than herself, accompanied her. When both were a few steps
+from the stone table, the seigneur of Plouernel said to the damsel:
+"Have you decided to obey the orders of your suzerain?"
+
+"Monseigneur," answered the young girl, in a feeble and suppliant voice,
+"it is impossible for me to resign myself to----"
+
+She could not finish. Sobs smothered her words, and, breaking out in
+tears, she dropped her head upon the shoulder of her mother, who said to
+the Count: "My good seigneur, my daughter loves Eucher, one of your own
+vassals. Eucher loves my daughter Yolande no less tenderly. The union
+of these two children would make the happiness of my life----"
+
+"No! no!" interrupted the seigneur of Plouernel, in a towering rage. "By
+the death of her father Yolande holds a fief under my seigniory. Mine
+alone is the right to dispose of her in marriage. She must choose a
+husband from among the three men whom, according to our usage, I have
+designated. They are three Franks, that is, nobles--Richard, Enquerrand
+and Conrad. The eldest of them not being yet sixty years old, the age
+limit is observed. Does Yolande accept one of my three lieges for her
+husband?"
+
+"Oh, seigneur," replied the mother imploringly, while the young girl
+sobbed aloud, "Richard is mean looking and blind of one eye; Conrad is a
+murderer; he killed his first wife in a fit of passion; Enquerrand is
+lame, wicked and feared by all who come near him, moreover, he is too
+old for my daughter, he will be sixty years within two months. None of
+them is fit for Yolande."
+
+"Your daughter, accordingly, refuses to wed one of the three men
+presented by me?"
+
+"Seigneur, she wishes no other husband than Eucher; and I may assure you
+the lad is worthy of the love of my daughter."
+
+"The devil! We have had words enough. If your daughter insists upon
+refusing to select from among my men, and marries Eucher, the fief
+reverts to me. It is my right. I shall enforce it."
+
+"In the name of heaven, monseigneur, if you appropriate our lands what
+shall we live on? Are we to beg our bread? Have pity upon us!"
+
+Yolande raised her beautiful face, pale and wet with tears, took a step
+towards Neroweg, and said, with dignity: "Keep the heritage of my
+father. I prefer to live in poverty with him whom I love than to wed any
+of these men of yours who inspire me with horror."
+
+"My daughter!" exclaimed the distracted mother, "disobedience to the
+seigneur of Plouernel means misery for us!"
+
+"Marriage with one of the three men proposed, means death to me,"
+answered the poor child.
+
+"Seigneur, good seigneur!" resumed the stricken mother, "deign to allow
+Yolande to remain a spinster. You would not force her to the choice
+between our ruin and a marriage that horrifies her?"
+
+"No fief can remain in the possession of a woman," was the sententious
+utterance of the bailiff. "Usage is opposed to it."
+
+"We have had enough of words!" cried out Neroweg, stamping the ground
+with rage. "This young woman refuses to wed one of my men. The fief is
+now mine. Bailiff, you will this evening send a force to take possession
+of the house and all its contents. You will eject the two women."
+
+"Mother, let's depart," said Yolande, proudly. "We once were free and
+happy; now we are no better than serfs. But I prefer their sad lot to
+that reserved for me by Count Neroweg in delivering me to one of his
+bandits."
+
+Undoubtedly the seigneur of Plouernel would have revenged himself for
+the bitter reproaches of Yolande had he not been prevented by the sudden
+arrival of one of his men, who, running in all out of breath, brought
+news of the arrest of the Bishop of Nantes, who had appeared at the toll
+gate disguised as a mendicant friar, and was recognized by one of the
+guards.
+
+"The Bishop of Nantes in my power!" exclaimed Neroweg. "Azenor predicted
+it. Her magic charm begins to operate!" He rose precipitately from his
+throne, and, followed by his sons and several of his equerries, ran to
+meet the bishop, his enemy, who was being led a prisoner, together with
+the other travelers captured by the armed guards posted at the toll
+gate. Bezenecq the Rich and his daughter Isoline accompanied Simon, the
+Bishop of Nantes, and the monk Jeronimo, clad like a prelate. After his
+vain efforts to induce the travelers not to cross the seigniory of
+Plouernel, the bishop had, nevertheless, joined them, not venturing to
+enter alone with Jeronimo upon the territory of the seigneur of
+Castel-Redon, and hoping he would pass unperceived amidst a numerous
+troop. Unhappily for him, among the guards at the gate was a soldier
+named Robin the Nantesian, who had lived in the city of Nantes, and
+where he had opportunity to see the leading personages among the
+inhabitants. He quickly pointed out Bezenecq the Rich as a townsman from
+whom it would be easy to extract a big ransom. Noticing, thereupon, a
+monk, who seemed anxious to keep his cowl over his head, he pulled the
+frock off the monk and recognized the Bishop of Nantes, a personal enemy
+of the Count. The men of Neroweg then seized the two friars, pinioned
+them, as well as Bezenecq and his daughter, and accepted the toll from
+the other passengers, whom they allowed to pursue their journey. The
+bourgeois of Nantes, bound upon his mule, with his daughter bathed in
+tears at the crupper, was carried to the castle, with the bishop and
+Jeronimo, their hands tied behind their backs, following on foot. When
+the captives arrived at the first court-yard of the castle, Bezenecq
+alighted from the saddle, and, freed from his bandages, he held up his
+daughter, ready to faint. The bishop, pale as death, leaned upon the arm
+of Jeronimo, whose resolute carriage betrayed no fears. Neroweg,
+accompanied by his sons, arrested his hurrying steps when he came close
+to the prisoners, and, addressing them, said, sardonically: "I greet
+you, Simon! I greet you, holy man, my father in Christ! I hardly looked
+for this joyful meeting!"
+
+"I am at your mercy," answered the prelate; "the will of God be done. Do
+with me as you will."
+
+"I shall avail myself of your leave," replied the seigneur of Plouernel.
+"Oh, this is a happy day to me!"
+
+"I ask only one favor," rejoined the bishop, "the favor of keeping near
+me this poor monk until the moment of my death, that he may help me to
+die like a Christian."
+
+"I do not mean to send you quite so soon to Paradise. I have other
+designs upon you," and beckoning to Garin the Serf-eater to draw near,
+the seigneur of Plouernel whispered a few words in his ear. The bailiff
+nodded affirmatively, crossed the drawbridge and entered the donjon.
+
+During their father's brief dialogue with the bishop, Guy and Gonthram
+had not ceased to pursue Isoline with their lascivious looks, and the
+frightened young girl had hidden her face on the breast of her father.
+Robin the Nantesian, raising his voice, said to Neroweg, while placing
+his hand on the shoulder of the townsman: "This is one of the richest
+merchants of the city of Nantes. He is called Bezenecq the Rich. Forget
+not that he is worth his weight in gold."
+
+The Count fastened his falcon eyes upon the captive, and, taking two
+steps toward him, said: "Your name is Bezenecq the Rich?"
+
+"I am so called, noble seigneur," humbly answered the bourgeois. "If
+your men have arrested me in order to make me pay ransom, I only request
+not to be separated from my daughter. Hand me a parchment. I shall write
+to the depositary of my money to deliver a hundred gold sous to whomever
+of your men shall deliver my letter to him. You will have the sum upon
+the return of your messenger, and you will then return our liberty to
+myself and my daughter." Seeing that the Count shrugged his shoulders
+with a sardonic smile, the merchant added: "Illustrious seigneur,
+instead of one hundred gold sous I will give you two hundred. But, I
+pray you, for mercy's sake, have me taken with my daughter to some
+apartment where the poor child may recover from her fright and the
+fatigues of the journey." Isoline, more and more alarmed at the ardent
+looks of the two whelps, trembled convulsively. Neroweg, silent as
+before, looked from time to time towards the donjon as if awaiting the
+return of the bailiff. Bezenecq resumed with an effort: "Seigneur, if
+two hundred pieces of gold do not yet suffice you, I shall go as far as
+three hundred. It means my ruin. But I resign myself to that, provided
+you set my daughter and myself free."
+
+At that moment Garin the Serf-eater came out of the donjon, recrossed
+the draw bridge and spoke in an undertone to Neroweg, who, turning to
+the prisoners, said: "Come along, my guests! You will learn what I am to
+do with you. You are to have a chat with a certain dame of great powers
+of persuasion."
+
+"Oh, you butcher! You mean to put me to the torture!" cried the bishop,
+horror stricken. "Jesus, my God, have pity upon me! Mercy! Mercy!"
+
+"No weakness, Simon," whispered Jeronimo to him; "we must submit to the
+will of God. His ways are inscrutable."
+
+"Let the bishop be taken to his lodging; the monk shall keep him
+company." The bishop emitted lamentable cries and essayed to resist the
+men who were dragging him into the donjon. "It is now your turn to step
+in, Bezenecq the Rich. Come, brother, resistance is useless."
+
+"Have I not offered you three hundred gold sous for my ransom, Count of
+Plouernel?" asked the merchant. "If you do not find that sum enough I
+shall add another hundred gold pieces. I shall have given you my whole
+fortune!"
+
+"Oh, worthy brother, in honor to the commerce of Nantes, I cannot admit
+that one of its wealthiest merchants is worth only four hundred gold
+sous!" Then, turning to his men: "Conduct my guest and his daughter to
+their quarters."
+
+At the moment when the men of Neroweg were about to take hold of
+Bezenecq the Rich, Gonthram, brutally seizing the hand of Isoline, whom
+the merchant held fainting in his embrace, said: "I take this girl! She
+is my share of the ransom!"
+
+"I also want her," cried out Guy, his eyes all aflame and advancing
+toward his brother with a menacing look. But Gonthram, little caring for
+the words and threats of his brother, made ready to seize the maid and
+carry her off. Guy then drew his sword. Gonthram in turn drew his, while
+the daughter of the townsman, distracted with terror, shrank within
+herself, inert, in a swoon.
+
+"Guy! Gonthram! Put up your swords! This maid shall be none of yours,"
+ordered Neroweg. "She shall not leave her father. In the presence of his
+daughter the bourgeois will prove more accommodating. Put back your
+swords! You, Garin," he went on, turning to the bailiff, "take this
+beauty in your arms, if she cannot walk, and carry her in with the old
+man."
+
+Isoline, catching, despite her terror, the last words of Neroweg, rose
+to her feet with an effort and said to Garin in a suppliant voice: "For
+mercy's sake, my good seigneur, take me along with my father. I shall
+have strength to walk."
+
+"Come," answered the bailiff, leading her to the draw bridge, while Guy
+and Gonthram, slowly returning their swords to their scabbards,
+exchanged such vindictive looks that the Count considered it necessary
+to remain near them in order to prevent a fresh outbreak.
+
+Isoline, following Garin with unsteady step, crossed the draw bridge and
+entered the hall of the stone table, where still several vassals of the
+seigneur awaited the close of the session that had been interrupted by
+the arrival of the prisoners. At one of the corners of this hall was the
+stone staircase that led down in a spiral from the platform of the
+donjon to its lowest cells. Near the steps was a trap door. Two men of
+sinister figure, clad in goat skins and carrying lanterns in their
+hands, stood near the gaping opening. Bezenecq was loudly calling for
+his daughter, and resisting with all his force the men who were dragging
+him in. Seeing, however, his daughter advancing towards him, he ceased
+to offer resistance, but broke down, weeping.
+
+"Hurry up, my rich townsman!" said Garin the Serf-eater to him; "my
+seigneur wishes that you and your daughter remain together." Then,
+turning to the gaolers who carried the lanterns: "Go down first and
+light our way." The gaolers obeyed, and soon the merchant and Isoline
+disappeared with them in the depths of the subterranean donjon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ABBOT AND MONK.
+
+
+The donjon cells of the manor of Plouernel consisted of three vaulted
+stories, the only daylight into which penetrated through three narrow
+slits opening upon the gigantic ditch, out of which rose the donjon
+itself. Within, apart from a massive door studded with iron, these cells
+consisted of stone only--they were roofed with stone, floored with
+stone, and the walls were of stone, ten feet thick. The cell, whither
+the Bishop of Nantes and the monk Jeronimo were taken, was at the very
+bottom of this subterraneous structure. A narrow loophole barely
+filtered through a pale ray of light into that semi-Stygian darkness.
+The walls sweated a greenish moisture. In the center of the dungeon
+stood a stone bed, intended for torture or death. Chains and heavy iron
+rings fastened to the headpiece, to the sides and the feet of the long
+stone slab, that rose three feet above the floor, announced the purpose
+of that funereal couch, on which were now seated the monk and the Bishop
+of Nantes. The latter, a prey at first to agonizing despair, had by
+degrees recovered his composure. His face, now almost serene with a
+melancholic good nature, contrasted with the somber severity of his
+companion. "I am now resigned to death," the prelate was saying to
+Jeronimo, "yet I confess, I feel my heart fail me at the thought of
+leaving my wife and children without protection in days as dark as these
+are."
+
+"There you have one of the consequences of the marriage of priests," the
+monk answered. "How justly did Gregory VII. reason when he forced the
+councils to interdict marriage to the clergy!"
+
+After a moment's silence the Bishop of Nantes resumed with a melancholy
+smile: "Stoics, like the philosophers of antiquity, let's consider at
+this very moment of imminent torture and death the dogmas that bear upon
+our present situation."
+
+"Let's commence with the great question of the spiritual and temporal
+dominion of the church."
+
+"It is a grand subject. I listen."
+
+"In our days, for every twenty abbots or bishops who are sovereign in
+their abbeys or bishoprics, are there not a hundred dukes, counts,
+marquises or seigneurs, sovereign masters in their dukedoms, counties or
+seigniories?"
+
+"Sad to say, 'tis so!"
+
+"Did not a large portion of the estates, that proceeded from the gifts
+of Charles Martel, return to the hands of the clergy at the time of the
+terror the people were seized with at the thought of the end of the
+world,--a terror ably fomented by the church down to the year 1000, and
+prolonged to 1033 by dint of able maneuvers?"
+
+"That's true, too. The terrified seigneurs abandoned to the church a
+large part of their goods, thinking the day of judgment was at hand.
+Since then, however, the same seigneurs, or their descendants, retook
+their rich donations from the clergy. The hatred that the Count Neroweg
+pursues me with has no other cause than the recovery of the lands that
+his grandfather bequeathed to my predecessor, at the time when those
+brutes expected to see the end of the world. The Count wages war against
+me to re-enter upon domains that once belonged to his family. The lance
+is rising against the holy water sprinkler."
+
+"It has been so in all the other provinces. One of the causes of the
+wars of the seigneurs against the bishops and abbots has, for the last
+fifty years, been the recovery of the goods given to the Church on the
+occasion of the end of the world. In these impious strifes the seigneurs
+have almost always come out on top. The church was vanquished."
+
+"It is a sad fact."
+
+"In order to recover its omnipotence, the Church must again become
+richer than the seigneurs. She must, above all, rid herself forever of
+those brigands who dare reach out a sacrilegious hand towards the goods
+of the Church, and assault the priests of our Lord, the ministers of
+God."
+
+"Alack, Jeronimo, it is a far way from the wish to the fact! The sword
+gets the best of the bishop's crook!"
+
+"The distance is simply the journey from here to Jerusalem. That's all!"
+
+The bishop regarded the monk with amazement, repeating without
+understanding the words: "The journey from here to Jerusalem!"
+
+"I am a legate of Pope Urban II." proceeded Jeronimo. "As such, I am
+initiated in the policies of Rome. The French Pope Gerbert, and, after
+him, Gregory VII., conceived a great idea--to submit the peoples of
+Europe to the papal will. In order, however, to habituate them to a
+passive obedience, an ostensible purpose had to be held out. Gerbert
+conceived the thought of the deliverance of the tomb of Christ, which
+had fallen into the hands of the Saracens, the masters of Syria and
+Jerusalem. This pregnant thought, conceived in the head of Gerbert and
+hatched out by Gregory VII., was the subject of long cogitations on the
+part of their successors. The Popes recommended to the faithful the
+pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to which they attached special indulgences and
+privileges. The people of Germany, of Spain, of Gaul, of England,
+gradually began to hear Jerusalem, the Holy City, talked about. The
+pilgrimages multiplied. Long though the voyage was, it did not seem
+impossible; moreover, it insured indulgences for all crimes, and, above
+all, it was a pleasure trip for the mendicants, the vagabonds, the
+runaway serfs from the domains of their masters. The pilgrims found good
+lodgings in the abbeys; they picked up some little money in the cities,
+and obtained free passage on the Genoese or Venetian vessels as far as
+Constantinople, where they then departed for Jerusalem, traversing Syria
+and lodging over night from convent to convent. Arrived at the Holy
+City, they paid their devotions."
+
+"And all that without any interference on the part of the Saracens. We
+must admit it among ourselves, Jeronimo, those miscreants showed
+themselves quite tolerant! The churches rose in peace beside the
+mosques; the Christians lived in tranquility, and the pilgrims were
+never incommoded."
+
+"And it remained so," continued Jeronimo, "until the Saracens,
+exasperated by the anathemas hurled at the sectarians of Mahomet by the
+Catholic priests of Jerusalem, brought their hammer down upon the holy
+Temple of Solomon and demolished it--a demolition, however, that we
+avenged upon Jews by massacring them in the several countries of Europe.
+But after all, we cared little about the destruction of the Temple, or
+the safety of the Sepulchre. Our end was attained. The people had
+learned to know the road to Jerusalem. The sandals of the pilgrims had
+smoothed the road to the Holy Land to the Catholic peoples. The number
+of pilgrims increased from year to year. Often seigneurs, certain to
+obtain by means of that pious voyage the absolution of their crimes,
+joined the pilgrim vagabonds and beggars. That perpetual flux and reflux
+of peoples of all stations drew ever more the eyes of Europe to the
+Orient. The marvels narrated by the pilgrims upon the return from their
+long voyage, the relics that they brought back, the respect with which
+the Church surrounded them,--everything affected more and more the
+spirit of credulity and the vulgar imagination of the masses. Gregory
+VII. foresaw these results. He considered it opportune to preach the
+Holy War. The Church raised her voice: 'Shame and sorrow upon the
+Catholic world! The Sepulchre of the Saviour of man is in the power of
+the Saracens! Kings and seigneurs, march at the head of your peoples to
+the deliverance of the Sepulchre of Christ and the extermination of the
+infidels.' To that premature appeal Europe remained indifferent. The
+hour of the Crusades had not yet sounded. Since then, however, the idea
+has made progress, and to-day we are certain to find the minds disposed
+to second the Pope in his projects. Accordingly, Urban II. has not
+hesitated to leave Rome and come to preach the Crusade in Gaul, the
+Catholic country _par excellence!_"
+
+"What say you? The Pope himself is coming to preach the Crusade! Can
+that be true, oh, my God!"
+
+"His Holiness is bound for Auvergne, and he sends his emissaries into
+the other provinces."
+
+"And who are the men invested with the confidence of the Pope, and
+charged with leading such an undertaking to a successful end?"
+
+"One of them, Peter the Hermit, vulgarly called 'Cuckoo Peter,' is a
+monk who has twice accomplished the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He is an
+ardent man, gifted with a savage eloquence that exercises upon the
+multitudes a powerful effect. Another emissary is Walter the Pennyless,
+a knight of adventure, bold Gascon, charged to seduce with the
+cheerfulness of his words and the exaggeration of his descriptions all
+those who might remain indifferent to the savage eloquence of Peter the
+Hermit."
+
+"But what arguments will these emissaries advance in order to rouse the
+masses to these insensate migrations?"
+
+"I shall answer that question presently. But let me remind you of the
+principal motives of the church to drive the people to the Crusades; to
+habituate Catholic Europe to rise at the voice of the Pope for the
+extermination of heretics; to switch off to Palestine a large number of
+the seigneurs who are contending with the Church for the goods of the
+earth and the dominion of the people,--to get rid of one's enemies."
+
+"The idea is good, profound, politic. I can well see the object that the
+Pope has in view."
+
+"Let me, furthermore, call your attention to a fact that renders
+necessary a large migration of the common people to the Holy Land. In
+Gaul, despite the private wars of the seigneurs and the sufferings of
+this century, the population of the serfs has multiplied to an
+extraordinary degree during the last fifty years."
+
+"That is so. The serf population, decimated by the famines that reigned
+from 1000 to 1034, immediately began to recover with the years of plenty
+that followed upon those of dearth."
+
+"Aided, above all, by the action of the Church when, desirous of
+repeopling her domains, stripped of its agricultural serfs, she caused
+the 'Armistice of God' to be proclaimed, interdicting the seigneurs and
+the bishops from levying war during three days of each week under
+penalty of excommunication."
+
+"That plebeian increase brought on the formidable revolts of the serfs
+of Normandy and Brittany, when doggerels were sung containing strophes
+of unheard-of audacity, as you may judge from this one:
+
+    Why allow we ourselves to be oppressed?
+    Are we not human like the seigneurs?
+    Have we not, as they, body and limbs?
+    Is not our heart as large as theirs?
+    Are we not one hundred serfs to a single knight?
+    Let's then be up striking with our pitchforks and our scythes!
+    For lack of arms, take the stones the roads are strewn with!
+                'Death to the friars!'
+
+"And that's the truth, Jeronimo! Those songs of revolt gave the signal
+to terrible insurrections in Normandy and Brittany. But two or three
+millions of the rebels had their eyes put out, their feet and hands
+chopped off, and the revolt was stamped out. Those wicked people must be
+exterminated."
+
+"In order to conjure away the return of similar uprisings, it is
+necessary to lead abroad the plebeian increase. The plebs grows
+threatening by reason of its numbers and the force that numbers carry
+with them. In order to weaken it, it will be enough to make it depart on
+the Crusade across Europe."
+
+"Explain to me how the Crusades are expected to bring about the results
+that you consider needful, and that the exhortations of the papal
+emissaries are to invoke."
+
+"Is it not evident that, for every thousand serfs who will leave Gaul to
+fight in Palestine, barely a hundred will arrive as far as Jerusalem?
+Those wretches, departing penniless, in rags, without provisions,
+carrying wife and children in their train, ravaging the regions they
+traverse--Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Bulgaria, the countries of the
+Danube--because, in the course of so long a voyage, such multitudes
+cannot live without pillage along the route, three-fourths of them will
+have been exterminated by the inhabitants of the countries that they
+must cross, or will die of hunger and fatigue before being able to reach
+Jerusalem. The small number of them that will arrive before the Holy
+City will be still further decimated by the Saracens. It is safe to say
+that hardly any of those who leave will return. Thus we shall be rid of
+this vile and dangerous populace that dares rise against its masters,
+especially against the Church."
+
+"It remains to be seen, Jeronimo, whether this plebs mass will be
+senseless enough to venture upon so distant and perilous a journey."
+
+The monk answered: "Is not the lot of the villeins and the serfs on the
+lay or ecclesiastical seigniories the most wretched? And, of all the
+yokes, is not that of the glebe the heaviest, which forbids them to
+cross the boundaries of their own seigniory. When the Church will say to
+those myriads of people, chained down to the glebe: 'Go! You are free!
+March off to fight the Saracens in Palestine, the country of miracles,
+where you will gather an immense booty! Take no heed of provisions for
+the journey, God will provide! Above all, you will accomplish your
+eternal salvation!' the serfs will depart in mass, drawn by the desire
+to be free, the thirst for booty, the spirit of adventure, and by the
+pious ardor to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the defilement of the
+infidels!"
+
+"Jeronimo," rejoined the Bishop of Nantes, "the craving after freedom,
+the spirit of adventure, the hope of booty, may, perhaps, drive those
+wretches to Palestine. But desire to avenge the tomb of the Saviour from
+the pretended defilement of the infidels, is, meseems, too feeble a
+motive. We shall fail there."
+
+"When this holy cause, thrice holy and eloquently preached by the
+Church, is furthermore backed by the thirst for freedom, the hope of
+booty, the certainty of gaining Paradise, and curiosity regarding the
+future, that, though unknown, could not be worse than the present, the
+attraction of the populace for Palestine will become irresistible."
+
+"I grant it. But will the seigneurs consent to have their lands thus
+depopulated by allowing the serfs to depart for the Crusades?"
+
+"As much as ourselves do the seigneurs dread the revolt of the serfs. In
+that we two have a common interest. Moreover, that plebs overflow, which
+it is the part of wisdom to empty out abroad, constitutes, at the
+highest, only one-third of the serfs. Only that third will depart."
+
+"And who guarantees that many more will not yield to the attraction,
+that you consider irresistible, and will not go along?"
+
+"This plebs mass has become craven through the habit of slavery that
+weighs it down since the Frankish conquest. Only a part of the village
+and country populations is sufficiently disposed to revolt. It is those
+very ones who are most impatient of the yoke, the most intelligent, the
+most venturesome, the most daring, and, consequently, the most
+dangerous, who will be the first to start for Palestine. Thus shall we
+be rid of those inciters of rebellion."
+
+"That reasoning is correct."
+
+"Thus only one-third of the rustic plebs will emigrate. Those who remain
+behind will suffice to cultivate the land. Being fewer to the task,
+their toil will increase. The ox that is heavily burdened, the ass that
+is heavily laden, does not kick. The danger of a new revolt will have
+been conjured off. The Church will resume her preponderance over both
+the plebs and the seigneurs."
+
+"I admire, Jeronimo, the powerful combinations of the politics of the
+papacy. But one of the most important results of this policy would be to
+deliver us from a large number of those accursed seigneurs, always at
+war against us. Oh, they will not, like the serfs, be driven by the
+desire to escape a fearful lot, or of enjoying freedom. They, I fear,
+will remain at home."
+
+"A large number of them are as anxious as their serfs to change their
+condition. After all, what is the life of these seigneurs? Is it not
+that of chiefs of brigands? Always at war; always on the watch, fearing
+to be attacked or surprised by their neighbors; unable but rarely to
+leave their seigniories except armed to the teeth; often not daring even
+to go on the hunt in their own domains; forced to entrench themselves in
+their lairs; these ferocious men are tired of such monotonous life. They
+will follow the stream."
+
+"I have, indeed, often been struck by the expression of mortal tiredness
+reflected upon the faces of the seigneurs."
+
+"This will be the language of the friars to these men steeped in crime,
+brutified almost as much as their own serfs, and all of them nursing at
+the bottom of their hearts a more or less profound fear of the devil:
+'You are smothering in your castles of stone; you here wrangle over the
+meager spoils of some traveler, or over the barren lands of the
+Occident--lands peopled with wretches resembling animals rather than
+human beings. Leave the ungrateful soil and somber sky of the Occident!
+Go to Palestine, go to the Orient, the land of azure and of sunshine,
+fertile, splendid, radiant, studded with magnificent cities, palaces of
+marble, gilded cupolas, delicious gardens! There you will find the
+treasures for centuries accumulated by the Saracens, treasures so
+prodigious that they suffice to pave with gold, rubies, pearls and
+diamonds the whole road from Gaul to Jerusalem! God delivers into your
+hands that teeming soil, its palaces, its beautiful women, its
+treasures. Depart on the Holy War!' A large number of seigneurs will
+bite with all the snap of their heavy jaws at that bait glittering with
+all the fires of the sun of the Orient."
+
+"You are right, Jeronimo," observed the Bishop of Nantes. "But do you
+not fear that the seigniorial station, thus stripped, shrunk and ruined,
+will leave the place open for the royalty, to-day without power, and
+that that royalty will not endeavor to share with us the dominion of the
+people, and will not even strive to dominate the Church?"
+
+"We need not fear the rivalry of the Kings. Even their private interests
+are to us a safe guarantee of their submission to the will of the Pope,
+the representative of God on earth, the dispenser of eternal rewards or
+punishments."
+
+"Oh, Jeronimo, your words have opened a new horizon before me. I see now
+the future of the Catholic Church in all her formidable majesty. I now
+cleave to life, and would wish to assist at that magnificent spectacle."
+
+"This topic has a close bearing upon our present position of prisoners
+of Neroweg VI, and you must inspire yourself with it, Simon, to the end
+that you may regulate your conduct accordingly."
+
+"Tell me what I am to do, Jeronimo. I can take no more precious a guide
+than you in all matters concerning our holy religion."
+
+"Neroweg relies upon your torture to extort from you the possession of
+the domains of your diocese, which he has long coveted. Accede to all
+that he may demand. Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless will not
+be long in arriving in this region to preach the Crusade. Neroweg will
+depart for Jerusalem, and will not be able to profit from the
+concessions you will have granted."
+
+"But say he insists upon putting me to the torture to glut his thirst
+for revenge upon me! I shudder at the prospect."
+
+The conversation between the Bishop of Nantes and the monk was here
+interrupted by a rumbling and weird noise, that seemed to proceed from
+the interior of the thick wall. The two prelates trembled with affright,
+and looked at each other. Then, drawing near the wall in the direction
+from which the noise came, they applied their ears with bated breath.
+But the noise slowly receded, and a few minutes later died away
+completely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CHAMBER OF TORTURE.
+
+
+The dungeon of Bezenecq the Rich and his daughter, vaulted and floored
+with stone slabs like the other subterranean cells, but located on the
+second story of that redoubtable structure, received a somewhat better
+light from its narrow loop-hole. In the center of the cell stood a
+gridiron, six feet long, three wide, raised a good deal above the floor,
+and constructed of iron bars placed slightly apart from each other.
+Chains and rings, fastened to the gridiron, served to keep the victim in
+position. Near this instrument of punishment rose two other engines of
+torture, devised with ingenious ferocity. The one consisted of a
+projecting iron bar, in the nature of a gibbet about seven or eight feet
+above the floor, and terminating in an iron carcan that opened and
+closed at will. A heavy stone, weighing about two tons, and furnished
+with a ring and a strap to hang it by, lay at the foot of the gibbet.
+The other engine had the appearance of a gigantic prong, sharp and
+turned back similar to those used by butchers to hang their quarters of
+beef on. The slabs of the flooring, covered everywhere else with
+greenish moisture, wore a blood-red tint under the prong. Opposite to
+this instrument of punishment, there was grossly sculptured on the wall,
+a sort of grinning mask, hideous, half beast, half human; its eyes and
+the cavity of its gaping mouth, resembled deep black holes. Finally,
+close to the door of the cell stood a wooden box full of straw, and
+there lay the daughter of the townsman of Nantes, colorless like a
+corpse, and frozen with terror. At times her body shook with convulsive
+shivers, other times she remained motionless, her eyes shut, without,
+therefore, however, her tears ceasing to stream down her cheeks.
+Bezenecq the Rich, seated on the edge of the straw bed, his elbows on
+his knees and his forehead hidden in his hands, was saying to himself:
+"The seigneur of Plouernel.... A descendant of Neroweg!... Strange,
+fatal encounter!... Woe is us!"
+
+"Oh, father," murmured the maid in a fainting voice, "this encounter is
+our sentence of death."
+
+"The sentence of our ruin, but not of our death. Calm yourself, poor
+child, the seigneur of Plouernel knows not that our obscure family,
+descended from the Gallic chieftain Joel, who made a head against Caesar,
+has been at strife with his own all through the past ages, since the
+Frankish conquest. But when that bailiff pronounced the name of Neroweg
+VI, which I had not heard mention during this ill-starred journey, and
+when, questioned by me, that man answered his master belonged to the
+ancient Frankish family of Neroweg, established in Auvergne since the
+conquest of Gaul by Clovis, I no longer had any doubts, and, despite
+myself, I shuddered at the recollection of our family records, which our
+father once read to us at Laon, and that have remained in that country,
+in the hands of Gildas, my elder brother."
+
+"Oh, why did our grandfather leave Brittany. Our family lived there so
+happy."
+
+"Dear child, our grandfather, who lived near the sacred stones of
+Karnac, the cradle of our family, could no longer endure the oppression
+of the Breton seigneurs, who had grown to be as cruel as their Frankish
+fellows. He sold his little havings, and embarked with his wife at
+Vannes on a merchant vessel bound for Abbeville. He settled down in that
+city, where he set up a modest trade. Later, my father moved into the
+province of Picardy, and settled at Laon, where my elder brother Gildas
+still carries on the currier's trade. Coming by sea from Abbeville to
+Nantes to traffic in the articles of our trade, manufactured in Laon, I
+became acquainted with your mother, the daughter of the merchant to
+whom I was directed. Her parents did not wish to part from her. They
+made me promise not to leave Nantes. I became the partner of my wife's
+father, and grew rich in the business. Your mother then died. You were
+still a child. Her death was the greatest sorrow of my life. But you
+were left to me. You grew in gracefulness and beauty. Everything smiled
+upon me again. I was happy. And behold us now, while yielding to the
+wishes of your grandmother--" and Bezenecq interrupted himself with a
+cry of despair: "Oh, it is frightful!"
+
+"But how could we have merited the terrible punishment that seems
+reserved to us?"
+
+"Oh," replied the bourgeois of Nantes with a sigh, "my happiness
+rendered me forgetful of the misfortune of our brothers! I was selfish!"
+
+"Dear father, you surely exaggerate the faults or errors of your life."
+
+"Millions of serfs and villeins people the lands of the seigneurs and
+the clergy. Among them, some drag along a painful existence, that ends
+in death from exhaustion and misery; others are hanged from the
+patibulary forks. Those unhappy people are Gauls like ourselves. If some
+townsmen live in tranquility in the cities, when they have for seigneur
+so gentle a master as Simon of Nantes, millions of serfs and villeins,
+on the other hand, are devoted to all the miseries of life, and victims
+to the seigniories and the Church."
+
+"But, father, it did not depend upon you to alleviate the ills of these
+wretched folks."
+
+"My father spoke like a brave and generous man when he said to the
+bourgeoisie of the city of Laon: 'We are subject to the exactions of the
+bishop, our seigneur. But, after all, we townsmen enjoy certain
+franchises. It, therefore, devolves upon us, being more intelligent and
+less miserable than the serfs of the fields, to aid these to their
+deliverance by ourselves rising against the seigneurs, and thus setting
+the example of revolt against oppression. In the instances where, of
+their own accord, they rise as happened in Normandy, as happened in
+Picardy, as happened in Brittany, it is then our duty to place ourselves
+at their head, in order to insure the success of the insurrection. Is it
+not a shame; an unworthy timidity, to allow those unhappy men to be
+crushed and punished for a cause that is ours as much as theirs? Does
+not the tyranny of the nobles and the friars weigh upon us also. Are not
+we the prey of the feudal brigands the moment we leave the enclosure of
+the cities, where we suffer an amplitude of affronts?' But my father's
+words were not able to convince the townsmen to decide upon
+insurrection. They feared to risk their property and make their lot
+worse. Myself, having grown rich, sided with the self-seekers, and I
+echoed the views of the other merchants: 'No doubt, the condition of the
+serfs is horrible, but I can do nothing to improve it, and I dare not
+stake my life and fortune upon the result of an insurrection.' Our
+cowardly and selfish indifference increased the audacity of the
+seigneurs, until to-day we cannot set foot outside the cities without
+being exposed to the brigandage of the chatelains. Oh, my child, I am
+punished for having lacked energy and for disregarding the precepts of
+my father!"
+
+"We are lost; there is no hope left!" exclaimed the maid, no longer able
+to restrain her sobs. "Death, a shocking death awaits us!" And Isoline,
+whose teeth chattered with terror, directed her father's attention, with
+a gesture, to the instruments of torture that furnished the cell. Hiding
+her face in her hands, she moaned convulsively.
+
+"Isoline," rejoined Bezenecq imploringly and overcome with grief, "my
+beloved child, listen to the word of reason. Terror exaggerates. The
+aspect of this subterranean dungeon frightens. Oh, I understand that.
+But let's not lose all hope. When I shall have subscribed to all that
+the seigneur of Plouernel can exact from me, when I shall have consented
+to strip myself for his benefit of all that I possess, what do you
+imagine he could still do? Of what use to him would it be to have me
+tortured? He entertains against me no personal hatred. He is after my
+wealth. I shall give it all, absolutely all."
+
+"Good father, you are seeking to calm my spirit. I thank you a thousand
+times."
+
+"Is not our fate sufficiently sad? Why make the reality still darker? I
+had hoped to give you a rich dower, to bequeath to you later my
+property, that would have insured the happiness of your children. And
+now I am about to be stripped of all. Our descendants will be reduced to
+poverty!"
+
+"Oh, if only the seigneur of Plouernel grants us our lives, I would care
+little for that wealth that, for my sake, you bemoan."
+
+"Nor shall I be less courageous than you," said Bezenecq, tenderly
+clasping the hands of his daughter: "I shall imagine I placed all my
+money on board a ship that went down. Once out of this infernal castle,
+dear child, we shall return to Nantes. I shall see my friend Thibault
+the Silversmith. He knows my aptitude for commerce. He will employ me,
+and will pay me a salary that will suffice for our needs. But it will be
+necessary, my pretty Isoline," Bezenecq proceeded, forcing a smile to
+calm his daughter, "it will then be necessary for you to sew our clothes
+with your own little white hands, and prepare our frugal meals. Instead
+of inhabiting our beautiful house on the place of Marche-Neuf, we shall
+take humble lodgings in the quarter of the ramparts. But, what of it,
+provided the heart is joyful! Moreover, I shall always have in my pocket
+a few deniers wherewith occasionally, on my return home, to buy you a
+new ribbon for your neck, my dear, sweet child, or a bouquet of roses to
+cheer your little bedroom."
+
+Isoline felt hope rising within her at the words of her father, and shut
+her eyes not to be reminded of the horrible reality by the sight of the
+hideous stone mask and of the instruments of punishment. The maid hid
+her face on the breast of her father and murmured with emotion: "Oh, if
+only your words would prove true! If we only could quit this castle! So
+far from regretting our lost riches, I would thank God for affording me
+the opportunity of working for my venerated father!"
+
+"Damosel Isoline, I shall know how to provide," gayly replied Bezenecq.
+"Moreover, who knows, but I may soon find an assistant. Who knows but
+that some worthy lad will demand you in marriage, falling in love with
+this charming face, when it shall have regained its rosy hue?," added
+the merchant, tenderly embracing his daughter.
+
+"Father!" screamed Isoline, pointing with a gesture of dread toward the
+wall where the hideous stone mask was sculptured, and whose eyes seemed
+lighted from within. "Look, look at those flashes of light that escape
+from it! Some one has been spying upon us!"
+
+The merchant quickly turned his head in the direction of the wall
+indicated by Isoline and to which he had given his back up to that
+instant. But the light had disappeared. Bezenecq took it for an
+illusion, proceeding from the wrought-up spirit of Isoline, and
+answered: "You must have deceived yourself. How do you expect the eyes
+of that rude figure to flash light? It would require a candle in the
+middle of the wall. Is that possible my child? Regain your senses!"
+
+Suddenly the door of the cell opposite the mask was opened. Bezenecq the
+Rich and his daughter saw the bailiff, Garin the Serf-eater, enter with
+the scribe of the seigneur of Plouernel, and followed by several men of
+sinister mien. One of these carried a forge-bellows and a bag of coal;
+another bore several faggots. Isoline, for a moment reassured by her
+father, but now recalled to reality by the approach of the gaolers,
+uttered a scream of fright. In order to calm the agonies of his
+daughter, Bezenecq rose and said to the bailiff in a firm voice, while
+pointing to the scribe: "That, dear sir, is certainly the notary of the
+seigneur of Plouernel?" Garin the Serf-eater nodded in the affirmative.
+"This notary," continued the bourgeois of Nantes, "comes to obtain my
+signature to the document by which I consent to pay ransom?" The bailiff
+again nodded in the affirmative. Addressing himself then to his daughter
+and affecting absolute calmness, almost cheerfulness: "Fear nothing,
+dear child, I and these worthy men will soon agree, after which, I am
+certain, we shall have nothing to fear from them and they will set us
+free. Note, then, master scribe, I am ready, by means of an authentic
+deed in favor of the seigneur of Plouernel, to give and cede to him all
+my possessions, consisting of five thousand and three hundred silver
+pieces, deposited with my friend Thibault, the silversmith and minter of
+the Bishop of Nantes; secondly, eight hundred and sixty gold pieces and
+nine bars of silver, deposited in my house in a secret closet that I
+shall indicate to the person whom the seigneur count may commission to
+go to Nantes; thirdly, a large quantity of silver vessels, precious
+fabrics and furniture, which it will be easy to bring here by wagon,
+upon the written order that I shall issue to my confidential servant.
+There, finally, remains my house. Seeing it would not be quite
+practicable, worthy masters, to transport that also, I shall write and
+place in your hand a letter to my friend Thibault. Only two days before
+my departure from Nantes he promised to buy my house for two hundred
+pieces of gold. He will keep his promise, I am sure, especially when he
+learns of the tight place that I now find myself in. Accordingly, that's
+two hundred more gold pieces that, at my order, Thibault will have to
+deliver to the envoy of the seigneur of Plouernel. These assignments
+made, there remain to me and my daughter the clothes we have on. Now,
+worthy scribe, draw up the assignment, I shall sign it, and I shall join
+to it the letters to my servant and to my friend the silversmith. He
+knows too well the fashion of these times to fail to acquiesce in my
+wishes in the matter of the deposit that he has and of the purchase of
+the house. He will deliver the sum to the messenger whom the seigneur
+count is to dispatch to Nantes. As to the money in the secret closet of
+my house, it will be easy to find it with the help of this key and the
+directions that I shall dictate to the scribe----"
+
+"The notary will first have to draw up the assignment, then, you shall
+write the letters to your friend," broke in Garin. "The directions for
+the secret closet will follow. Now hurry up."
+
+"You are right, worthy bailiff," replied the bourgeois of Nantes with
+eagerness, fully at ease by the tone of Garin; and, leaning towards his
+daughter, who was seated on the edge of the bed, he said to her in an
+undertone: "Was I not right, my dear bundle of fears, in assuring you
+that, by a complete surrender of all my goods, these worthy masters
+would abstain from harming us?" Again embracing Isoline, whose fears
+began to make room for hope, and wiping with the back of his hand the
+tears that, despite himself, he was shedding, he turned to Garin:
+"Excuse me, bailiff, you would understand my emotion if you knew the
+foolish fears of this child. But what else can we expect! At her age,
+having until now lived happily at my side, she is easily alarmed----"
+
+"First item: Five thousand and three hundred silver pieces deposited
+with the silversmith Thibault," recited the scribe, interrupting
+Bezenecq with his harsh voice; and, taking his seat on the edge of the
+gridiron, he wrote, on his knees for a desk, by the light of one of the
+lanterns. "Next and secondly," he pursued, "how many pieces of gold are
+there in the secret treasure of the Nantes house?"
+
+"Eight hundred and sixty pieces of gold," Bezenecq hastened to answer,
+as if in a hurry to disengage himself of his riches; "and also nine bars
+of silver of different thicknesses." And, thus proceeding to enumerate
+his goods to the scribe, who entered them apace, the merchant pressed
+the hands of his daughter in an intoxication of pleasure to add to her
+confidence and courage.
+
+"And now, Bezenecq the Rich," said Garin, "we shall want the two
+letters to your confidential servant and your friend Thibault the
+Silversmith."
+
+"Kind scribe," answered the merchant, "lend me your tablet, give me two
+parchment sheets and a pen, I shall write yonder on my daughter's
+knees," and, suiting the act to the words, he placed himself at
+Isoline's knees, where he lay the notary's tablet, and wrote the
+letters, occasionally addressing the poor child with a smile: "Do not
+shake my table that way; you will have these worthy gentlemen form a
+poor opinion of my handwriting." The two letters finished, the merchant
+passed them over to Garin, who, after reading them, said:
+
+"Now, we want the directions for the secret treasure, without which the
+assignment may not be effective."
+
+"Here are two keys," said the merchant, drawing them from his pocket.
+"The one opens the door of a little vault which connects with the room
+that serves as my office----"
+
+"In the room that serves as office," repeated the scribe, writing while
+he repeated the words of the merchant. The latter proceeded: "The other
+key opens an iron-bound box back of the vault. In that box will be found
+the bars of silver and a casket containing the eight hundred and sixty
+gold pieces. I own not another denier. And here, worthy masters, you
+have me and my daughter as poor as the poorest serf. I have not wronged
+the seigneur of Plouernel a single obole. But, for all that, we shall
+not lose courage!"
+
+While the scribe finished transcribing the directions of Bezenecq, the
+latter, occupied only with his daughter, did not notice, any more than
+she, what was going on a few steps off in that cell, so feebly lighted
+by the lanterns, seeing that night had already fallen. One of the
+gaolers commenced heaping the coals and fagots under the gridiron.
+
+"The seigneur of Plouernel may send his messenger to Nantes with an
+escort," Bezenecq observed to Garin the Serf-eater. "If the messenger is
+quick he can be back to-morrow night. We shall surely, my daughter and
+I, be set at liberty when the seigneur count will be in possession of my
+property. Only, while waiting for the hour of our departure from the
+castle, be generous enough, bailiff, to have us taken to some other
+place, whatever it be, only less depressing than this. My daughter is
+broken down with fatigue; moreover, she is very timid. She would spend a
+sad night in this cell, surrounded by instruments of torture."
+
+"Now that you mention these engines of punishment," said Garin the
+Serf-eater, with a strange smile, and taking the hand of the bourgeois,
+"come, Bezenecq the Rich, I wish to explain their use to you, especially
+their mechanism."
+
+"I am not inquisitive to learn the details."
+
+"Draw near to us, Bezenecq the Rich."
+
+"That surname of 'Rich' that you insist in applying to me, is no longer
+mine," said the merchant with a sad smile; "rather call me Bezenecq the
+Poor."
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Garin, as if in doubt and shrugging his shoulders. He
+then added: "Come on, Bezenecq the Rich!"
+
+"Father!" cried out Isoline, uneasy, seeing her father stepping away
+from her. "Where are you going? Father, father, stay with me!"
+
+"There is nothing to fear, dear child. Stay where you are. I am to give
+the bailiff certain directions as to the route that the messenger of the
+seigneur count will have to take." And, fearing to displease Garin, he
+followed him, happy at the thought that Isoline could not hear the
+explanations he was to receive from the Serf-eater. The latter stopped
+first before the iron gibbet that terminated in a carcan. One of the
+gaolers having raised the lantern at the order of Garin, he said to the
+merchant: "As you see, that carcan opens at will. You may guess its
+object."
+
+"Yes. The neck of the patient being inserted in it, the poor fellow
+remains fast!"
+
+"Just so. He is made to climb the ladder you see here. Then, as his neck
+is in the carcan, all you have to do is to close the collar with a latch
+and remove the ladder. The gibbet being raised nine or ten feet above
+the floor, you may imagine the rest."
+
+"The patient remains hanged and strangled?"
+
+"Not at all! He remains suspended, but not hanged. The carcan is too
+wide to strangle. Then, while our man is thus kicking in the air an
+equal distance between the ceiling and the floor, this large stone is
+fastened to his feet by means of these straps to moderate his kicking
+and induce him to keep quiet."
+
+"That strain must be terrible."
+
+"Terrible, Bezenecq the Rich, terrible! Just think of it! The jaws are
+dislocated, the neck is stretched, the jointures of the knees and hip
+crack fit to be heard ten paces off. And yet,--would you believe
+it?--there are people of such a stubborn make-up that they do not yield
+to this first trial?"
+
+"What I do not understand," answered the merchant, suppressing his
+horror, "is that, instead of exposing themselves to this torture, they
+do not forthwith and loyally surrender all they own, as I have done.
+One, at least, escapes physical suffering and regains his freedom. Not
+so, worthy bailiff?"
+
+"Bezenecq the Rich, you are the pearl of townsmen. It is evident that
+you are of extraordinary sagacity."
+
+"You flatter me. I merely put myself through a very simple process of
+reasoning," rejoined the merchant, endeavoring to capture the good will
+of Garin. "I reasoned thus with my daughter: Suppose my whole fortune
+were placed on board a vessel; it goes down; I lose all my wealth; I
+find myself in the same position that I am in to-day: but so far from
+allowing myself to be discouraged, I start to work anew with fresh vigor
+to sustain my child. Is not that the better choice, worthy bailiff?
+Would you not do likewise?"
+
+"You never will be reduced to that, Bezenecq the Rich. You have
+inexhaustible resources."
+
+"You love to banter; you love to give me that surname of 'Rich,' to me,
+now no less poor than Job."
+
+"No, no; I do not banter. But let's return to the torture. I was saying
+that if the first trial failed to convince a stubborn fellow to give up
+his goods, he is then put through the second torture, which I shall now
+explain," and Garin, keeping the hand of the merchant, conducted him to
+the iron prong. "You see this prong? It is of well-beaten metal, strong
+enough to hold the weight of an ox."
+
+"I readily believe it. That hook is, indeed, of large dimensions----"
+
+"Our stubborn guest having resisted the trial of the carcan, he is
+hooked naked on this prong, either by the flesh of the back, or by the
+skin of his bowels, or by any other and more sensitive part of the
+body."
+
+"Speak not so loud," implored the merchant, hardly able to restrain his
+indignation and horror, "my daughter might overhear you."
+
+"You are right," answered the bailiff, with a sardonic smile; "your
+daughter's blushes must be spared. Well, now Bezenecq the Rich, think of
+it. I have seen stubborn fellows remain suspended from that hook by the
+skin for a whole hour, bleeding like a cow in the shambles, and still
+refuse to relinquish their goods! But they never resist the third trial,
+with which I am now about to entertain you, Bezenecq the Rich. Give me
+your ear, the description will interest you."
+
+"Strange!" suddenly exclaimed the merchant, interrupting Garin the
+Serf-eater. "I smell smoke. Whence does the smell proceed?"
+
+"Father, there is a fire!" cried out Isoline, horrified. "They are
+making a fire under the iron bars!"
+
+The bourgeois of Nantes turned around sharply and saw the heaped-up
+combustibles under the gridiron beginning to take fire. Several tongues
+of flame lighted with their ruddy glow the black walls of the cell,
+while forcing themselves through thick columns of smoke. A frightful
+suspicion flashed through the mind of the merchant, but he dared not
+even allow his thoughts to dwell upon them; and, wishing to comfort his
+daughter, said to her: "Be not afraid, you dear bundle of fears, that
+fire is built to drive off the chill in this cell; we may have to spend
+the night here. I was thanking the worthy bailiff for his
+thoughtfulness." But immediately upon this answer, uttered only in order
+to reassure his daughter, the merchant, shivering, despite himself with
+fear, turned to Garin: "Speaking truly, why is that fire made under the
+gridiron?"
+
+"Merely to give you an idea of the omnipotence of this last test,
+Bezenecq the Rich. I now commence the description."
+
+"It is superfluous. I take your word for it."
+
+"A fire is built under the gridiron, as they are doing now; when the
+fire has ceased to shoot up flames, a necessary precaution, and consists
+of a bed of live coals, the recalcitrant patient is stretched naked upon
+the gridiron, and he is kept there with the aid of those rings and iron
+chains. At the end of a few instants the skin of the patient, red and
+shriveling, rips up, bleeds, then turns black. I have seen the hot coals
+patter with fat that, clotted with blood, dripped from the body of men
+even less fat than you, Bezenecq the Rich."
+
+"Hold on, bailiff! I must confess to you my heart fails me, my head
+reels at the mere thought of such infliction," said the bourgeois of
+Nantes, shivering from head to foot. "I am ready to faint. Let me out of
+this cell with my daughter. I have assigned to your master my whole
+fortune. You have taken everything----"
+
+"Come, come, Bezenecq the Rich," broke in the bailiff, "a man who
+empties himself as easily as you did at the first word, and without
+having suffered the least tortures, must have reserved other riches.
+That's what we'll learn all about in a moment."
+
+"I? I have reserved part of my fortune!" exclaimed the merchant, struck
+almost speechless with amazement. "I have given you all, down to my last
+piece."
+
+"You observed, my wily friend, that despite the assignment of all the
+property that you were credited with having, I continued to call you
+Bezenecq the Rich. I feel certain you still merit the name. Come, now!
+You must disgorge. Come, let's have the rest of your fortune."
+
+"Upon the salvation of my soul, I have nothing left! I have given you
+all I possess."
+
+"May not the three tests draw from you some admission to the contrary?"
+
+"What tests are you speaking of?"
+
+"The tests of the carcan, of the hook and of the gridiron. Yes, if you
+do not surrender to me the other property that you are hiding from us,
+you will undergo the three tests under the very eyes of your daughter,"
+and saying this, Garin the Serf-eater raised his voice in such a way
+that Isoline, hearing his threats, darted through the gaolers and threw
+herself distracted at the feet of the bailiff, crying: "Mercy! Mercy
+upon my father! Have pity upon us!"
+
+"Mercy depends upon him," said Garin, imperturbably. "Let him surrender
+to our seigneur what he still holds in reserve."
+
+"Father!" cried out the young girl, "I know not what the extent of your
+wealth is. But if, in your tenderness for me, you sought to reserve
+aught to shelter me against poverty, I conjure you give it all! Oh, dear
+father, surrender everything!"
+
+"You hear!" resumed Garin the Serf-eater, smiling fiendishly upon the
+couple, and seeing the demoralizing effect upon the merchant of the
+imprudent words that terror had drawn from Isoline, "I am not the only
+one to suspect you of hiding from us a part of your treasures, Bezenecq
+the Rich. Like a good father you have sought to keep a fat dower for
+your daughter. Come, now, you must give us the dower!"
+
+"Garin," one of the gaolers approached to notify the bailiff, "the coals
+are red hot. They may go out if you put the man through the trials of
+the carcan and the hook."
+
+"As a favor to this young girl I shall be generous," said Garin. "The
+gridiron test will be enough, but stir the coals. And now answer,
+Bezenecq the Rich. I ask you for the last time, yes or no, will you give
+all you possess to my seigneur, the Count of Plouernel, including your
+daughter's dower?"
+
+"It is my daughter whom I shall make the answer to," answered the
+merchant, in a solemn voice. "Gaolers will not believe me;" and
+addressing Isoline in a voice broken with tears: "I swear to you, my
+child, by the sacred memory of your mother, by my tenderness for you, by
+all the pleasures you have afforded me since your birth,--I swear to
+you, by the salvation of my soul, I have not a denier left; I have
+surrendered all to the Seigneur of Plouernel!"
+
+"Oh, father, I believe you!" exclaimed the girl at his feet, and turning
+to Garin, she extended her hands towards him in prayer: "You have heard
+my father's oath; you may join mine to it."
+
+"I hold Bezenecq the Rich incapable of leaving his daughter thus
+penniless," retorted the bailiff. Turning then to the gaolers: "He will
+now have to confess to us. Strip him, stretch him on the gridiron and
+stir the coals. Let the brand flame up."
+
+The men of the seigneur of Plouernel threw themselves upon Bezenecq the
+Rich. Despite the resistance and the heart-rending, desperate cries of
+his daughter, whom they brutally held back, they stripped the bourgeois
+of Nantes, spread him upon the gridiron, and, by means of the iron
+chains, fastened him over the burning coals. "Oh, my father!" exclaimed
+Bezenecq, "I have disregarded your advice ... I now undergo the
+punishment for my cowardice ... for my selfishness ... I die under the
+torture for having been afraid to die arms in hand at the head of the
+serfs in revolt against the Frankish seigneurs.... Triumph, Neroweg!
+Yet, perchance, the terrible day of reprisals will come to the sons of
+Joel!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THE RESCUE.
+
+
+In her apartment, lighted by a lamp, Azenor the Pale was engaged in the
+preparation of the magical philter, promised by her to the seigneur of
+Plouernel. After blowing some powder on a fluid that she had poured into
+a flagon, she pulled out of a chest a little vial, whose contents she
+drank. Laying down the vial, she remarked with a sinister smile: "Now,
+Neroweg, you may come ... I am ready for you." Then, taking up the
+flagon, half full with a solution of several powders, she proceeded:
+"This flagon must now be filled with blood ... the imagination of these
+ferocious brutes must be struck ... come...." she added with a sigh,
+turning towards the turret where the little Colombaik was secreted.
+Raising the curtain that masked the alcove, Azenor saw before her the
+innocent little creature huddled in a lump in a corner, and silently
+weeping. "Come," said the sorceress to him in a sweet voice, "come to
+me." The son of Fergan the Quarryman obeyed, he rose and advanced
+timidly. Wan, thin, broken with want, his pale mien had, like his
+mother's, Joan the Hunchback's, an inexpressible charm of kindness.
+"Must you always be sad?" inquired Azenor, sitting down and drawing the
+child near to her and to a table on which lay a poniard. "Why do you
+always weep?" The little fellow wept afresh. "What's the cause of your
+sorrow?"
+
+"My mother, my father," faltered the child, without ceasing to weep, "I
+do not see them any more!"
+
+"You love your mother and father very much?" Instead of answering the
+sorceress, the poor little one threw himself sobbing upon her neck. The
+woman could not resist the impulse of responding to the childish
+prompting of a caress, and she embraced Colombaik at the very moment
+when, fearing he had been disrespectful to Azenor, the child was about
+to drop on his knees before her. Sinking upon the floor, he broke out
+into copious tears. The young woman, more and more moved, silently
+contemplated Colombaik, murmuring to herself: "No, no ... I lack
+courage.... I shall not kill that poor child, a few drops of his blood
+will be enough for the philter." Already her hand approached the poniard
+on the table, when suddenly her ear caught an unusual noise in the
+turret. It was like the scraping of a chain drawn with difficulty over
+an iron bar. The sorceress, alarmed, pushed the child back and ran
+toward the turret at the moment that Fergan the Quarryman stepped in,
+pale, bathed in perspiration and holding in his hand his iron pick.
+Azenor drew back, dumb with stupor and fear, while Colombaik, with a cry
+of joy, rushed to the quarryman, holding up his arms to him and calling:
+"My father! my father!" Beside himself with happiness, Fergan dropped
+his iron bar, took up the child in his robust arms, and, raising him to
+his breast, pressed him passionately, interrogating the face of
+Colombaik with inexpressible anxiety, while the child, taking between
+his little hands the gruff face of the quarryman, covered it with
+kisses, muttering: "Good father! Oh, good father! I see you again at
+last!"
+
+The serf, without noticing the presence of the sorceress, devoured
+Colombaik with his eyes. Presently he observed, with a profound sigh of
+relief: "He is pale, he has been weeping, but he does not seem to have
+suffered; they can't have hurt him!" Embracing Colombaik with frenzy, he
+repeated several times: "My poor child! How happy your mother will be!"
+But his paternal alarms being calmed, he remembered that he was not
+alone, and not doubting that Azenor was the sorceress, whose dreaded
+name had reached as far as the serfs of the seigniory, he put his child
+down, took up again his pick, approached the young woman slowly with a
+savage mien and said to her: "So, it is you, who have children
+kidnapped to serve your diabolical sorceries?" and with glistening eyes
+he raised his iron bar with both hands. "You will now die, infernal
+witch!"
+
+"Father, do not kill her!" cried out the child impetuously, clasping the
+quarryman's legs with both his hands. "Oh, do not kill this good lady
+who was embracing me just as you came in!"
+
+Fergan looked at Azenor, who, somber, pensive, her arms crossed upon her
+palpitating breast, seemed to brave death. Turning to the child: "Was
+this woman embracing you?"
+
+"Yes, father; and since I have been here she has been kind to me. She
+has sought to console me. She even often rocked me in her arms."
+
+"Why, then," said the quarryman to the sorceress, "did you have my child
+kidnapped? What have you to say!"
+
+Azenor the Pale, without answering the question of the serf, and
+pursuing the thought that turned in her head, said: "Where does the
+passage run out through which you have penetrated to this turret?"
+
+"What's that to you!"
+
+The young woman stepped to a cabinet of massive oak, took from it a
+casket, opened it, and displaying before the quarryman the gold pieces
+that it was filled with, said: "Take this casket and let me accompany
+you. You have been able to enter this donjon by a secret passage, you
+will be able to get out again. We shall escape together from this
+accursed den. I pay a rich ransom."
+
+"You ... you mean to accompany me?"
+
+"I wish to flee from this castle, where I am a prisoner, and run to
+rejoin at Angers William IX., Duke of Aquitaine----" Stopping short and
+leaning her ear towards the door, Azenor made a sign of silence to
+Fergan, and proceeded in a whisper: "I hear voices and steps on the
+staircase. Someone is coming up here.... It is Neroweg!"
+
+"The count!" exclaimed the quarryman, with savage joy, stepping towards
+the door: "Oh, Worse than a Wolf, you will no longer bite! I shall kill
+the wretch!"
+
+"Keep still or we are lost," interrupted Azenor in a low voice. "The
+Count is not alone; think of your child!" and pointing with rapid
+gesture to the cabinet of massive oak, she hastily whispered to the
+serf: "Push that piece of furniture across the door. Be quick! We shall
+have time to flee! Your enemy, Neroweg, has only a few more steps to
+climb! I hear his spurs clank upon the stone floor!"
+
+Fergan, thinking only of the safety of his child, followed the advice of
+Azenor, and, thanks to the herculean strength he was endowed with,
+succeeded in pushing the massive piece of furniture across the door,
+which, thus barricaded, could not swing open into the room. The
+sorceress hastily wrapped herself in a mantle; took from the cabinet
+whence she had extracted the casket, a little leathern bag containing
+precious stones, and said to the quarryman, holding the casket out to
+him: "Take this gold and let's flee."
+
+"Carry your gold, yourself! I shall carry my child and my pick to defend
+him!" answered the serf, taking up his iron bar with one hand, and
+placing on his left arm little Colombaik, who held fast by his father's
+neck. At that very moment the fugitives heard from without the sound of
+the key that turned in the lock, followed by the voice of the seigneur
+of Plouernel: "Who is holding that door back inside? Is that one of your
+enchantments, accursed sorceress?"
+
+While the Count was beating against the door, and, redoubling his
+imprecations, vainly sought to force it, the quarryman, his son and
+Azenor, gathered in the turret, prepared to flee by the secret passage.
+One of the slabs of the flooring, being swung aside by means of a
+counterweight and chains wound around an iron axis, exposed the first
+step of a ladder so narrow that it could barely allow passage to one
+person at a time, and of such a slope at that spot that its first ten
+rungs could be cleared only by sliding down almost on the back from
+step to step. Azenor was the first to undertake the narrow passage; the
+little Colombaik imitated her; the two were followed by Fergan, who then
+readjusted the counterweight. The stone slab, back again in its place,
+again masked the secret passage. This steep portion of the ladder was
+wrought in an abutment of the turret, where its base projected beyond
+the wall of the donjon. Its foot connected with the narrow stone spiral,
+which, wrought in the ten-foot thick wall, descended to the lowest
+depths of the donjon. At each landing, a skilfully masked outlet opened
+upon this secret passage, lighted by not a ray from without. But Fergan,
+equipped with his tinder box, punk and wick, of the kind that he helped
+himself with in the quarries, lighted the passage, and, with his iron
+pick in one hand, his light in the other, preceded his son and Azenor
+down the stone spiral. The descent was but slowly effected.
+
+Presently the fugitives, leaving above them the level of the landing
+where the hall of the stone table was located, and which was situated on
+the ground floor, arrived at the place that corresponded with the
+subterranean cells. Here the passage served not merely as a means of
+retreat in case of a siege, it also afforded the chatelain an
+opportunity to spy upon the prisoners and overhear their confidential
+communications. By its construction, the cell of Bezenecq the Rich gave
+special facilities for such espionage. Furthermore, a slab three feet
+square by two inches thick, fastened in a strong oaken frame on hinges,
+constituted a sort of stone door, undistinguishable from the inside of
+the somber apartment, but easy to push open from without. Thus the
+seigneur reserved to himself an access to those subterraneous chambers,
+unknown even to the dwellers of the castle. Above the opening and within
+the cell was sculptured that hideous mask, whose sight had frightened
+the daughter of the merchant. The two eyes and the mouth of this grim
+figure, bored through the full thickness of the wall and exteriorly
+chiseled in the form of a niche, permitted the spy, posted at that
+place of concealment, to see the prisoners and overhear what they said.
+Thus it happened a few hours before that Fergan, climbing up by the
+light of his wick, had overheard the conversation between the Bishop of
+Nantes and Jeronimo, the legate of the Pope, and then that of the
+bourgeois of Nantes and his daughter. The fugitives were now on a level
+with the cell of Bezenecq, when suddenly brilliant rays of light shot
+through the openings in the stone mask, proceeding from a light within.
+
+Fergan was in advance of his child and Azenor. He halted at the sound of
+rawkish peals of laughter--frightful, like those of a maniac. The serf
+peeped through the holes pierced in the eyes of the mask, and this was
+what he saw by the light of a lantern placed upon the ground. Two naked
+corpses, the one suspended by the neck from the iron gibbet fastened in
+the wall, the other by the groins from the iron prong. The former,
+rigid, horribly distended and dislocated by the enormous weight of the
+stone attached to his feet; the latter, hooked by the flesh upon the
+sharp prong that penetrated his entrails, was bent backwards with his
+arms dangling against his legs. These victims, captured shortly before,
+from a new troop of travelers on the territory of the seigneur of
+Plouernel and taken to this cell, better fitted out than the others with
+instruments of torture, did not survive the experience. The corpse of
+Bezenecq the Rich was chained to the gridiron above the dying embers of
+the coal fire. The agonies of that unhappy man had been so excruciating
+that his members, held fast by the iron bands, had been convulsively
+distended. Undoubtedly at the moment of expiring he had made a supreme
+effort to turn his head towards his daughter, so as to die with her in
+sight. The face of the merchant, blackened, frightful to behold,
+retained the expression of his agony. A few steps from the corpse of her
+father, cowering upon the straw bed, her knees held in her arms, Isoline
+swayed to and fro, emitting at intervals rythmic peals of maniacal
+laughter. She had gone crazy. Fergan, moved with pity, was considering
+how to deliver the daughter of Bezenecq, when the door of the cell
+opened and Gonthram, the eldest son of Neroweg, stepped in, a torch in
+his hands and his cheeks of purple. His eyes, his unsteady walk, all
+announced a high stage of inebriety. Approaching Isoline, he struck
+against the gridiron, where lay the corpse of the bourgeois of Nantes.
+Unmoved by that spectacle, Gonthram stepped towards the young girl,
+seized her rudely by the arm, and said in a maudlin voice: "Come, follow
+me!" The demented girl seemed not to hear, she did not even raise her
+eyes, and continued swaying to and fro and to laugh. "You are quite
+gay," observed the whelp; "I also am gay. Come upstairs. We shall laugh
+together!"
+
+"Oh, traitor!" broke in a new personage, precipitating himself out of
+breath into the cell. "I made no doubt what you had in your mind when I
+saw you leave the table the moment my father went up to the sorceress!"
+And throwing himself upon his brother, Guy, the second son of Neroweg,
+cried out: "If you want the girl, you will have to pay for her with your
+blood!"
+
+"Vile bastard! You, the son of my mother's chaplain! You dare to
+threaten me!" In his rage, increased by intoxication, Gonthram raised
+his burning torch, struck his brother with it in the face and drew his
+sword. Guy, uttering a furious imprecation, also drew his sword. The
+struggle was short. Guy fell lifeless at the feet of his brother, who
+exclaimed: "The bastard is dead. I am the better man. The girl is mine!"
+and rushing back to Isoline: "Now, you are mine!"
+
+"No!" resounded a menacing voice, and before Gonthram, who had taken up
+the daughter of Bezenecq in his arms, had time to turn around, he
+received over his head a crushing blow with an iron bar, throwing him
+down upon his brother's body. From the place of concealment, where
+Fergan had stood, he saw the commencement of the fratricidal strife and
+had entered the cell by the secret opening when the fight was at its
+height between the two sons of Neroweg. Time was passing. Some of the
+men of the seigneur of Plouernel, observing the prolonged absence of the
+two whelps, might at any moment come down. Fergan took the poor maniac
+by the hand and led her to the secret opening. "Now, stoop, dear child,
+and get through the aperture." Isoline remained motionless. Renouncing
+all hope of being understood by her, Fergan pressed his two hands with
+force upon the shoulders of the child. "Woman," the serf cried out to
+Azenor the Pale, who had remained outside of the cell, contemplating the
+two bleeding bodies of the sons of Neroweg, "take the hand of this poor
+girl and try to draw her out."
+
+"Why take this insane woman along?" said Azenor to Fergan. "She will
+retard our march and increase the difficulties of our flight."
+
+"I wish to save this unfortunate being."
+
+Sustained by Fergan, who preceded Colombaik, carrying the lighted wick,
+Isoline descended with difficulty the steps of the staircase.
+Penetrating ever deeper into the bowels of the earth, the fugitives
+arrived at the bottom of the stone spiral that connected with a tunnel,
+bored through the living rock at such a depth that, passing under the
+sheet of water of the gigantic pit, from the midst of which the donjon
+rose, it issued out into the open half a league away from the castle at
+a place concealed amid tumbling bowlders and brushwood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+CUCKOO PETER.
+
+
+Day was slowly breaking upon the fateful night during which the
+fugitives effected their escape from the manor of Plouernel. Joan the
+Hunchback, seated at the threshold of her hut, which lay at the
+extremity of the village, incessantly turned her eyes, red with weeping,
+towards the road by which Fergan, absent since the previous morning in
+quest of Colombaik, was expected. Suddenly the female serf heard from
+afar a great tumult, caused by the approach of a large crowd of people.
+At intervals confused and prolonged clamors were heard rising above the
+din, frantically crying out: "God wills it! God wills it!" Finally Joan
+saw a crowd of people turning a road that led to the village. At the
+head marched a monk mounted on a white mule, whose bones protruded from
+its skin, together with a man-at-arms astride of a small black horse,
+not less lean than the mule of his companion.
+
+The monk, called by some Peter the Hermit, but by most Cuckoo Peter,
+wore a tattered brown frock, on the left sleeve of which near the
+shoulder was sewn a cross of red material, the rallying sign of the
+Crusaders on the holy march of the Crusade. A rope served him for a
+belt. His unhosed feet, shod in worn-out sandals, rested on wooden
+stirrups. His cowl, pushed back, exposed a bald head, boney and grimy
+like the rest of his face, bronzed by the hot sun of Palestine. His
+hollow eyes, glistening with a somber fire, flamed from the depths of
+their orbits. His haggard looks expressed savage fanaticism. In one hand
+he held a cross of rude wood, hardly planed, with which ever and anon he
+smote the crupper of his mule to quicken its pace.
+
+The companion of Cuckoo Peter was a Gascon knight surnamed Walter the
+Pennyless. Of a physiognomy as grotesque and jovial as that of the monk
+was savage and funereal, the mere sight of the knight provoked a smile.
+His eyes, sparkling with mischief, his inordinately long nose, that
+almost kissed the chin, his rakish mouth, slit from ear to ear, his
+features hinged on a perpetual grin, amused from the start, and when he
+spoke, his buffoonery and his mirthful sallies, delivered with southern
+spirit, carried hilarity to its highest pitch. Wearing on his head a
+rusty, cracked and knocked-in casque, ornamented with a bunch of goose
+feathers, his chest covered with a breast-plate no less rusty, no less
+cracked and no less knocked in than his casque, Walter the Pennyless
+also wore the red cross on the left sleeve of his patched cloak. Shod in
+cowhides, fastened with cords around his long heron legs, he bore
+himself with as triumphant an air on his lean black hirsute horse, that
+he named the "Sun of Glory," as if he bestrode a mettlesome charger. His
+long sword, sheathed in wood, named by him the "Sweetheart of the
+Faith," hung from his leathern shoulder belt. On his left arm he bore a
+shield of tin, covered with vulgar pictures. One of these, filling the
+upper part, represented a man clad in rags, knapsack on back and pilgrim
+staff in hand, departing on the Crusade, as indicated by the cross of
+red stuff painted on his shoulder. The lower picture represented the
+same man, no longer wan and haggard, no longer dressed in tatters, but
+splendidly fitted out, bursting with fat, and spread upon a bed, covered
+with purple cloth, beside a beautiful Saracen woman, with nothing on but
+collar and bracelets. A Saracen, wearing a turban and humbly kneeling,
+poured out the contents of a coffer full of gold at the foot of the bed
+where the Crusader was frolicking with his female bedfellow in an
+obscene posture. The very crudity of the idea expressed by these vulgar
+pictures was calculated to make a lively impression upon the childish
+imagination of the multitude.
+
+At the heels of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless followed a mob of
+men, women and children, serfs and villeins, mendicants and vagabonds,
+prostitutes and professional thieves, the latter distinguishable by
+their cropped ears, as well as the murderers, some of whom, in a spirit
+of sanguinary ostentation, bedecked their breasts with pieces of black
+cloth bearing in white one, or two, sometimes three skulls--a sinister
+emblem, denoting that the holy Crusade gave absolution for murder,
+however frequently committed by the criminal. All bore the red cross on
+the left sleeve. Women carried on their backs their children too young
+to walk, or too tired to proceed on the route. Other women, in an
+advanced stage of pregnancy, leaned on the arms of their husbands,
+loaded with a bag containing all their havings. The least poor of the
+Crusaders traveled on donkeys, on mules or in wagons. They carried all
+their belongings with them, even to their pigs and chickens. The latter,
+fastened by the legs to the rails of the wagons, kept up a deafening
+cackle. Other poor people dragged their milk goats after them, or a
+loaded sheep, or even one or more cows.
+
+Contrasting with this tattered multitude, here and there some couples
+were seen, the cavalier in the saddle, his paramour on the crupper,
+happy to escape through that holy pilgrimage the jealous or disturbing
+surveillance of a father or a husband. These runaways also took the
+route of the Orient. Among them was Eucher with the handsome Yolande,
+dispossessed of her father's heritage by the seigneur of Plouernel. They
+had sold a few jewels, given one-half the proceeds to Yolande's mother,
+and with the rest the lovers bought a mule on which to follow the
+Crusaders to Jerusalem.
+
+This mob, consisting of three or four thousand persons, moving from
+Angers and surrounding localities, recruited its forces all along the
+route with new pilgrims. The faces of the serfs and villeins breathed
+joy. For the first time in their lives they left an accursed land,
+soaked in the sweat of their brow and in their blood, and to which, from
+generation to generation, they and their fathers had been chained down
+by the will of the seigneurs. At last they tasted a day of freedom, an
+inestimable happiness to the slave. Their joyous cries, their disorderly
+songs, gross, licentious, resounded far and wide, and ever and anon they
+repeated with frenzy the words, hurled out by Cuckoo Peter in a hoarse
+voice: "Death to the Saracens! Let's march to the deliverance of the
+Holy Sepulchre! God wills it!" At other times they echoed the Gascon
+cavalier, Walter the Pennyless: "To Jerusalem, the city of marvels! Ours
+is Jerusalem, the city of pleasures, of good wine, of beautiful women,
+of gold and of sunshine! Ours is the Promised Land!"
+
+Singing, dancing, uproarious with gladness, the troop crossed the
+village and passed by the hut of Fergan. The serfs, instead of betaking
+themselves to the fields for their hard day's labor, ran ahead of the
+train, shut in at that moment between two lines of ruined houses that
+bordered the road. Joan, standing at the threshold of her door, looked
+at this mob as it passed, with a mixture of astonishment and fear. A big
+scamp of a gallows bird, nicknamed by his companions Corentin the
+Gibbet-cheater, was giving his arm to a young wench that went by the
+name of Perrette the Ribald. She noticed poor Joan the Hunchback at her
+door and cried out to her, alluding to her deformity: "Halloa, you
+there, who carry your baggage on your back, come with us to Jerusalem;
+you will be admired there as one of the prodigies among the other
+marvels!"
+
+"By the navel of the Pope! By the buttocks of Satan! You are right, my
+ribald!" cried the Gibbet-cheater. "There can be no hunchbacks in
+Jerusalem, a land of beautiful Saracen women, according to our friend
+Walter the Pennyless. We shall exhibit this hunchback for money. Come
+on!" said the bandit, seizing Joan by the arm, "follow us, you camel!"
+
+"Yes, yes," added Perrette the Ribald, laughing loudly and seizing the
+other arm of the quarryman's wife, "come to Jerusalem; come to the land
+of marvels!"
+
+"Leave me alone!" said the poor woman, struggling to disengage herself.
+"For pity's sake, leave me! I am expecting my husband and my child!"
+
+Forced to follow her persecutors, and carried, despite herself, by the
+stream of the Crusaders, Joan, fearing to be stifled or crushed under
+foot by the crowd, sought no longer to struggle against the current.
+Suddenly, instead of proceeding onward, the mob swayed back, and these
+words ran from mouth to mouth: "Silence! Cuckoo Peter and Walter the
+Pennyless are going to speak! Silence!" A deep silence ensued. Halting
+in the middle of a large open space, where, gaping with curiosity, the
+serfs of the village stood gathered together, the monk and his companion
+prepared themselves to harangue these poor rustic plebs. Cuckoo Peter
+reined in his white mule and rising in his stirrups, he screamed in a
+hoarse yet penetrating voice, addressing the serfs of the seigniory of
+Plouernel: "Do you, Christian folks, know what is going on in Palestine?
+The divine tomb of the Saviour is in the hands of the Saracens! The Holy
+Sepulchre of our Lord is in the power of the infidels! Woe is us! Woe!
+Malediction! Malediction!" And the monk struck his chest, tore his
+frock, rolled his hollow eyes in their sockets, ground his teeth, foamed
+at the mouth, went through a thousand contortions on his mule, and
+resumed with increased fury: "The infidel is lord in Jerusalem, the Holy
+City! The miscreant insults the tomb of Christ with his presence! And
+you, Christians, my brothers, you remain indifferent before so horrible
+a sacrilege! Before such an abomination----"
+
+"No, no!" cried back with one voice the mob of the Crusaders. "Death to
+the infidels! Let's deliver the tomb! Let's march to Jerusalem, the city
+of marvels and of beauty! God wills it! God wills it!"
+
+The serfs of the village, ignorant, besotted, timid, opened wide their
+eyes and ears, and looked at one another, never before having heard the
+name of Jerusalem or of the Saracens mentioned, and unable to explain
+the fury and contortions of the monk. Accordingly, Martin the Prudent,
+the same who, two days before, had ventured to depict to the bailiff the
+sufferings of his fellows, timidly said to Cuckoo Peter: "Holy patron,
+seeing that our Lord Jesus Christ sits on his throne in heaven, together
+with God the Father in eternal glory, what can it be to him whether his
+tomb be in the hands of the people whom you call Saracens? Kindly
+enlighten us."
+
+"That's what we would like to know," joined another serf, a young fellow
+who looked less stupid than the others. "We want to know that first."
+
+"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless. "By my valiant sword, the
+Sweetheart of the Faith! Here have we a rude questioner. What's your
+name, my brave lad?"
+
+"My name is Colas the Bacon-cutter."
+
+"As surely as ham is the friend of wine, you must be a relative of my
+friend Simon the Porkrind-scraper," replied the Gascon knight, amidst
+peals of laughter from the serfs, who were delighted by this sally. "So,
+then, you would like to know, my worthy Colas the Bacon-cutter, what it
+can matter to Jesus Christ, enthroned in heaven with the Eternal Father
+and the sweet dove, the Holy Ghost, if his sepulchre is held by the
+Saracens?"
+
+"Yes, seigneur," rejoined the serf; "because, if that displeases him,
+how is it that, seeing he is God and omnipotent, he does not exterminate
+them? Why does he not turn those Saracens into pulp at a single wafture
+of his hand?"
+
+"Woe is us! Abomination! Desolation of the world!" ejaculated Cuckoo
+Peter, breaking in upon the Gascon adventurer, who was about to answer.
+"Oh, ye people without faith, ingrates, impious and rebellious children!
+Jesus Christ gave his blood to redeem you. Is that so or not?"
+
+"Serfs were our fathers, serfs are we, serfs will our children be,"
+retorted Colas the Bacon-cutter. "We have not been redeemed, holy
+father, as you claim."
+
+The answer of young Colas unquestionably embarrassed the monk; he shot
+at him threatening glances, writhed on his mule and resumed in a
+thundering voice: "Malediction! Desolation! Oh, ye of little faith!
+Jesus has given you his blood to redeem you, and you, in return, refuse
+to shed the blood of those accursed Saracens, who every day outrage his
+sepulchre! This is what the divine Saviour has said.... Do you hear?...
+Here is what he said.... Listen...."
+
+Walter the Pennyless here broke in with his own harangue: "Those
+accursed Saracens are gorged with gold, with precious stones, with
+silver vessels; they inhabit a marvelous country where there is a
+profusion without the trouble of cultivation: Golden wheat fields,
+delicious fruits, exquisite wines, sweethearts of all complexions! One
+must go there to believe it! Think of it! Winter is unknown, spring
+eternal. The poorest of those infidel dogs have homes of white marble
+and enchanting gardens, embellished with limpid fountains. The beggars,
+clad in silk, play tennis with rubies and diamonds." A murmur of
+astonishment, then of admiration ran through the serfs. Their eyes
+fixed, their mouths agape, their hands clasped, they listened with
+increasing avidity to the Gascon adventurer. "Such is the miraculous
+country inhabited by those infidel dogs, and the Christians, the beloved
+children of the holy Catholic Church, inhabit dens, eat black bread,
+drink brackish water, shiver under a sky frozen in winter and rainy in
+summer. No, let all the devils take it! Let my beloved brothers come to
+the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, exterminate the infidels, and then
+they will have for their reward the prodigious lands of Palestine!
+Theirs be Jerusalem, the city of silver ramparts, with golden gates,
+studded with carbuncles! Theirs be the wines, the beautiful maids, the
+riches of the accursed Saracens! If you wish all that, good people, it
+is yours!" Then, turning to Peter the Hermit, "Not so, holy man?"
+
+"It is the truth," answered Cuckoo Peter; "it is the truth. _The goods
+of the sinner are reserved for the just_."
+
+In the measure that the adroit lieutenant of Cuckoo Peter had held up to
+the dazzled eyes of the poor villagers the ravishing picture of the
+delights and riches of Palestine, a good number of those famished serfs,
+clad in tatters and who all their lives had not crossed the boundaries
+of the seigniory of Plouernel, began to tremble with ardent covetousness
+and feverish hope. Others, more timid or less credulous, hesitated in
+believing those marvels. Of these old Martin the Prudent was the organ.
+Turning to his fellows: "My friends, that knight, on the back of that
+little black horse that looks like an ass, has said to you: 'One must go
+to that country to believe these marvels by seeing them with his own
+eyes.' Now, then, it is my opinion that it is better to believe them
+than to go and see them. It is not enough to depart for those regions.
+One must be certain of provisions on the route, and to return from such
+a distance."
+
+"Old Martin is right," put in several serfs. "Let's take his advice and
+stay home."
+
+"Besides," added another serf, "those Saracens will not allow themselves
+to be plundered without resisting. There will be blows received ... men
+killed ... thousands of them."
+
+These views, exchanged aloud, no wise troubled the Gascon adventurer. He
+drew his famous sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith, and indicating with
+its point the pictures that ornamented his shield, he cried out in his
+cheerful and catching accent: "Good friends, see you this poor man with
+his cane in his hand? He departed for the Holy Land, his pouch as empty
+as his belly, his knap-sack as hollow as his cheeks. He is so ragged
+that one would think a pack of dogs had been at him! Look at him, the
+poor fellow, he is really to be pitied. What misery! What pinching
+poverty, my friends!"
+
+"Yes, yes," the serfs exclaimed together, "he is really to be pitied."
+
+"And now, my friends, what see you here?," resumed the Gascon
+adventurer, touching with the point of his sword the second picture on
+his shield. "Here is our very man, one time poor! You do not recognize
+him. I do not wonder, he is no longer the same, and yet it is himself,
+round of cheeks, clad like a seigneur and bursting his skin. Beside him
+lies a beautiful female Saracen slave, while at his feet a male Saracen
+comes to surrender his treasure! Well, now, my friends, this man, once
+so poor, so ragged at home, is you, is I, is all of us, and that same
+friend so plump, so sleek, so well clad, that, again, will be you, will
+be I, will be all of us, once we are in Palestine. Come, then, on the
+Crusade! Come and deliver the tomb of the Saviour! The devil take the
+rags, the rickety huts, the straw litters and the black bread! Let ours
+be marble palaces, silk robes, purple carpets, goblets of delicious
+wines, full purses, and beauteous Saracen women to rock us to sleep with
+their songs! Come to the Crusade!"
+
+"Come, come!," cried out Cuckoo Peter. "If you are guilty of robbery, of
+arson, of murder, of prostitution, if you have committed adultery,
+fratricide or parricide--all your sins will be remitted. Come to the
+Crusade! Do you need an example, my brothers? William IX, Duke of
+Aquitaine, an impious fellow, a ravisher, a debauche who counts his
+crimes and adulteries by the thousands, William IX, that bedeviled
+criminal, departs to-morrow from the city of Angers for Palestine, white
+as a paschal lamb."
+
+"And I, white as a swan!" interjected Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. "God
+wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"
+
+"And I as white as a dove!" said Perette the Ribald, with a peal of
+laughter. "God wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"
+
+"Yes, yes; let's depart on the Crusade!" cried out the more daring of
+the villagers, intoxicated with hope. "Let's depart for Jerusalem."
+Others, less resolute, less venturesome, and of these was the larger
+number, took the advice of Martin the Prudent, fearing to stake their
+fate, whatever their present misery, upon the cast of a dangerous
+voyage and of unknown countries. They deemed insane the exaltation of
+their fellows in servitude. Finally, others, still hesitated to take so
+grave a step, and Colas the Bacon-cutter addressed Walter the Pennyless:
+"To depart is easy enough. But what will our seigneur say to that? He
+has forbidden us to leave his domains on pain of having our feet cut
+off. And he will surely have the order carried out!"
+
+"Your seigneur!" answered the Gascon adventurer breaking out in a
+horse-laugh. "Scorn your seigneur as you would a wolf caught in a trap!
+Ask these good people who follow us whether they have bothered about
+their seigneurs!"
+
+"No, no, the devil take the seigneurs!" cried out the Crusaders. "We are
+going to Jerusalem. God wills it! God wills it!"
+
+"What!" put in Cuckoo Peter, "the Eternal wants a thing, and a seigneur,
+a miserable earthworm will dare oppose His will! Oh, desolation! Eternal
+malediction upon the seigneur, upon the father, upon the husband, upon
+the mother, who would dare resist the holy impulse of their children,
+their wives, their serfs, who run to the deliverance of the tomb of the
+Lord!"
+
+These words of Peter the Hermit were received with acclamation by the
+Crusaders. The beautiful Yolande and her lover, Eucher, as well as other
+loving couples, cried out in emulation and louder than the others: "God
+wills it! There is no will above his!"
+
+"Master Walter the Pennyless," resumed Colas the Bacon-cutter,
+scratching the back of his ear, "is it far from here to Jerusalem?"
+
+"The distance is from sin to safety!" bellowed Cuckoo Peter. "The road
+is short for the believers, endless for the impious! Are you a Christian
+or a miscreant? Are you an idolater or a good Catholic?"
+
+Colas the Bacon-cutter, finding himself, no more than some other serfs
+who still hesitated, sufficiently instructed by the monk's answer on the
+distance of the journey, asked again: "Father, it is said to be a long
+ways from here to Nantes. Is it as far to Jerusalem?"
+
+"Oh, man of little faith!" answered Peter the Hermit, "dare you measure
+the road that leads to Paradise and to the Holy Virgin?"
+
+"By the four swift feet of my good horse, the Sun of Glory! They are
+thinking of the length of the road!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless.
+"See here, my friends, does the bird that escapes from its cage inquire
+the length of the road when it can fly to freedom? Does not the ass in
+the mill, turning his grindstone, and tramping from dawn to dusk in the
+same circle, travel as much as the stag that roves through the woods at
+pleasure? Oh, my good friends, is it not better, instead of, like the
+ass of the mill, incessantly to tramp this seigniorial soil unto which
+you are chained, to march in search of adventures, free, happy like the
+stag in the forest, and every day see new countries?"
+
+"Yes, yes," replied Colas, "the stag in the forest is better off than
+the ass in the mill. Let's depart for Palestine!"
+
+"Yes, let's depart for Palestine!" the cry now went up from several
+other villagers. "On to that land of marvels!"
+
+"My friends, be careful what you do," insisted Martin the Prudent. "The
+ass in the mill at least receives in the evening his meager pittance.
+The stags of the forest do not pasture in herds, hence they find a
+sufficiency in the woods. But if you depart with this large troop, which
+swells as it marches, you will be thousands of thousands when you reach
+Jerusalem. Who, then, my friends, will feed you? Who is to lodge you on
+the road? Who is to furnish you with clothes and footwear?"
+
+"And who is it that lodges and feeds the birds of the good God, man of
+little faith?" Cuckoo Peter exclaimed. "Do the birds carry their
+provisions with them? Do they not raid the harvests along their route,
+resting at night under the eaves of the houses? Answer, ye hardened
+sinners!"
+
+"By the faith of the Gibbet-cheater, you may trust that man!" here put
+in Corentin. "As truly as Perrette is a daisy, our route from Angers to
+this place has been but one continuous raid to us big birds on two legs.
+What feasts we have had? Poultry and pigeons! Hams and sausages! Pork
+and mutton! Tons of wine! Tons of hydromel! By my belly and my back, we
+have raided for everything on our passage, leaving behind us but bones
+to gnaw at and empty barrels to turn over!"
+
+"And if those people were to complain," added Perrette the Ribald with
+her usual outburst of laughter, "we would answer them: 'Shut up,
+ninnies! Cuckoo Peter has read in the holy books that '_the goods of the
+sinner are reserved for the just!_' Are not we the _just_, we who are on
+the march to deliver the holy tomb? And are not you _sinners_, you who
+stay here stagnating in your cowardice? And if these ninnies said but a
+word, the Gibbet-cheater, backed by our whole band, would soon have
+convinced them with a thorough caning."
+
+These sallies of Perrette and Corentin completed the conversion of those
+serfs who still hesitated. Seeing in the voyage but a long and merry
+junket, a goodly number of them, Colas the Bacon-cutter at their head,
+cried out in chorus: "Let's depart for Jerusalem, the country of
+beautiful girls, good wines and ingots of gold!"
+
+"Onward, march, my friends! Trouble your heads neither about the road,
+nor about lodging, nor yet about food. The good God will provide!" cried
+Walter the Pennyless. "On the march! On the march! If you have
+provisions, take them along. Have you a donkey? mount him. Have you
+wagons? hitch on, and put wife and children in them. If you have nothing
+but your legs, gird up your loins, and on to Jerusalem! We are hundreds
+upon hundreds; we soon shall be thousands upon thousands; and presently
+we shall number hundreds of thousands. Upon our arrival in Palestine we
+shall find treasures and delights for all--beautiful women, good wine,
+rich robes, and lumps of gold in plenty!"
+
+"And we shall all have gained eternal salvation! We shall have a seat in
+Paradise!" added Cuckoo Peter in a strident voice, brandishing his
+wooden cross over his head. "Let's depart for Jerusalem! God wills it!"
+
+"Forward, let's depart for Palestine!" cried out a hundred of the
+villagers, carried away by Colas, despite the prudent advice of Martin.
+These ill-starred men, a prey to a sort of delirium, ran to their huts
+and gathered up the little that they possessed. Some loaded their asses
+in haste; others, less poor, hitched a horse or a yoke of oxen to a
+wagon and placed their families on board; while Peter the Hermit and
+Walter the Pennyless, to the end of inflaming still more the ardor of
+these new recruits of the faith in the midst of their preparations for
+the journey, struck up the chant of the Crusades that was soon taken up
+in chorus by all the Crusaders:
+
+"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!
+
+"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that
+marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!
+
+"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!"
+
+Joan the Hunchback, having succeeded in freeing herself from the hands
+of Corentin and his wench, had pushed herself not without great pains,
+out of the compact mob, and was about to start back to her humble home
+by cutting across the skirt of the village, intending to wait for the
+return of her husband and child, a return that she hardly ventured to
+hope for. Suddenly she turned deadly pale and tried to scream, but
+terror deprived her of her voice. From the somewhat raised ground where
+she stood, Joan saw, down the plain, Fergan carrying his son in his
+arms, and running with all his might towards the village, with Garin the
+Serf-eater at his heels. The latter, giving his horse the spurs,
+followed the serf, sword in hand. Several men-at-arms on foot, following
+at a distance the tracks of the bailiff, sought to make up to him in
+order to render him armed assistance. Despite his efforts to escape,
+Fergan led Garin by barely fifty paces. The lead was shortened from
+moment to moment. Already within but two paces, and believing the
+quarryman to be within reach of his sword, the bailiff had sought to
+strike him down by leaning over the neck of his horse. Thanks to several
+doublings, like those that hares make when pursued by the hound, Fergan
+escaped death. Making, finally, a desperate leap, he ran several steps
+straight ahead with indescribable swiftness, and then suddenly
+disappeared from the sight of Joan as if he had sunk into the bowels of
+the earth. A second later the poor woman saw Garin reining in his horse
+with great effort near the spot where the quarryman had just disappeared
+from view; he raised his sword heavenward, and then, instead of
+proceeding straight ahead, turned to the left and followed at a full
+gallop a hedge of green that traversed the valley diagonally. Joan then
+understood that her husband, having jumped with the child to the bottom
+of a deep trench, which the bailiff's horse could not clear, at the very
+moment when he would have been struck down by the bailiff, the latter
+had been compelled to ride along the edge of the trench to a point where
+he might cross it, in order to proceed to the village, where he counted
+upon capturing the quarryman. Joan feared lest her husband and child
+were hurt in the leap. But soon she saw her little Colombaik climb out
+of the trench with the aid of his little hand and supported by his
+father, whose arms only were visible. Presently Fergan also climbed out,
+picked up the child again, and carrying that dear load, continued to
+flee at a full run towards the village, which he aimed at reaching
+before the bailiff. Despite her weakness, Joan rushed forward to meet
+her child and her husband, and joined them. Fergan, without stopping and
+keeping the child in his arms, hurriedly said to his wife, almost out of
+breath and exhausted: "Let's reach the village. Let's get in ahead of
+Garin, and we shall be safe!"
+
+"My dear Colombaik, you are here at last!" Joan said, while running
+beside the serf and devouring the child with her eyes, forgetting at
+the sight of him both the present perils and the past, while Colombaik,
+smiling and reaching out his little arms, said: "Mother! mother! How
+happy am I to see you again! Dear, good mother!"
+
+"Oh," said the serf while redoubling his efforts to gain the village
+before Garin, who was driving his horse at full speed, "had I not been
+delayed burying a dead woman at the egress of the tunnel, I would have
+been here before daybreak. We would have met to flee together."
+
+"My child! They have not hurt you?" Joan was thinking only of her child,
+one of whose hands she had seized and was kissing while weeping with
+joy, and running beside her husband. At that moment the chant of the
+Crusaders' departure resounded from afar with renewed fervor:
+"Jerusalem! City of marvels!"
+
+"What songs are these?" inquired the quarryman. "What big crowd is that,
+gathered yonder? Whence come all these people?"
+
+"Those are people who are going, they say, to Jerusalem. A large number
+of the inhabitants of the village are following them. They are like
+crazy!"
+
+"Then we are really saved!" exclaimed the quarryman, seized with a
+sudden thought. "Let's depart with them!"
+
+"What, Fergan!" demanded Joan out of breath and exhausted with her
+precipitate gait. "We to go far away with our child!"
+
+But the serf, who found himself at the most a hundred paces from the
+village, made no answer, and followed by Joan, he finally reached the
+crowd, into the midst of which he dived, holding Colombaik and exhausted
+with fatigue, while, muttering to his wife: "Oh, saved! We are saved!"
+
+Garin, who had continued driving his horse along the trench until he
+reached a spot where he could cross, observed with astonishment the
+crowd of people that blocked his way and access to the village. Drawing
+near, he saw coming towards him several of the serfs who preferred their
+crushing servitude to the chances of a distant and unknown voyage. Among
+these was old Martin the Prudent. Seeking to flatter the bailiff, he
+said to him trembling: "Good master Garin, we are not of those rebels
+who dare to flee from the lands of their seigneur to go to Palestine
+with that troop of Crusaders, that are traveling through the country. We
+do not intend to abandon the domain of our seigneur. We wish to work for
+him to our last day."
+
+"S-death!" cried out the bailiff, forgetting the quarryman at the
+announcement of the desertion of a large number of the serfs. "The
+wretches who have thought of fleeing will be punished." The crowd,
+opening up before the horse of Garin, he reached the monk and Walter the
+Pennyless, who were pointed to him as the chiefs of the Crusaders. "By
+what right do you thus enter with a large troop upon the territory of my
+seigneur, Neroweg VI, sovereign Count of Plouernel?" Then, raising his
+voice still more and turning to the villagers: "Those of you, serfs and
+villeins, who had the audacity of following these vagabonds, shall have
+their hands and feet cut on the spot, like rebels----"
+
+"Impious man! Blasphemer!" exclaimed Cuckoo Peter breaking in upon the
+bailiff in a thundering voice. "Dare you threaten the Christians who are
+on the march to deliver the tomb of the Lord? Woe be unto you!----"
+
+"You frocked criminal," the bailiff in turn interrupted, boiling with
+rage, and drawing his sword, "you dare issue orders in the seigniory of
+my master!" Saying which, Garin, driving his horse towards the monk,
+raised his sword over him. But Peter the Hermit parried the move with
+his heavy wooden cross, and struck the bailiff such a hard blow with it
+over his casque, that the latter, dazed for a moment, let fall his
+sword.
+
+"Death to the bandit, who would cut off the feet and hands of the
+avengers of Christ!" several voices cried out. "Death to him! Death!"
+
+"Yes, death!" yelled the serfs of the village, who had made up their
+minds to depart for the Holy Land, and who abhorred the bailiff. "Death
+to Garin the Serf-eater! He shall eat none more!" With that, Colas the
+Bacon-cutter threw him from his horse, and in a moment the bailiff,
+trodden under foot, was slaughtered and torn to pieces. The serfs broke
+his bones, cut off his head, and Colas the Bacon-cutter, taking up the
+livid head of the Serf-eater with the prong of his pitch-fork, raised
+the bleeding trophy above the mob. Carrying it on high, he rejoined the
+troop of the Crusaders, whereupon the crowd marched away singing at the
+top of their voices:
+
+"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! You will be our delight!
+
+"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that
+marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!
+
+"God wills it! God wills it! God wills it."
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+THE CRUSADE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE SYRIAN DESERT.
+
+
+The sun of Palestine inundates with its blinding and scorching light, a
+desert covered with reddish sand. As far as the eye reaches, not a house
+is seen, not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass, not a pebble. Not
+a sparrow could find shelter in this vast expanse. Everywhere a shifting
+sand, fine as ashes, radiates back in more torrid temperature the heat
+imparted to it by that flaming sun, vaulted by a fiery sky that dips in
+the western horizon into a zone of burning vapor. Here and yonder, half
+buried in the waves of sand that are periodically raised by the gales of
+these regions, appear the whitened bones of men and children, horses,
+asses, oxen and camels. The flesh of these bodies has been devoured by
+vultures, jackals and lions. The Saracen proverb is verified: "The
+Christians find here shelter only in the belly of the vultures, the
+jackals and the lions!" These decomposing human and other debris trace
+across the desert the route to Marhala, a city situated ten days' march
+from Jerusalem,--the holy city toward which converge the several armies
+of the Crusaders from Gaul, Germany, Italy and England, marching to the
+conquest of an empty tomb.
+
+If in this solitude there are skeletons and corpses half devoured, there
+are also dying and living beings. Numerous are the dying, few, on the
+contrary, the living; and the latter would count themselves happy if the
+dead and the dying around them were the worst of their plight. Here are
+the Crusaders, who, in their credulity, left the year before the
+"ungrateful soil of the Occident" for the "miraculous land of the
+Orient," where they arrived after a voyage of eleven or twelve hundred
+leagues. The bulk of the army that left Gaul, then under the command of
+Bohemund, Prince of Taranto, slowly melted away yonder, in the midst of
+the thick cloud of dust raised by the marching Crusaders. In their wake
+followed a long train of stragglers, scattered helter-skelter,--women,
+children, the wounded, the infirm, the sick, a mass of wretchedness
+dying of thirst, heat and fatigue. Here and there they drop down by the
+way in this boundless desert, never to rise again.
+
+The least to be pitied among these stragglers are those who, having lost
+their horses, resolutely mounted an ass, an ox, a goat, occasionally one
+of those huge Syrian mastiffs, three feet in height. They thus drag
+along at the gait of the animal they ride, their swords on their side,
+their lances at their backs. In order to protect themselves from the
+consuming heat, that, descending at right angles on their skulls, often
+caused insanity or death, they carry strange head-pieces. Some shelter
+their heads under a piece of cloth spread out by means of sticks, that
+they hold in their hands in the manner of a dais; cleverer ones have
+plaited the dried leaves of the date plant into broad chaplets that
+shade their brows; the larger number wore a species of mask made of
+shreds of cloth, and perforated with a hole at the place of the eyes to
+protect their eye-lids from a dust so scorching and corrosive that it
+produced painful inflammations, and often led to death.
+
+At a great distance from these Crusaders followed the foot-passengers in
+grotesque costumes, and sinking to their knees in the shifting sand,
+whose mere burning contact rendered intolerable the excoriation of their
+feet, worn to the quick by the road. Their limbs bandaged in dirty rags,
+the wounded tramped along painfully, leaning on their staffs. Women,
+gasping for breath, carried their children on their backs, or dragged
+them heaped upon rude sledges that they pulled after them with the aid
+of their husbands. Among these wretches, almost wholly in tatters, some
+were seen in bizarre accoutrement. There were men, who barely covered
+with a crazy frock-coat, yet sported on their heads a rich turban of
+Oriental material; others, out at toes, wore a splendid cloak of
+embroidered silk, dashed with spots of blood, like all the other spoils
+of pillage and massacre.
+
+Suffocated with stifling heat, blinded with the dust that the march
+raised, streaming with perspiration, parched with a devouring thirst,
+their skins burnt by the sun, ill of humor, gloomy and discouraged,
+these wretched beings were tramping along, muttering imprecations
+against the Crusade, when they perceived a numerous and brilliant
+cavalcade approaching through thick clouds of dust from a great distance
+in the rear. At the head of the cavalcade and mounted upon a spirited
+Arabian horse, black as ebony, advanced a young man in splendid
+accoutrements. It is William IX, the handsome Duke of Aquitaine, the
+impious poet, the contemner of the Church, the seducer of Malborgiane,
+whose portrait he carried in Gaul upon his shield. But Malborgiane is
+now forgotten and cast off, like so many other victims of this great
+debauchee. William IX is advancing at the head of his men-at-arms. His
+face at once bold and bantering, is partially covered by a wrapper of
+white silk that falls upon his shoulders. The outlines of his elegant
+and supple figure are set off by a light tunic of purple color; his
+broad hose, worn loose in Oriental style, exposes his boots of green
+leather, wrought in silver and tipped with gold. William carries neither
+arms or armor. With his left hand he guides his horse; on his right,
+covered with a gauntlet of embroidered leather, sits his favorite
+falcon, hooded in scarlet and its legs ornamented with little gold
+bells. Such is the courage of this bird that often does its master fly
+it against the vultures of the desert, as he more than once starts
+against the hyenas and jackals, the large hunting dogs with red collars
+that, breathing heavily, follow his horse. At the crupper of his
+prancing horse is a negro boy, eight or nine years of age, and quaintly
+arrayed. He carries a large parasol, whose shade shelters the head of
+William. At the right of the duke, and towering above him with its
+large body, ambles a camel richly caparisoned. Another negro boy guides
+the animal seated in front of the double litter, which, closed in with
+silken curtains, is fastened with girths to the back and body of the
+animal, and is so contrived that in each of its compartments a person
+can be comfortably seated, protected from the sun and the dust. William
+often ensconced himself in one of them.
+
+Beside William, rode the chevalier, Walter the Pennyless. Before his
+departure on the Crusade, the Gascon adventurer, pale, bony and
+tattered, bore a strong resemblance to the poor devil sketched on the
+upper part of his shield. Now, however, thanks to the sumptuousness of
+his dress, the knight recalls the second picture on his shield. From the
+pommel of his saddle hung a Venetian casque, which he had doffed for a
+turban, a more comfortable head-gear on the route. A long Dalmatic of
+light material, thrown over his rich armor, kept the latter from being
+heated in the burning rays of the sun. Of his poor equipment of yore,
+the Gascon preserved only his good sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith,
+and his little horse, the Sun of Glory. Surviving by the merest accident
+the perils and fatigues of the long passage, the Sun of Glory testified
+by the lustre of his coat to the good quality of the Saracen fodder,
+that he seemed to run short of as little as his master lacked
+provisions.
+
+Behind these personages followed the equerries of the Duke of Aquitaine,
+carrying his standard, his sword, his lance and his shield, on which
+William was in the habit of carrying the pictures of his mistresses, the
+ephemerous objects of his libertine whims. Accordingly, the picture of
+Azenor the Pale, replacing that of Malborgiane, now occupied the center
+of the buckler; but, with a brazen refinement of corruption, other
+medallions, representing some of his numerous other concubines,
+surrounded the image of Azenor in token of homage.
+
+The equerries led by the reins the duke's chargers, vigorous horses,
+covered and caparisoned in iron, carrying pendent from their saddles
+the several pieces of their master's armor. He could thus don his war
+harness when came the hour of battle, instead of supporting its
+oppressive weight during the long route. After the equerries came, led
+by black slaves taken from the Saracens, the mules and camels that were
+laden with the baggage and provisions of the duke. If hunger, thirst and
+fatigue decimated the masses, the noble Crusaders, thanks to their
+wealth, almost always escaped privations. One of William's camels was
+loaded with several bags of citron and large pouches filled with wine
+and with water,--inestimable commodities in a journey over the deserts.
+
+About three hundred men-at-arms constituted the cavalcade of the Duke of
+Aquitaine. These cavaliers, the only survivors of a thousand warriors
+who departed on the Crusade, now habituated to battle, inured to fatigue
+and bronzed by the sun of Syria, had long braved the dangers of the
+murderous climate. Their heavy iron armor weighed on their robust bodies
+no more than a coat of gauze. Disdain for danger, together with
+ferocity, was depicted on their savage countenances. Many among them
+bore from the pommels of their saddles, as bloody trophies, some Saracen
+head freshly severed, and suspended from the single lock of hair that
+Mohammedans keep at the top of their skulls. The cavaliers of the duke
+were armed with strong ash or aspen-tree lances ornamented with
+streaming bannerets, and double-edged long swords, besides a battle axe
+or a spiked mace hanging from their saddles. Oval bucklers, hauberks or
+steel coats-of-arms, braces, greaves, iron jambards,--of such was their
+armor. The troop was rapidly riding through the bands of stragglers,
+when a white slender hand parted the curtains of the litter beside which
+rode the duke, and a voice was heard calling:
+
+"William, I am thirsty, let me have some water!"
+
+"Azenor wishes to refresh herself!," said the noble Crusader reining in
+his horse and turning to Walter the Pennyless. "Fetch some water for my
+mistress. I know woman's impatience. Besides, the lips must not be
+allowed to languish that ask for a fresh drink or a warm kiss!"
+
+"Seigneur duke, I shall fetch the drink, do you take care of the kiss,"
+retorted the adventurer, turning his horse's head toward the baggage,
+while, stooping down on his horse, the duke pushed his head under the
+curtain.
+
+"Oh, William, only the other day my lips were white and frozen. The fire
+of your kisses has returned to them their reddish hue."
+
+"Which proves that I can perform as great prodigies as you, my beautiful
+witch."
+
+"You quit giving me that name, William. It recalls the days I spent in
+the turret of Neroweg Worse than a Wolf, whom I execrate,--days of shame
+and trial to me, and whose memory haunts me."
+
+"But you are well revenged for those days of shame. Count Neroweg is now
+poorer than the lowest of his serfs as a result of his losses at the
+gaming tables of Joppa where he met such consummate gamblers that they
+won from him five thousand gold besans, his silver plate, his baggage,
+his horses, his arms and even his sword. By Satan! I imagine I see that
+Neroweg, that Worse than a Wolf, that Count of Plouernel, so rudely
+plucked at the start of his Crusade, fighting with an old cap on for
+helmet, a stick for a lance, and for charger an ass, a goat or good
+Palestine mastiff!"
+
+"Let's drop that sad topic, and talk about yourself, who have been the
+dream of my youth. Now that I am yours, I should feel happy, and yet my
+heart is cruelly tormented. Your inconstancy makes me despair. I am
+dying with jealousy. Can it be that that infamous Perrette the Ribald
+has her share of your caresses?"
+
+"What a frisky and bold girl that Perrette is! After the siege of
+Antioch, cup in hand, her hair to the breeze----"
+
+"Be still, William, I am jealous of her!"
+
+"Poor Ribald! She must have died on the route. She never turned up again
+after that moment."
+
+"I could have strangled her with my hands, and Yolande, also!"
+
+"A ravishing girl! What a beautiful shape! A skin of satin! One
+imagines, seeing her, the Diana of old resurrected!"
+
+"You are pitiless!" replied Azenor with a tremulous voice. "I hate those
+two women."
+
+"Let others conquer Jerusalem! As to me, I'm satisfied with conquering
+German, Saxon, Bohemian, Hungarian, Wallachian, Moldavian, Bulgarian,
+Greek, Byzantine, Saracen, Syrian, Moorish and negro beauties. Yes, by
+Venus! If I am anxious to enter Jerusalem, it is for the purpose of
+capturing the handsomest of the Arabian virgins."
+
+"You bold and debauched fellow, it is not an only woman I have to fear
+for a rival! I am crazy for this man! Woe is me!"
+
+"In order to appease your anger, I shall confide to you that there is a
+whole race your jealousy has nothing to apprehend from. Heavens and
+earth! the mere sight of a woman of that one breed would make me as
+chaste as a saint, and would turn your lover into another St. Anthony!"
+
+"Of what race are you speaking?"
+
+"Of the Jews!" answered the Duke of Aquitaine with a look of disgust.
+"Oh, when I had all the Jews and Jewesses exterminated from my
+seigniories, not one woman of that accursed species escaped the torture,
+and death!"
+
+"Whence do you gather such a rage against those wretched people? What
+harm have they done you? You have shown yourself cruel towards them,"
+said Azenor the Pale with a slight tremor in her voice.
+
+"Blood of Christ! See me take a Jewess for mistress! a Jewess!" replied
+the duke, trembling anew. An instant later, wishing no doubt to
+disengage himself from the thoughts that haunted him, William cried out
+joyfully: "To the devil with the Jews, and long live Love! A sweet
+kiss, my charmer! A conversation on those infernal people leaves me an
+after-taste of sulphur and brimstone, as if I had tasted the kitchen of
+Satan! Let mine be the ambrosia of your kisses, of your passionate
+caresses, my loving one!"
+
+A few distant cries and a tumult that broke out among the duke's
+men-at-arms interrupted his conversation with Azenor. He turned his
+head, and saw Walter the Pennyless riding towards him, holding a small
+vermillion cup in the hand that was free from his horse's bridle. "What
+noise is that?" asked the duke, taking the cup and passing it to Azenor.
+
+"Seigneur duke, at the moment when your black slaves let down a pouch of
+water to fill this cup, into which I had first pressed the juice of two
+citrons and the sugar of one of the reeds found in this country and the
+marrow of which is as sweet as honey, the stragglers gathered around.
+'Water! Water! I die of thirst!' cried some; 'My wife and children are
+dying for want!' cried others. By my sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith,
+never did frogs at a mid-summer drought croak more frightfully than
+those scamps. But some of your men-at-arms soon put an end to the
+frightful croaking, by laying about with their lances. The impudence of
+that rag-tag and bob-tail crowd is inconceivable! 'Where are those clear
+fountains that you promised us at our departure from Gaul?' they yelled
+in my ears; 'where are the refreshing shades?'"
+
+"And what answer did you make, my merry Gascon, to those ignorant
+questioners?" asked the duke laughing, while Azenor, leaning out of the
+litter, was imbibing and enjoying the contents of the little vermillion
+cup.
+
+"I assumed the rude voice of my friend, Cuckoo Peter, and said to those
+brutes: 'Faith is a rich fountain that refreshes the soul. You have
+faith, ye soldiers of Christ. Dare you ask where are the shady gardens?
+Is not faith, besides a fountain, also an immense tree that spreads over
+the faithful its protecting branches? Rest yourselves, spread
+yourselves in that shade. Never will an earthly oak tree have afforded
+you a more delectable shelter under its leafy branches. Finally, if
+these various refreshments should not yet suffice you, then broil in the
+heat like fish under the sand!'"
+
+"Well answered, my worthy Gascon!" And turning to his troop, the duke
+ordered in a loud voice: "On the march, and make haste, lest the army
+capture without us the city of Marhala, where a rich booty awaits us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SERF AND SEIGNEUR.
+
+
+The cloud of dust raised by the troop of the Duke of Aquitaine was lost
+at a distance in a burning mist, whose reddish vapors were invading the
+horizon. Those among the stragglers who had resisted the fatigue, a
+consuming thirst, or painful wounds, followed haltingly, at great
+distances from one another, the road to Marhala, marked with so much
+human debris, above which flocks of vultures, for a moment frightened
+away, again leisurely flapped their wings. The last group of the
+stragglers had disappeared in the whirlwind of dust raised by the train,
+when three living creatures, a man, a woman and a child--Fergan, Joan
+the Hunchback and Colombaik--were left alone in the midst of the desert.
+Colombaik, dying with thirst, was stretched upon the sand beside his
+mother, whose sore feet, wrapped in blood-clotted rags, could no longer
+support her. On his knees beside them, his back turned to the sun,
+Fergan sought to shade his wife and child with his body. Not far from
+them, the corpses of a man and woman were in sight. An hour before the
+woman had succumbed to the agonies of childbirth, bringing forth a still
+child. The little being lay at the feet of its mother, almost shapeless,
+and already blackened and shriveled by the fiery sun. The man had been
+killed by the blow of a lance of one of the duke's men-at-arms for
+having tried to capture one of the water pouches.
+
+Joan the Hunchback, seated beside Colombaik, whose head she held upon
+her knees, wept as she muttered: "Do you no longer hear me, dear heart?
+Do you not answer me?" The tears of the poor woman left their furrows on
+the dust-covered face of the child as they dropped, and ran down his
+cheeks to the corners of his parched lips. His eyes half shut, and
+feeling his face bathed in his mother's tears, Colombaik carried his
+fingers mechanically towards his cheeks and his mouth, as if seeking to
+quench his thirst with the maternal tears. "Oh!" muttered Joan,
+observing the motions of her child, "Oh, if but my blood could recall
+you to life!" And, struck by the idea, she said to the quarryman:
+"Fergan, take your knife and open one of my veins; we may be able to
+save the child!"
+
+"I was myself thinking of letting him drink blood," answered Fergan;
+"but I am robuster than you--" and the serf stopped short, interrupted
+by the sound of a great flapping of wings above his head. He felt the
+air agitated around him, raised his eyes and saw an enormous brown
+vulture, its neck and head stripped of feathers, letting itself heavily
+down upon the corpse of the still-born child, seize the little body
+between its talons, and, carrying off its prey, rise into space emitting
+a prolonged cry. Joan and her husband, for a moment forgetful of their
+own agonies, followed with frightened eyes the circulating flight of the
+vulture, when the serf descried, approaching from afar, a pilgrim
+mounted on an ass.
+
+"Fergan," said Joan to the quarryman, whose eyes were fastened on the
+pilgrim, as he drew nearer and nearer, "Fergan, weakened as you are, if
+you lose blood for our child, you will perhaps die. I could not survive
+you. Who, then, would protect Colombaik? You can still walk and carry
+him on your shoulders. As to me, I am beyond proceeding. My bleeding
+feet refuse to carry me. Let me sacrifice myself for our child. You will
+then dig me a grave in the sand, that I be not eaten up by the vultures
+or the wild beasts."
+
+Instead of answering his wife, Fergan said to her sharply: "Joan, spread
+yourself on the ground; do not budge; pretend to be dead, as I shall. We
+are saved!" Saying which the serf threw himself down flat on his stomach
+beside his wife. Already the heavy breathing of the pilgrim's donkey was
+heard approaching. Though prodded, the beast moved slowly and with
+great effort, its legs sinking up to the knees in the sand. Its master,
+a man of tall and robust stature, was clad in a tattered brown robe,
+that fell to his feet, shod in sandals. In order to protect himself
+against the heat of the sun, he had drawn over his head like a cowl the
+tippet of his robe, which was sprinkled over with shells and bore the
+red cross of the Crusader on the left shoulder. From the donkey's
+pack-saddle hung a knap-sack, together with a large pouch of water.
+
+While drawing near the corpses of the man and the woman whose new-born
+child had just been carried off by the vulture, the pilgrim, speaking to
+himself, said in a low voice: "Dead bodies everywhere! The road to
+Marhala is paved with corpses!" Saying this he arrived near the place
+where Joan and Fergan lay motionless on the sand. "And still more dead
+bodies!" muttered the pilgrim, turning his head aside, and he kicked his
+mule with both heels to hasten its pace. Hardly had he gone a few steps,
+when, rising and springing forward with one bound, Fergan jumped on the
+crupper of the donkey, seized the traveler by the shoulders, threw him
+back and on the ground, and, placing both his knees on the pilgrim's
+chest, held him down while hurriedly calling: "Joan, there is a full
+pouch at the donkey's saddle, take it quick, and give our child to
+drink!" The courageous mother was not able to walk, but dragging herself
+on her knees and hands as far as the donkey, which had stood still after
+its master was thrown down, she succeeded in unfastening the pouch, and,
+weeping with joy she returned to her child, again dragging herself on
+her knees with the help of one hand while holding the pouch with the
+other, muttering: "Provided it is not too late, my God, and that our
+child can be recalled to life!"
+
+While Joan hastened to give her child to drink in the hope of plucking
+him from the claws of death, Fergan was engaged in a violent struggle
+with the traveler, whose traits he could not distinguish, the tippet of
+the latter's robe having wound itself completely around his head. As
+robust as the quarryman, this man made violent efforts to extricate
+himself from the embrace of the serf. "I mean you no harm," Fergan was
+saying to him, continuing to struggle with his adversary. "My child is
+dying of thirst! you have in your pouch a precious beverage; I shall
+take it in the knowledge that you would have answered with a refusal,
+had I requested you for a few drops of the water that it contains."
+
+"Oh, that I have not a single weapon to kill this dog who steals away my
+water!" groaned the pilgrim while redoubling his efforts to disengage
+himself. "In a minute I would have killed you; I would have cut you to
+pieces, vagabond!"
+
+"I know this voice!" cried out Fergan, and brusquely pulling aside the
+folds of the tippet that covered the face of the traveler, the serf
+remained dumb with astonishment. Under him lay Neroweg, Worse than a
+Wolf!
+
+The seigneur of Plouernel profiting by that moment of confusion, freed
+himself from Fergan's hold, rose, and thinking only of his pouch of
+water, cast his eyes about him. He saw a few steps away Joan, radiant
+with joy, yet tearful, on her knees near Colombaik, and holding the
+pouch which the child pressed with his two little hands, while he drank
+with avidity. He seemed to regain life in the measure that he slaked his
+consuming thirst.
+
+"That bastard is drinking up my water!" Neroweg yelled with fury. "In
+this desert, water is life," and he was about to rush upon Joan and her
+child when the quarryman, recovering from his stupor, seized the Count
+of Plouernel between his robust arms: "We are not here in your
+seigniory; you covered with iron and I naked! Here we are man to man,
+body to body! In the midst of this desert we are equals, Neroweg! I
+shall have your life, or you shall have mine. Fight for it!"
+
+A terrific struggle ensued, in the midst of the cries of Joan and
+Colombaik, who trembled for husband and for father. The seigneur of
+Plouernel was a man of redoubtable strength; but the serf, although
+weakened with privation and fatigue, drew energy from his hatred of his
+implacable enemy. A Gallic serf, Fergan was struggling with a descendant
+of the Nerowegs! The combatants swayed forward and back, silent,
+desperate, breast to breast, face to face, livid, terrible, foaming with
+rage, palpitating with a homicidal ardor, furiously pressing each other,
+under a brassy sky, in the midst of thick clouds of dust raised by their
+own feet. On their knees, their hands joined in prayer, passing
+alternately from hope to fear, Joan and Colombaik dared not approach the
+two athletes, who ever and anon reappeared through the cloud of dust,
+frightful to behold. Suddenly the thud of a heavy fall was heard,
+simultaneously with the exhausted voice of Fergan: "Woe is me! Oh, my
+wife! Oh, my child!" Fergan lay prone upon the sand, vainly battling
+against Neroweg, who, having gained the upper hand, sought to strangle
+his adversary. He held him under his left knee while raising himself by
+his right leg that he stretched out with a violent effort. At the cries
+of despair, "My wife! My child!" emitted by the serf, Colombaik ran to
+his father, threw himself flat on the ground and clinging to the bare
+and stiff leg of Neroweg, the child bit him in the calf. The sharp and
+unexpected pain drew from the Count a scream, and he turned back sharply
+towards Colombaik. Fergan, thus freed from the grasp of his seigneur,
+lost no time to spring upon his feet, and now keeping the advantage,
+succeeded in throwing Neroweg down. Calling his son to his aid, the serf
+managed to pinion the arms of the Count with a long cord that held his
+own robe at the waist, and to bind his legs with the fastenings of his
+own sandals. Feeling his strength exhausted by this desperate combat,
+Fergan, ready to faint, covered with perspiration, threw himself on the
+sand beside Joan and his son. These hastened to approach to his lips the
+pouch in which there still was some water left, while the seigneur of
+Plouernel, breathing fast and broken, shot at the quarryman looks of
+impotent rage.
+
+"We are saved!" said Fergan when he had slaked his thirst and felt his
+strength returning. "By husbanding the water still left in this pouch,
+we shall have enough to reach Marhala with. I have a provision of dates
+in my knap-sack. The ass will serve you and the child to ride on, my
+poor Joan. I can still walk. As to the seigneur of Plouernel," Fergan
+proceeded with a somber look, "he will soon need neither provision nor
+conveyance!" And rising to his feet, while his wife and child followed
+his movements with uneasy eyes, the serf approached Neroweg. The
+seigneur, still stretched upon the sand, writhed in his bands, tugging
+to burst them; then, exhausted by his idle efforts, he lay motionless.
+"Do you recognize me?" asked the serf, crossing his arms on his breast,
+and looking down upon the fettered seigneur of Plouernel; "Do you
+recognize me? In Gaul you were my seigneur, I your serf. I am the
+grandson of Den-Brao the Mason, whom your grandfather, Neroweg IV,
+killed of hunger in the subterranean donjon of Plouernel. I am a
+relative of Bezenecq the Rich, who died under the torture, in the
+presence of his own daughter, herself going crazy with fear, and dying
+at the very moment when I was rescuing her from her cell. I had to dig
+her grave among the rocks that lie about the issue of the secret passage
+from your castle."
+
+"By the tomb of the Saviour! Is it you, vagabond, who penetrated to the
+turret of Azenor the Pale? You helped her in her flight?"
+
+"I went to look in your den for my child, whom you see yonder."
+
+"Woe is me! I am alone in this desert, without arms, bound hand and
+foot, at the mercy of this vile serf. How comes this dog to have
+survived this long journey? A curse upon him!"
+
+"I have survived in order to avenge upon you the wrongs you have
+perpetrated upon my kin. This is not the first time that a descendant of
+Joel the Gaul locks horns with a descendant of Neroweg the Frank. Before
+us, in the course of centuries that rolled by, the ancestors of us two
+have met arms in hand. Fate so wills it. It is a war to death between
+our two races. The struggle, mayhap, will continue yet ages to come.
+Neroweg, I am the evil genius of your race, as you and yours are the
+persecutors of mine."
+
+"That I should have to meet this miserable runaway serf, and find myself
+in his power in the midst of a Syrian desert!" muttered the seigneur of
+Plouernel, a prey to superstitious terror. "Jesus, my God, have mercy
+upon me! I am a great sinner! Mighty Saint Martin, come to my help!"
+
+"Neroweg," proceeded Fergan, after a moment's reflection, "the heat
+grows suffocating, despite the sun's being veiled behind that reddish
+mist that is slowly rising heavenward. My wife and I shall not proceed
+on our journey until the moon rises. You and I shall have time to talk
+matters over, before taking leave of each other forever."
+
+The seigneur of Plouernel contemplated the serf with a mixture of
+astonishment, defiance and terror. Fergan exchanged a look with Joan,
+and sat down on the sand at a little distance from Neroweg. Indeed, the
+atmosphere was becoming so stifling that the travelers, panting for
+breath, and streaming in perspiration, yet, without making any motion,
+would have been unable to resume their journey.
+
+"In Gaul, at your seigniory, you were at once indicter, judge and
+executioner over your serfs. To-day, my seigniory is this desert! and
+you my serf! In my turn I shall be the indicter, the judge and the
+executioner. The indictment I shall draw up will be the recital of my
+journey. You may then, perhaps, understand the horror that you,
+seigneurs, inspire your serfs with, when you will have learned the
+dangers that we brave to escape your tyranny and enjoy a day of freedom.
+When we left your seigniory, we were three thousand Crusaders, men,
+women, or children. Our numbers increased daily. Thus, after we had
+traversed Gaul from west to east, from Anjou to Lorraine, we were more
+than sixty thousand when we crossed over into Germany. Other troops of
+Crusaders, no less numerous than ours, and also proceeding from Gaul, to
+the north from Flanders, to the south from Burgundy or Provence, struck
+like ourselves the route for the Orient. After traversing Hungary and
+Bohemia, skirting the Adriatic to Wallachia, and following the banks of
+the Danube, we arrived at Constantinople. Thence we entered Asia Minor,
+and from Asia Minor we made into Palestine, where we now are. What a
+journey! For poor serfs, barefooted and in rags, the road is long. To
+tramp fifteen hundred leagues in order to escape the oppression of the
+seigneurs! But unhappy serfs that we are! We flee the seigneurs, and the
+seigneurs pursue us into Palestine. The seigneur Baudoin seizes Edessa,
+and there you have a 'Count of Edessa'; Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, takes
+Tripoli, and there you have a 'Prince of Tripoli.' When we shall have
+arrived in Galilee, in Nazareth, in Jerusalem, we may live to see a
+'King of Jerusalem,' a 'Baron of Galilee,' a 'Marquis of Nazareth!'--a
+full seigniorial hierarchy."
+
+"This miserable serf has gone crazy," muttered the seigneur of Plouernel
+to himself. "He may, perhaps, forget to kill me."
+
+"Our troop left Gaul, as I said, sixty thousand strong, under the lead
+of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. On the road the inoffensive
+inhabitants were pillaged, ravaged and massacred to the cry of 'God
+wills it!' Deceived on the length of the journey and in their ignorance,
+hardly had the Crusaders left Gaul, when, at the sight of each new town
+they asked: 'Is that Jerusalem?' 'Not yet,' answered Cuckoo Peter, 'we
+must march on!' And we marched. At the start it was a joy, a delirium, a
+triumphal procession! Serfs and villeins were the masters. People fled
+and trembled at our approach. The 'soldiers of Christ' sacked or burned
+the towns, set fire to the harvests, killed the cattle that they could
+not drag along, slaughtered old men and children, raped the women and
+then cut them to pieces, heaped up booty, and from city to city repeated
+the question: 'Is not that Jerusalem, either?' 'Not yet!' answered
+Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. 'Not yet! March on, march on!'
+And we marched. The strangers, at first taken by surprise, allowed
+themselves to be pillaged and massacred by the 'soldiers of the faith.'
+But, soon apprised by report of the ravages committed by the Crusaders
+and of their ferocity, these were fought with determination, and so
+effectively were they cut down, that our troop, consisting of more than
+sixty thousand people at the start, numbered at its arrival in
+Constantinople only five or six thousand survivors. During the journey
+through Asia Minor and Palestine, that number was reduced by one-half
+through battles, the pest, hunger, thirst and fatigue. Among the
+survivors, some, seized and kept for serfs of the new seigniories of
+Edessa, Antioch or Tripoli, have been forced to cultivate these lands
+for the seigneurs under the killing sun of the Holy Land. Others, and I
+am of the number, preferring freedom to renewed servitude, risked their
+lives in order to continue their march to Jerusalem. Some expect to find
+considerable booty in the Holy City; others imagine they will gain
+Paradise by rescuing the tomb of Christ. Of them all, I alone wish to
+reach Jerusalem, in order to see the places where, now a thousand and
+odd years ago, my ancestress, Genevieve, witnessed the death of the
+young man of Nazareth. This is how was accomplished the pilgrimage of
+those thousands of serfs and villeins, whose bones mark a long trail
+from the frontiers of Gaul to this place. Fatality drove them. They were
+forced to move on, or perish on the road. Thus, myself, fleeing from
+your seigniory to escape your gaolers, would but have been exposed to
+renewed servitude had I stopped in Gaul. Beyond the frontiers, to
+separate myself from the Crusaders, and take my chances with my wife and
+child among nations in arms against the 'soldiers of the cross,' would
+have been insanity. There was no choice but to march, and march again.
+Moreover, miserable as it was, yet our vagrant life was no worse than
+the life of serfdom. That's how it happened, Neroweg, that we meet here
+in the desert where you are mine, just as in your seigniory I was
+yours,--at my will and mercy, in life and death. Do you understand?"
+
+The seigneur of Plouernel muttered in a hollow voice, expressive of
+concentrated rage: "Oh, to perish by the hand of a vile serf!"
+
+"Yes, you shall die. But I mean to make your dying hour a long-drawn
+torture. The vain-glory, the cupidity, the ambition of founding
+seigniories in the Orient, the hope of buying back your forfeitures and
+of escaping from the claws of the devil have driven you seigneurs to the
+Crusade! Oh, how stupid you were! How many of you, haughty seigneurs,
+after having sold or mortgaged your lands to the Church, are not this
+hour ruined by gaming and debauchery, and reduced to beg your way! How
+many have not been massacred or abandoned by your serfs a few miles from
+your seigniories! How many of you have not died of the pest or under the
+scimiter of the Saracen! Let this thought embitter your dying hour,
+Neroweg, you are about to die like a beggar midst the sands of Syria,
+while the Bishop of Nantes, your mortal enemy, having slipped through
+your fingers, now enjoys the largest part of your domains! At this hour
+you groan with a rage that is impotent, and my vengeance begins."
+
+"A curse upon that Italian priest whom I captured with the Bishop of
+Nantes! That Jeronimo turned my head speaking to me of the Crusade. He
+made me fear for my salvation, pointing out that the hand of God weighed
+heavy upon me by the death of one of my sons, killed by his own
+brother!"
+
+"Both your sons are dead, Neroweg! I myself felled the fratricide with a
+blow of my iron bar at the moment he was about to do violence to the
+daughter of Bezenecq the Rich! Both the wolves and the whelps of the
+seigniories are beasts of prey and of carnage. They must be
+exterminated!"
+
+"My son Gonthram did not die, and Jeronimo promised me, in the name of
+God, that if I departed for the Crusade and let the Bishop of Nantes
+free, I would insure the recovery of my son. Oh, heart-broken at the
+sight of one son dead and the other dying, I was bereft of reasoning! I
+obeyed the priest and departed for Palestine,--to my greater undoing.
+Bitterly I repent the day!"
+
+Fergan, struck at the tenderness that the seigneur of Plouernel had not
+been able to suppress at the mention of his son Gonthram, said to him:
+"You love your son?"
+
+Neroweg shot with his eyes daggers of hatred at the serf as he lay
+stretched out on the sand at the latter's feet. Two tears rolled down
+his savage face. But wishing to conceal his emotions from Fergan, he
+turned his head brusquely aside. Joan and Colombaik, having drawn near
+the quarryman, listened in silence to his dialogue with Neroweg. While
+the seigneur sought to hide his tears, the woman saw them and said in a
+whisper to her husband: "Despite his wickedness, that seigneur weeps at
+the thought of his son. His sorrow affects me."
+
+"Oh, father," put in Colombaik, joining his hands, "if he weeps, be you
+merciful! Do not harm him!"
+
+The serf remained silent a moment, then, addressing his seigneur said:
+"You are moved at the thought of your child, and yet you meant to have
+mine strangled. Do you imagine a serf has not, like you, a father's
+heart?"
+
+Neroweg answered with an outburst of sarcastic laughter.
+
+"What are you laughing about?"
+
+"I laughed as I would if I heard an ass, or other beast of burden, talk
+about his 'father's heart,'" rejoined the seigneur of Plouernel. "You
+vagabond, were I not in your power now, I would kill you for the vile
+dog that you are!"
+
+"In his eyes a serf has no more soul than a beast of burden!" repeated
+the quarryman. "Yes, this man speaks in the sincerity of his savage
+pride. He weeps for his own child. After all he is human. And yet, what
+is a serf to him? An animal without heart, reason or feeling! But why
+should I wonder? Neroweg cannot choose but share with his likes that
+opinion of our animal abjectness. Our craven attitude confirms it. Our
+conquerors are thousands, while we, the conquered, number millions, and
+yet we patiently bear the yoke. Indeed, never did more docile cattle
+march under the whip of a master, or stretch the neck to the butcher's
+knife!" After a moment's silence, Fergan resumed: "Listen, Neroweg! You
+are in my power, disarmed and fettered. I am about to fulfil a great
+act of justice by braining you with my cudgel like a wolf caught in a
+trap. It is the death that you deserve. Had I a sword, I would not use
+it on you. But what you have just said has made me think and somewhat
+spoils my pleasure. I admit it; by reason of our brutishness and
+cowardice, we deserve to be looked upon and treated like cattle by you,
+our seigneurs. 'Tis true, we are as craven as you are ferocious, but if
+our cravenness explains your criminal conduct, it does not excuse it.
+So, you shall die, Neroweg! Yes, in the name of the horrid ills that
+your race has made mine suffer, you shall die! I only wish to keep a
+memento of you, a descendant of the Nerowegs," and Fergan leaned forward
+over the seigneur of Plouernel. The latter, believing his last hour had
+come, could not restrain a cry of anguish. But the serf only pulled from
+Neroweg's robe one of the shells that it was sprinkled with, as symbols
+of a pious pilgrimage. For an instant Fergan contemplated the shell with
+a pensive mien. Joan and her son, following with astonished and uneasy
+looks the movements of the quarryman, saw him raise his ragged kilt,
+that only half-covered his thighs, and detach a long belt of coarse
+cloth that was wound around his waist. Inside the belt the quarryman
+carried several pious mementos, that had been handed down from
+generation to generation in his family, and which, before finally
+marching away with the troop of the Crusaders, he had taken with him. To
+them he added the shell he had just pulled from the robe of Neroweg VI.
+Refastening his belt, the serf cried out: "And now, justice and
+vengeance, Neroweg! I have accused you, judged and condemned you. You
+shall now die!" Looking around for his heavy and knotted staff, he
+grasped the massive implement with both his powerful hands, while his
+wife and child implored aloud: "Mercy!" The serf, however, throwing
+himself upon the seigneur of Plouernel planted one foot on the latter's
+breast: "No, no mercy! Did the Nerowegs know mercy for my grandfather,
+for Bezenecq the Rich, or for his daughter?" Saying which, the quarryman
+raised the cudgel over the head of Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf, who,
+gnashing his teeth, faced death without blanching. It would have been
+over then and there with the seigneur of Plouernel had not Joan embraced
+the knees of her husband, imploring him aloud: "For the love of your
+son, have mercy! Without the water that you took from this seigneur,
+Colombaik would have expired in the desert!"
+
+Fergan yielded to the prayers of his wife. Despite the justice of the
+reprisal, it went against his nature to kill an unarmed enemy. He threw
+his staff far away; remained for an instant gloomy and silent and then
+said to his seigneur: "It is said that despite your crimes, you and your
+likes at times remain true to your vows. Swear to me, by the salvation
+of your soul and by your faith as a knight, to respect from this moment
+the life of my wife, of my child and of myself. I do not fear you so
+long as we are alone in this desert, but if I meet you at Marhala or
+Jerusalem with the other seigneurs of the Crusade, I and mine will be at
+your mercy. You could order us burned or hanged. Swear that you will
+respect our lives, I shall then have mercy upon you, and set you free."
+
+"An oath to you, vile serf! To soil my word by passing it to you!" cried
+out Neroweg, and he added with another outburst of sardonic laughter:
+"As well might I give my word as a Catholic and a knight to the ass or
+any other beast of burden!"
+
+"This is too much!" yelled Fergan exasperated, while he ran to pick up
+his club. "By the bones of my father, you shall die!"
+
+At the very moment, however, when the serf had anew seized the cudgel,
+Joan, clinging to his arm said with terror: "Do you hear yonder growing
+noise?... It approaches.... It rumbles like thunder!"
+
+"Father," cried out Colombaik, no less horrified than his mother, "look
+yonder! The sky is red as blood!"
+
+The serf raised his eyes, and, struck with the strange and startling
+spectacle, forgot all about Neroweg. The orb of the sun, already near
+the horizon, seemed enormous and of purple hue. Its rays disappeared at
+intervals in the midst of a burning mist which it lighted with a dull
+fire, and whose reflection suddenly crimsoned the desert and the air.
+The frightful spectacle seemed to be seen through some transparent glass
+tinted with a coppery red. A furious gale, still distant, swept over the
+desert and carried with its dull and prolonged moanings a breath as
+scorching as the exhalations of a furnace. Flocks of vultures fled at
+full tilt before the approaching hurricane, scurrying over the ground or
+dropping down motionless, palpitating, or uttering plaintive squeaks.
+Suddenly the sun, ever more completely eclipsed, disappeared behind an
+immense cloud of reddish sand that veiled the desert and the sky, and
+that advanced with the swiftness of lightning, chasing before it the
+jackals and the lions, that roared with fear, and rushed by,
+terror-stricken, a few steps from Fergan and his family.
+
+"We are lost! This is a sand-spout!" cried out the quarryman.
+
+Hardly had the serf uttered these words of despair when he found himself
+enveloped by a sand cloud as fine as ashes, and dense as a fog. The
+mobile soil, hollowed, thrown up and up-turned by the irresistible force
+of the sand-spout, opened at the feet of Fergan, who, with wife and
+child, disappeared under a sand wave. The gale furrowed, beat about and
+tossed up the sands of the desert as a tempest furrows, beats about, and
+tosses up the waters of the ocean.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE EMIR'S PALACE.
+
+
+The city of Marhala, like all others in the Orient, was crossed by
+narrow and sinuous streets, bordered with whitewashed houses, bearing
+narrow windows. Here and there the dome of a mosque or the top of a palm
+tree, planted in the middle of an interior court-yard, broke the
+uniformity of the straight lines formed by the terraces, that surmounted
+all the houses. Since about fifteen days, and after a murderous siege,
+the city of Marhala had fallen into the power of the army of the
+Crusaders, commanded by Bohemond, Prince of Taranto. The ramparts of the
+city, half torn down by the engines of war, presented at several places
+only a heap of ruins, from which a pestilential odor escaped, due to the
+decomposition of the Saracen bodies that were buried under the debris of
+the walls. The gate of Agra was one of the points most violently
+attacked by a column of Crusaders under the order of William IX, Duke of
+Aquitaine, and also most stubbornly defended by the garrison. Not far
+from the spot rose the palace of the Emir of Marhala, killed at the
+siege. According to the manner of the Crusaders, William had his
+standard raised over the door of the palace, of which he took
+possession.
+
+Night was falling. Maria, a large wrinkled old woman, with a beaked
+nose, protruding chin, and clad in a long Saracen pelisse, sat crouched
+upon a kind of divan, furnished with cushions, in one of the lower halls
+of the Emir's palace. She had just issued the order to some invisible
+person: "Let the creature come in, I wish to examine her!"
+
+The creature that came in was Perrette the Ribald, the mistress of
+Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. The young woman's complexion, now tanned by
+the sun, rendered still more striking the whiteness of her teeth, the
+coral tint of her lips and the fire of her eyes. The expression of her
+pretty face preserved its blithe effrontery. Her tattered costume was of
+both sexes. A turban of an old yellow-and-red material partially covered
+her thick and curly hair; a waistcoat or caftan of pale green and open
+embroidery, the spoils of a Saracen and twice too large for her, served
+her for a robe. Held at the waist by a strip of cloth, the robe exposed
+the naked legs of the Ribald, together with her dusty feet, shod in
+shoddy sandals. She carried at the end of a cane a small bundle of
+clothes. Upon entering the hall, Perrette said to the old woman
+deliberately: "I happened on the market place when an auction sale of
+booty was being conducted. An old woman, after eying me a long time,
+said to me: 'You seem to be the right kind of a girl. Would you like to
+exchange your rags for pretty clothes, and lead a merry life at the
+palace? Come with me.' I answered the old woman: 'March, I follow!
+Feastings and palaces are quite to my taste.'"
+
+"You look to me to be a wide-awake customer."
+
+"I'm eighteen years old. My name is Perrette the Ribald. That's what I
+am."
+
+"Your name is written on your brazen brow. But are you good company? Not
+quarrelsome and not jealous?"
+
+"The more I look upon you, honest matron, the surer I am of having seen
+you before. Did you not keep at Antioch the famous tavern of the Cross
+of Salvation?"
+
+"You do not deceive yourself, my child."
+
+"Ah, you must have made many a bag of gold besans in your holy brothel."
+
+"What were you doing in Antioch, my pretty child?"
+
+"I was in love ... with the King!"
+
+"You are bantering, my friend, there was no king in the Crusade."
+
+"You forget the King of the Vagabonds."
+
+"What! The chief of those bandits, of those skinners, of those eaters of
+human flesh?"
+
+"Before he became the king of the bandits, I loved him under the modest
+name of Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. Oh, what has become of him?"
+
+"You must have left him?"
+
+"One day I made a slip. I committed an infidelity towards him. I do not
+plume myself upon my constancy. I left the King of the Vagabonds for a
+duke."
+
+"A duke of beggars?"
+
+"No, no! A real duke. The handsomest of all the Crusaders, William IX."
+
+"You were the mistress of the Duke of Aquitaine?"
+
+"That was in Antioch, after the siege. William IX was crossing the
+market-place on horseback. He smiled, and reached his hand out to me. I
+placed my foot on the tip of his boot, with one jump I landed in front
+of his saddle, and he took me to his palace," and seeming to recall some
+droll incident, Perrette laughed out aloud.
+
+"Are you laughing at some of your tricks?" asked the old shrew.
+
+"On that same day when the Duke of Aquitaine took me on his horse, a
+very beautiful woman went by in a litter. At the sight of her he turned
+his horse and followed the litter. I, fearing he would drop me for the
+other woman, said to him: 'What a treasure of beauty is that Rebecca the
+Jewess, that has just gone by in a litter.' Ha! ha! ha! old lady,"
+Perrette added, breaking out anew into roars of laughter. "Thanks to
+that lucky slander, my debauche turned about and galloped off to his own
+palace, fleeing from the litter no less frightened than if he had seen
+the devil. And so it happened that, at least for that one day, I kept my
+duke, and we spent the night together."
+
+"I see. And what became of your king?"
+
+"On the same evening of that adventure, he left Antioch with his
+vagabonds on an expedition. I have not seen him since."
+
+"Well, my little one, in default of your king, you will find your duke
+back. You are here in the house of William."
+
+"Of the Duke of Aquitaine?"
+
+"After the siege of the city, William took possession of the Emir's
+palace. He gives to-night a feast to several seigneurs, the flower of
+the Crusade. Almost all old customers of my tavern in Antioch: Robert
+Courte-Heuse, Duke of Normandy; Heracle, seigneur of Polignac; Bohemond,
+Prince of Taranto; Gerhard, Count of Roussillon; Burchard, seigneur of
+Montmorency; William, sire of Sabran; Radulf, seigneur of Haut-Poul, and
+many more merry blades, without counting the gentlemen of the cloth, and
+the tonsured lovers of pretty girls, of Cyprus wine and of dice."
+
+"Is it for this one feast, you old mackerel, that you are engaging me?"
+
+"You will remain in the palace until the departure of the army for
+Jerusalem, my gentle pupil and pearl of gay girls."
+
+The entrance of a third woman interrupted the conversation between Maria
+and Perrette, who, uttering a short cry, ran to a miserably dressed
+young girl, just let in. "You here, Yolande?"
+
+Yolande preserved her beauty, but her face had lost the charm of candor,
+that rendered her so touching when she and her mother implored Neroweg
+VI not to deprive them of their patrimony. The face of Yolande,
+alternately bold and gloomy, according as she brazened out or blushed at
+her degradation, at least gave token that she was conscious of her
+infamy. At sight of Perrette, who ran towards her with friendly
+eagerness, Yolande stepped back ashamed of meeting with the queen of the
+wenches. Perrette, reading on the countenance of the noble girl a
+mixture of embarrassment and disdain, said to her reproachfully: "You
+were not quite so proud when, ten leagues from Antioch, I kept you from
+dying of thirst and hunger! Oh, you put on airs! You have become
+haughty!"
+
+"Why did I leave Gaul?" muttered Yolande with sorrowful contrition.
+"Though reduced to misery, at least I would not have known ignominy. I
+would not have become a courtezan! A curse upon you, Neroweg! By
+depriving me of the inheritance of my father, you caused my misfortune
+and shame!"
+
+The girl, unable to repress her tears, hid her face in her hands, while
+Maria, who had attentively examined her, said to Perrette in an
+undertone: "Oh, the pretty legs of that girl! Do you know Yolande?"
+
+"We left Gaul together, I on the arm of the Gibbet-cheater, Yolande at
+the crupper of her lover, Eucher. In Bohemia, Eucher was killed by the
+Bohemians who resisted us. Yolande, now a widow and alone, could not
+continue so long a journey without protection. From one protector to
+another, Yolande fell under the eyes of the handsome Duke of Aquitaine
+at Bairut in Syria. Later I found her riding on the road to Tripoli
+dying of hunger, thirst and fatigue----"
+
+"And you came to my aid, Perrette," fell in Yolande, who, having dried
+her tears, overheard the words of the queen of the wenches. "You gave me
+bread and water to appease my hunger and thirst, and you saved my life."
+
+"Come, my children, let's not have tears," remarked the matron. "Tears
+make old faces. You shall be taken to the baths of the Emir, where are
+assembled some of the most beautiful Saracen female slaves of that
+infidel dog."
+
+At that moment an old woman, the same who had introduced Perrette and
+Yolande to the hall, came in roaring with laughter, and said to the
+other shrew: "Oh, Maria, what a find! A diamond in your brothel!"
+
+"What makes you laugh that way?"
+
+"A minute ago, coming back from casting my hook on the
+market-place,"--and she broke out laughing anew. Presently she
+proceeded: "And I found there--I found there--a diamond!"
+
+"Finish your story!"
+
+But the second old hag, instead of answering, disappeared for an instant
+behind the curtain that masked the door, and immediately re-appeared
+conducting Joan the Hunchback, who led by the hand the little
+Colombaik, no less exhausted than herself from privations and fatigue.
+To all cruel hearts the poor woman, indeed, was a laughable sight. Her
+long, tangled hair, half tumbling over her face, fell upon her bare
+shoulders, dusty like her breast, arms and legs. Her clothing consisted
+of shreds, fastened around her waist with a band of plaited reeds, so
+that her sad deformity was exposed in all its nudity. Joan had stripped
+herself of the rags that constituted the bodice of her robe in order to
+wrap the feet of Colombaik, flayed to the quick by his long tramp across
+the burning sands. The quarryman's wife, sad and broken down, quietly
+followed the shrew, and daring not to raise her eyes, while the latter
+did not cease laughing.
+
+"What sort of thing is that you bring me there?" cried out the coupler.
+"What do you want to do with that monster?"
+
+"A first-class joke," replied the other, finally overcoming her
+hilarity. "We shall rig out this villein in some grotesque costume,
+leaving her hump well exposed, and we shall present this star of beauty
+to the noble seigneurs. They will split their sides with laughter.
+Imagine this darling in the midst of a bevy of pretty girls. Would you
+not call that a diamond?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! An excellent idea!" the matron rejoined, now laughing no
+less noisily than her assistant. "We shall place upon her head a turban
+of peacock feathers; we shall ornament her hump with all sorts of
+gew-gaws. Ha, ha! How those dear seigneurs will be amused. It will pay
+us well!"
+
+"That's not all, Maria. My find is doubly good. Look at this marmot. It
+is a little cupid. Everyone to his taste!"
+
+"He is certainly sweet, despite his leanness, and the dust that his
+features are stained with. His little face is attractive."
+
+Seized with compassion at the sight of Joan and her child, Yolande had
+not shared in the cruel mirth of the two shrews. But Perrette, less
+tender, had broken out into a loud roar, when, suddenly struck by a
+sudden recollection, and attentively eyeing Joan, against whom
+Colombaik, no less confused and uneasy than his mother, was cuddling
+closely, the queen of the wenches cried out: "By all the Saints of
+Paradise! Did you not inhabit in Gaul one of the villages of a
+neighboring seigniory of Anjou?"
+
+"Yes," answered the poor woman in a weak voice, "we started from there
+on the Crusade."
+
+"Do you remember a young girl and a tall scamp who wanted to carry you
+along to Palestine?"
+
+"I remember," answered Joan, regarding Perrette with astonishment; "but
+I managed to escape those wicked people."
+
+"Rather say those 'good people,' because the young woman was myself, and
+the tall scamp my lover, Corentin. We wanted to take you to the Holy
+Land, assuring you that you would be exhibited for money! Now, then, by
+the faith of the queen of the wenches! confess, Yolande, that I am a
+mighty prophetess!" added Perrette, turning to her companion. But the
+latter reproachfully answered her: "How have you the courage to mock a
+mother in the presence of her child!"
+
+These words seemed to make an impression upon Perrette. She checked her
+laughter, relapsed into a brooding silence, and seemed touched by the
+fate of Joan, while Yolande addressed the woman kindly: "Poor, dear
+woman, how did you allow yourself to be brought here with your child?
+You cannot know what place this is. You are in a house of prostitution."
+
+"I arrived in this city with a troop of pilgrims and Crusaders, who, by
+a miracle, escaped, like myself and son, a sand-spout that buried, a
+fortnight ago, so many travelers under the sands of the desert. I had
+sat down with my son under the shadow of a wall, exhausted with fatigue
+and hunger, when yonder woman," and Joan pointed to the shrew, "after
+long looking at me, said to me charitably: 'You seem to be very much
+tired out, you and your child. Will you follow me? I shall take you to a
+holy woman of great piety.' It was an unlooked-for piece of good luck to
+me," added Joan. "I put faith in the words of this woman, and I followed
+her hither."
+
+"Alack! You have fallen into a hateful trap. They propose to make sport
+of you," Yolande replied in a low voice. "Did you not hear those two
+shrews?"
+
+"I care little. I shall submit to all humiliation, all scorn, provided
+food and clothing be given to my child," rejoined Joan in accents that
+betokened both courage and resignation. "I will suffer anything upon
+condition that my poor child may rest for a while, recover himself and
+regain his health. Oh, he is now doubly dear to me----"
+
+"Did you lose his father?"
+
+"He remained, undoubtedly, buried in the sand," answered Joan, and like
+Colombaik, she could not restrain her tears at the memory of Fergan.
+"When the sand-spout broke over us, I felt myself blinded and
+suffocated. My first movement was to take my child in my arms. The
+ground opened under my feet and I lost consciousness. I remember nothing
+after that."
+
+"But how did you reach this city, poor woman?" asked the queen of the
+wenches, interested by so much sweetness and resignation. "The road is
+long across the desert, and you seem too feeble to sustain the fatigues
+of such a journey."
+
+"When I regained consciousness," answered Joan, "I was lying in a wagon,
+near an old man who sold provisions to the Crusaders. He took pity upon
+me and my child, having found us in a dying condition, half buried under
+the sand. Surely my husband perished. The old man told me he saw other
+victims near us when he picked us up. Unfortunately the mule to which
+the wagon of the charitable man was hitched died of fatigue ten leagues
+from Marhala. Compelled to remain on the road and to abandon the troop
+of pilgrims, our protector was killed trying to protect his provisions
+against the stragglers. They pillaged everything, but they did not harm
+us. We followed them, fearing to lose our way. I carried my child on my
+back when he found himself unable to walk. It was thus that we arrived
+in this city. It is a sad story!"
+
+"But your husband may yet, like you, have escaped death. Do not
+despair," observed Yolande.
+
+"If he escaped that danger, it was probably to fall into a greater, for
+the seigneur of Plouernel----"
+
+"The seigneur of Plouernel!" exclaimed Yolande interrupting Joan, "do
+you know that scoundrel?"
+
+"We were serfs in his seigniory. It is from the country of Plouernel
+that we departed for the Holy Land. Accident made us meet with the
+seigneur count shortly before the sand-spout burst upon us. My husband
+and he fought----"
+
+"And did he not kill Neroweg?"
+
+"No, he yielded to my prayers."
+
+"What, pity for Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf!" exclaimed Yolande in an
+explosion of rage and hatred. "Oh, I am but a woman! But I would have
+stabbed him to the heart without remorse! The monster!"
+
+"What did he do to you?"
+
+"He deprived me of the inheritance of my father, and, falling from shame
+to shame, I have become the companion of the queen of the wenches."
+
+"Oh, mademoiselle Yolande," remarked Perrette, returning to her cynic
+quips, "will you ever remain proud?"
+
+"I?" answered the young woman with a sad and bitter smile. "No, no!
+Pride is not allowed me. You are the queen. I am one of your humble
+subjects."
+
+"Come, come, my daughters!" said the matron. "The day declines. Go to
+the baths of the Emir. As to you, my beauty," proceeded the devilish
+shrew, addressing Joan, "as to you, we shall rig you up, we shall
+perfume you, and above all we shall have your hump radiate with
+matchless lustre."
+
+"You may do with me what you please, when you will have given my child
+wherewithal to appease his hunger and thirst. He must recover his
+strength, he must sleep. I shall not leave him one instant."
+
+"Be easy, my star of beauty, you shall remain at his side, nor shall
+your child want for anything. We shall pay due attention to him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ORGIES OF THE CRUSADERS.
+
+
+The interior court-yard of the palace of the Emir, of Marhala, presented
+that evening a fairy aspect. The court was a perfect square. Along the
+four sides ran a wide gallery of Moorish ogives carved with trifoil and
+supported by low pillars of rose-colored marble. Between each column and
+into the court, large vases of Oriental alabaster filled with flowers
+served as pedestals to gilded candelabras holding torches of perfumed
+wax. Mosaics of various colors ornamented the floor of the galleries.
+The ceilings and walls disappeared under white arabesques chiseled on a
+purple background. Soft silken divans reclined against the walls,
+pierced with several ogive doors that were half closed with curtains
+fringed with pearls. These doors led to the interior apartments. At each
+corner of the galleries, gilded cages with silver bars held the rarest
+birds of Arabia, on whose plumage were mirrored the glint of the ruby,
+the emerald and the azure sapphire. In the center of the court a jet of
+crystalline water shot up from a large porphyry vase, falling back in a
+brilliant spray, and producing the murmur of a perpetual cascade as the
+water overflowed into a broad basin, from whose marble rim rose another
+circle of large and gilded candelabras, similar to those along the
+galleries. This refreshing fountain, sparkling with light, served as
+central ornament to a low table that wound around the basin and was
+covered with a cloth of embroidered silk. On it glistened the
+magnificent gold and silver vessels, carried from Gaul by the Duke of
+Aquitaine, and the rich spoils taken from the Saracens: goblets and
+decanters studded with precious stones, large amphoras filled with wine
+of Cyprus and Greece, huge gold platters on which were displayed
+Phoenician peacocks, Asiatic pheasants, quarters of Syrian antelopes
+and mutton, Byzantine hams, heads of the wild boars of Zion, and
+pyramids of fruit and confectionery. The banquet hall had for its dome
+the starry vault. The night was calm and serene; not a breath of wind
+agitated the flames of the torches.
+
+But the tumult of an orgie resounded at this sumptuous table, around
+which, seated or reclining upon couches, feasted the guests of William
+IX. Distinguished above all and occupying the place of honor, was the
+legate of the Pope; then followed, to the right and left of the Duke of
+Aquitaine, Bohemond, Prince of Taranto; Tancred; Robert Courte-Heuse,
+Duke of Normandy; Heracle, seigneur of Polignac; Siegfried, seigneur of
+Sabran; Gerhard, Duke of Roussillon; Radulf, seigneur of Haut-Poul;
+Arnulf, sire of Beaugency; and other seigneurs of Frankish origin,
+beside the knight, Walter the Pennyless. These noblemen, already
+effeminated by Oriental habits, instead of remaining armed from dawn to
+dusk, as in Gaul, had exchanged their harness of war for long robes of
+silk. The Duke of Aquitaine, whose hair floated on a tunique of gold
+cloth, wore, after the fashion of the ancients, a chaplet of roses and
+violets, already wilted by the vapors of the feast. Azenor the Pale,
+whose lips, no longer white as of yore, but now red with life, was
+seated beside William, superbly ornamented with sparkling collars and
+bracelets of precious stones. The papal legate, clad in a robe of purple
+silk bordered with ermine, carried on his breast a cross of carbuncles
+hanging from a gold chain. Behind him, ready to wait upon his master,
+stood a young negro slave, in a short blouse of white silk with silver
+collar and bracelets ornamented with corals. The cup-bearers and
+equerries of the other seigneurs likewise attended the table. The wines
+of Cyprus and of Samos had been flowing from vermillion amphoras since
+the beginning of the feast, and flowed still, carrying away in their
+perfumed waves the senses of the guests. The Duke of Aquitaine, one arm
+encircling the waist of Azenor, and raising heavenward the gold goblet
+at which his mistress had just moistened her lips, called out: "I drink
+to you, my guests! May Bacchus and Venus be propitious to you! Honor to
+him who is deepest in love!"
+
+Heracle, the seigneur of Polignac, in turn raised his cup and answered:
+"William, Duke of Aquitaine, we, your guests, drink to your courtesy and
+your splendid banquet!"
+
+"Yes, yes!" joined the Crusaders; "let's drink to the banquet of William
+IX! Let's drink to the courtesy of the Duke of Aquitaine!"
+
+"I drink gladly," said Arnulf, the seigneur of Beaugency, in his cups,
+and, shaking his head, he added meditatively, a sentence already
+repeated by him a score of times during the repast with the tenacity of
+the maudlin: "I'd like to know what my wife, the noble lady Capeluche,
+is doing at this hour in her chamber!"
+
+"By my faith, seigneurs," said the seigneur of Haut-Poul, "as true as
+ten deniers were paid for an ass's head during the scarcity at the siege
+of Antioch, I have not in my life feasted like to-night. Glory to the
+Duke of Aquitaine!"
+
+"Let's talk of the scarcity," rejoined Bohemond, the Prince of Taranto;
+"its recollection may serve to rekindle our satisfied hunger and our
+extinguished thirst."
+
+"I ate up my shoes soaked in water and seasoned with spices," said the
+sire of Montmorency.
+
+"Do you know, noble seigneurs," put in Walter the Pennyless, "that there
+are comrades, luckier or wiser than we, who never suffered hunger in the
+Holy Land, and whose faces are fresh and ruddy?"
+
+"Who are they, valiant chevalier?"
+
+"The King of the Vagabonds and his band."
+
+"The wretches who ate up the Saracens, and regaled themselves with human
+flesh?"
+
+"Seigneurs," remarked Robert Courte-Heuse, Duke of Normandy, "we must
+not run down Saracen flesh."
+
+"These feasts on human flesh," explained the seigneur of Sabran, "are
+not at all wonderful. My grandfather once told me that, during the
+famous famine of 1033, the plebs fed on one another."
+
+"I remember one evening," added Walter the Pennyless, "when I and my
+friend Cuckoo Peter had a famous supper----"
+
+"And what has become of that Peter the Hermit?" inquired Gerhard, Duke
+of Roussillon, interrupting the Gascon adventurer. "It is now a month
+since he left us. We have not heard from him since. Is he dead or
+alive?"
+
+"He has gone to join the army of Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, who we are
+to connect with before Jerusalem," answered Walter. "But allow me, noble
+seigneurs, to tell you my tale. As I was saying, one evening, at the
+camp before Edessa, Cuckoo Peter and I, attracted by a delicious kitchen
+odor, that spread from the quarter of the King of the Vagabonds, walked
+into their quarters, and their worthy monarch made us sup on a tender
+roast, so fat, so toothsomely seasoned with saffron, salt and thyme,
+that I swear by my good sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith, Cuckoo Peter
+and I licked our chops! What a morsel!"
+
+"We should not enlarge in that manner upon abominable feasts on human
+flesh, seigneurs," said the legate; "we should entertain ourselves with
+some other subject more pleasing and pious. If you are willing, I shall
+tell you of a miracle that we are preparing for to-morrow."
+
+"What miracle, holy man?" inquired the Crusaders. "What a lucky
+windfall!"
+
+"A prodigious miracle, my children, which will be one of the most
+telling triumphs of Christianity. Peter Barthelmy, deacon of Marseilles,
+had a vision after the capture of Antioch. Saint Andrew appeared before
+him and said: 'Go into the church of my brother Peter, situated at the
+gate of the city. Dig up the earth at the foot of the main altar, and
+you will find the iron of the lance that pierced the side of the
+Redeemer of the world. That mystic iron, carried at the head of the
+army, will insure the victory of the Christians and will pierce the
+hearts of the infidels.' Peter Barthelmy having communicated to me this
+miraculous vision, I assembled six bishops and six seigneurs, the most
+pious and pure. We went to the church. The earth was dug up in our
+presence at the foot of the main altar--and--to our stupefaction----"
+
+"The iron of the holy lance was found!" interrupted William IX, in a
+roar of laughter, relapsing into his habitual incredulity.
+
+"You deceive yourself, sinner!" answered the legate. "Peter Barthelmy
+found nothing in that hole. What a misfortune that a man, who so
+passionately hates the Jews, should be incredulous to such a degree! But
+sooner or later the grace of heaven will descend upon you. Meantime I
+shall confound your incredulity. The lance's iron was not then found.
+But Peter Barthelmy, moved by a new inspiration of Saint Andrew, threw
+himself into the hole, dug in it with his nails, and finally did
+discover the iron of the holy lance. To-morrow, the deacon is to walk
+across a burning pyre, in order to demonstrate, in plain view of all,
+the virtue of that precious relic, that will render him insensible to
+the flames. The miracle is assured----"
+
+"A truce with your idle talk!" said William, interrupting the legate.
+"Halloo, there, cup-bearers, equerries, bring the dice, the checks, my
+casket of gold, and fetch in the dancers. After a banquet, there's
+nothing like a cup in one hand, the dice in the other, and beautiful
+girls in sight, dancing, naked or in gauze!"
+
+"To the game, to the game!" cried the Crusaders. "Equerries, fetch the
+dice, bring in the dancers and withdraw!"
+
+The orders of the Duke of Aquitaine were executed. The domestics of his
+household placed under the galleries and near the divans little Saracen
+tables of sculptured ivory, on which they laid the checks and dice. The
+Crusaders, in keeping with their unbridled passion for gambling, had
+provided themselves with fat purses of gold besans, now handed to them
+by their lackeys. During the tumult due to the preparations for the
+games and the removal of the seigneurs from the tables to the divans
+under the gallery, Azenor, her features distorted by the tortures of
+jealousy, convulsively grasped the arm of the Duke of Aquitaine, who at
+that moment was opening a casket filled with gold, and whispered to him
+in a hollow and excited voice: "William, you gave the order to bring in
+women hardly clad and even naked!"
+
+"That's so, my charmer, and you heard the grateful applause of my
+guests!"
+
+"Who are those women?"
+
+"Dancers, the joy of banqueters after a feast. Beauties who have nothing
+to refuse----"
+
+"Whence come they?"
+
+"From the land of marvels, India!"
+
+"Take care! Do not drive me to extremes! Hell burns in my heart! Woe is
+me! Those creatures here, and under my very eyes? You know that jealousy
+turns me crazy!"
+
+The Duke of Aquitaine answered his mistress with bantering nonchalance,
+and drew near a group of seigneurs who were looking at a troop of girls
+that had just burst into the banquet hall. Noticeable above all were
+Perrette and Yolande, the former always brazen and challenging. Already
+the Crusaders, inflamed with wine and amorousness, acclaimed the troop
+with cries of vulgar license, when Maria announced in a loud voice: "One
+moment, noble seigneurs, reserve your enthusiasm for the treasure of
+youth, of beauty and of charms that I hold under this veil and who is
+about to dazzle your charmed eyes!"
+
+Saying this, the shrew pointed to a confused form, hidden under a long
+white veil that trailed on the floor. Astonishment and curiosity calmed
+for a moment the impure ardor of the Crusaders. A deep silence ensued.
+The eyes of all sought to penetrate the semi-transparency of the veil,
+when suddenly the Duke of Aquitaine cried out: "Gentlemen, it is my
+opinion that that aster of beauty must be the reward of that cavalier
+who displayed the greatest valor at the siege of Marhala!"
+
+"Yes, yes!" responded the Crusaders. "That's right! That treasure must
+be the prize of the most valorous!"
+
+"I shall not, then, be gainsaid by any," proceeded the Duke of
+Aquitaine, "when I proclaim that Heracle, the seigneur of Polignac,
+showed himself the bravest among the brave at the siege of this city."
+Cries of approval received William's words, who went on saying:
+"Heracle, seigneur of Polignac, yours is that treasure of beauty! Yours
+alone the privilege of unveiling that radiant aster that will dazzle us
+all!"
+
+The seigneur of Polignac eagerly broke through the group of Crusaders,
+while Perrette exclaimed banteringly, affecting despair: "Oh, cruel man,
+you leave me for a miraculous beauty!" and catching the eye of William
+she cried out: "My handsome duke will console me for all my sorrows!"
+
+"By Venus!" said William in great glee, "welcome to you, my ribald! Come
+to my arms, and all sensuous pleasure along with you!"
+
+"Your Azenor will strangle me!"
+
+"The devil take Azenor! Long live Love!"
+
+During this short dialogue between the Duke of Aquitaine and Perrette,
+the seigneur of Polignac had approached the veiled woman, and raised the
+gauze that concealed from the eyes of all the prize of the most valiant.
+The surprise and discomfiture of the Crusaders were first expressed by
+mute stupor. Before them stood poor Joan the Hunchback, on her head an
+enormous red turban stuck with peacock's feathers, and a short skirt of
+the same color on her body, fastened at her waist and completely
+exposing her sad deformity. By her side, little Colombaik pressed
+himself close to his mother, and was dressed in a flowing tunic, his
+hair curled and perfumed, but his eyes and ears covered by a bandage. "I
+consent to serve as your toy, to endure all humiliations, seeing you
+have promised to provide for my child and not to separate me from him,"
+were the words of Joan to Maria before lending herself to this cruel
+buffoonery; "but I insist, in the name of my dignity as mother, in the
+name of my child's chastity, to cover his eyes and ears, that he may
+not be a witness of his mother's degradation."
+
+At sight of Joan the Hunchback, the Crusaders, first stupefied, soon
+broke out in loud peals of laughter, which were redoubled by the
+disappointment that Heracle of Polignac seemed to labor under. Still
+under the effects of his discomfiture, he gazed open-mouthed at Joan.
+
+At that moment, livid, her features distorted with jealousy, Azenor was
+running from one Crusader to another, asking where William had gone to.
+But the seigneurs, half intoxicated and unconcerned at the sufferings of
+the love-sick woman, answered her with jests. "Let's carry the hunchback
+in triumph!" exclaimed several voices in the midst of deafening peals of
+laughter.
+
+Joan paled with fear. Resigned beforehand to all sorts of jests and
+humiliations, she had not foreseen such an excess of indignity.
+Trembling and distracted, the poor woman dropped upon her knees and
+holding her child in her arms, she muttered amid sobs: "My poor child!
+Why did we not die with your father in the sands of the desert!"
+Already, despite Joan's tears, the Crusaders were seizing her, when a
+great uproar broke out in one of the chambers that opened into the
+gallery. Immediately, menacing and terrible to behold, Fergan the
+Quarryman threw himself into the middle of the hall armed with a cudgel
+and calling out loudly to Joan and Colombaik.
+
+"Fergan!" "Father!" the woman and the child cried out together. At the
+sound of their voices, Fergan rushed across the group of Crusaders
+swinging his heavy stick and distributing such hard blows before him to
+the right and to the left, that the seigneurs, stunned and frightened,
+retreated precipitately before the serf. Beating his way through them,
+Fergan joined at last his wife and child, and pressed them to his heart
+in a passionate embrace. The domestics, thrown down, trodden under foot
+and half killed by Fergan, rose out of breath and explained to the
+seigneurs: "We were standing at the gate, playing chuck-farthing, when
+this madman ran up to us from the direction of the market-place. He
+asked us whether a hunchback and her child had been taken to the palace.
+'Yes,' said we, 'and just now they are the amusement of the noble guests
+of our seigneur, the Duke of Aquitaine.' The madman then threw himself
+upon us, ran through the gate of the palace, struck us with his cane,
+and got here."
+
+"He must be hanged on the spot!" the Duke of Normandy cried out. "These
+pillars will do for a gibbet. Fetch cords!"
+
+"That bandit has dared to threaten us with his cudgel! He deserves the
+gallows!"
+
+"Death to the criminal! Death!" cried out the Crusaders, now recovered
+from their first stupor, "Death to the vagabond!"
+
+"But where is the Duke of Aquitaine? No one can be hanged here without
+his consent."
+
+"He disappeared with the queen of the wenches. But his absence should
+not delay the execution of this wretch. When he returns he will find the
+vagabond hanging high and dry. William will ratify the sentence, and
+approve it."
+
+"I shall give my belt for a rope."
+
+After embracing his wife and child, Fergan took in at a glance the
+gravity of the situation, and observed that the seigneurs were not
+armed. Profiting by their first surprise, he had his wife and child
+climb on the banquet table and ordered them to stand with their backs
+against the marble edge of the basin. Thereupon, placing himself before
+them, his heavy cudgel in hand, he made ready for a desperate defence.
+But still wishing to try a last means of escape, he addressed the
+Crusaders, who were about to assault him: "For pity's sake, let me
+depart from this palace with my wife and child!"
+
+"Listen to the bandit, praying for mercy! Quick! Let one of these
+pillars serve him for a gibbet. Swing a rope around his neck!"
+
+"You may hang me!" cried out the serf in despair, "but more than one of
+you will have to fall under my cudgel!"
+
+The threat rekindled the fury of the Crusaders. Already, braving the
+rapid swing of Fergan's cudgel, several seigneurs were rushing forward
+to seize the serf, when suddenly the braying of clarions was heard from
+afar, together with loud and nearing cries of: "To arms! The Saracens
+are upon us! To arms! To the ramparts!" Several men-at-arms of the Duke
+of Aquitaine rushed into the hall, sword in hand, and calling out: "The
+Saracens have profited by the night to surprise the city. They have
+entered near the gate of Agra by the breech that we made. They are
+fighting on the ramparts. To arms, seigneurs, to arms! Duke of
+Aquitaine, to arms!" Hardly had these men-at-arms pronounced the name of
+the duke in the midst of the increasing tumult caused by the
+announcement of this unforeseen attack, than William IX. appeared, his
+clothes in disorder, coming out of one of the chambers that opened into
+the gallery. He was pale and terror-stricken, and held in his hands a
+parchment, while he cried in a terrified voice: "A Jewess! A Jewess!
+Damnation!"
+
+"William, arm yourself!" his companions called out to him, as they
+precipitately rushed out with the men-at-arms. "The Saracens are
+attacking the city! Let's run to the ramparts! To arms!"
+
+"A Jewess!" repeated the Duke of Aquitaine with eyes fixed, his brow
+bathed in perspiration, and seeming neither to hear nor to see his
+companions in arms. Perceiving the legate of the Pope, William threw
+himself on his knees at the feet of the prelate: "Holy father, have pity
+upon me! I am damned! While I was chatting with the queen of the
+wenches, Azenor entered the chamber where we were and, holding out this
+parchment, said to me she was a Jewess, and that the parchment, written
+in Hebrew, furnished the proof. I have been a miserable sinner. Holy
+father, have pity upon me! I am damned! Mercy for my soul! Upon my knees
+I ask you for absolution!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE KING OF THE VAGABONDS.
+
+
+At dawn, the sun rose over the plain that surrounds the city of Marhala,
+surprised at night by the Saracens and defended by the Crusaders. The
+infidels, relying more on their audacity than on their numbers, perished
+almost to a man in the assault. Only a small number of prisoners were
+taken. The approaches of the breech in the ramparts, not far from the
+gate of Agra, through which the Saracens sought to surprise the city,
+disappeared under a heap of corpses. Clouds of vultures hovered over
+that abundant quarry, but dared not yet let themselves down on it. Men
+of prey were ahead of the birds.
+
+These men, wholly naked, red and dripping blood, and hideous to behold,
+went and came like geniuses of death in the midst of that field of
+carnage. They would seize the body of a Saracen, strip it of its
+clothes, roll that in a bundle, and then, kneeling over the naked
+corpse, they pried open its jaws, rigid in death, carefully felt about
+in its mouth and under its tongue; finally, with the aid of long knives,
+they would cut open the corpse's gullet, chest and bowels, whose
+intestines they then pulled out and examined. Their faces, hands and
+members streaming blood, these demons were under the command of a chief.
+He gave orders and directed their sacrilegious profanations. They called
+him their king. It was Corentin the Gibbet-cheater, become chief of the
+vagabonds. His seneschal, one-time serf of the seigniory of Plouernel,
+was the identical Bacon-cutter, who, with a blow of his pitchfork had
+thrown Garin the Serf-eater from his horse just before the latter was
+butchered by the villagers.
+
+The King of the Vagabonds and his seneschal gave token of rare
+dexterity in their shocking trade. The two had just seized, one by the
+head the other by the feet, the corpse of a young Saracen. His face, his
+rich raiment, hacked by sabre blows, the bodies of several Crusaders
+stretched on either side of him--all bespoke the fierce resistance the
+warrior must have offered. "Oh, oh!" said the King of the Vagabonds,
+"that dog must have been some chieftain, it can be seen by his
+embroidered green caftan. Great pity that his dress is so slashed to
+pieces; it might have served as a mantle for Perrette."
+
+"You still think of the Ribald?" asked the Bacon-cutter, helping
+Corentin to strip the Saracen of his clothes; "your Perrette is in the
+Paradise of the wenches, on the crupper of some canon, or in the harem
+of some emir."
+
+"Seneschal, Perrette would leave Paradise, an emir or a canon if the
+Gibbet-cheater told her to. Come. Our corpse is now naked. Make a bundle
+of the clothes. They will find purchasers in the market-place of
+Marhala. Now that we have taken the peel from this Syrian fruit," he
+added, pointing to the dead body, "let's open it. It is inside that the
+precious almonds must be looked for, such as besans of gold and precious
+stones. Give me your knife. I wish to sharpen it against mine. The blade
+of mine has been dulled on the gullet of that old Saracen yonder with
+the white beard. The devil! His cartilage was as tough as that of an old
+goat," and while his seneschal was bundling up some clothes, the King of
+the Vagabonds sharpened his knife, casting upon the corpses strewn
+around him looks of satisfied covetousness, and remarked: "That's what
+it means to get up early in the morning. After their night's fight, the
+Crusaders have gone to sleep. When they will come to plunder the dead,
+we shall be at the dice!"
+
+"Great King! It is an easy matter to rise early if one has not gone to
+bed. We arrived in time to gather the harvest on this field of carnage."
+
+"Will you, vagabonds, still reproach me for having induced you to leave
+the fortress of the Marquis of Jaffa?" replied the king, continuing to
+sharpen his knife. "Think of lying in a stronghold in order to play the
+brigand in Palestine! It was folly!"
+
+"And yet, many of those new seigneurs who have left themselves down in
+the Holy Land as dukes, marquises, counts and barons, begin everywhere,
+just as they used to in Gaul, to ply the trade of highwaymen on the
+mainroads."
+
+"With this difference, seneschal, that there are no high roads here, and
+hardly anybody to rob. One must roam over ten or twelve miles of sand or
+rocks in order to meet a few thin troops of travelers, who, instead of
+kindly allowing themselves to be plundered, like the townsmen and
+merchants of Gaul, but too often strike back, show their teeth and use
+them too."
+
+"Great King! You speak wisely. Indeed, during those two months spent
+with the Marquis of Jaffa, we made but two sorry finds. At one of these,
+by the faith of the Bacon-cutter, we were warmly curried and rudely
+beaten, and all for almost nothing."
+
+"In exchange, this fine Saracen quarry awaited us this morning at the
+gates of Marhala. Our work done, we shall take a dip in the fountain
+sheltered by yonder cluster of date trees. Thanks to the bath, we, who
+are now red as skinned eels, shall become again white as little doves,
+after which, having but to take the pick of these Saracen wardrobes, and
+our pouches well filled, we shall make our royal entry in the best
+tavern of Marhala."
+
+"Where, mayhap, you will find again your queen, tapping for the
+customers and sleeping with them."
+
+"May heaven hear you, seneschal, and may the devil grant me my prayers!
+Now, quick to work. The sun is rising. We are naked and run the risk of
+being roasted by the sun before we are through. The bath first, the
+feast afterwards."
+
+"That word 'roasting' reminds me that this young Saracen is plump and of
+good muscle. In due time, what a fine mess would not a fillet of his
+large loins and round calves make, seasoned with some aromatic herbs and
+a pinch of saffron! Do you remember, among other ragouts, the head of
+that old sahib of the mountain, boiled with a certain peppery sauce?"
+
+"Seneschal, my friend, you are altogether too talkative. Instead of
+incessantly opening your mouth, whence flow only vain words, open that
+of this Saracen, and perhaps beautiful besans of gold or diamond of
+Bossorah may roll out."
+
+It was a shocking spectacle, like the violation of a sepulchre. The King
+of the Vagabonds took the head of the corpse between his knees, while
+the Bacon-cutter tried to force open the rigid jaws of the dead body.
+Unable to do so he said to Corentin: "That dog of an infidel must have
+been in a rage at the moment of expiring. His teeth are clenched like a
+vice."
+
+"And that embarasses you, you gosling? Insert the blade of your knife
+between his teeth, flat, then turn it round. That will separate the jaws
+sufficiently to be able to insert your fingers." And while the
+Bacon-cutter was conducting his abominable researches obedient to the
+directions of Corentin, the latter remarked with a ferocious sneer: "Oh,
+ye miscreant Saracens, you have the malignity of hiding in the hollow of
+your cheeks gold pieces and precious stones, and even of swallowing
+them, to the end of depriving the soldiers of Christ of those riches!"
+
+"Nothing!" exclaimed the seneschal with disappointment and interrupting
+the king, "nothing in the cheeks and nothing under the tongue."
+
+"Have you felt carefully?"
+
+"I have felt and felt over again, everywhere. Perhaps during this
+night's battle, some foxy Crusader, like a man of experience, have
+seized the throat of this Saracen at the moment when he expired and may
+thus have caused him to spit out the gold he was hiding in his mouth.
+Provided that dog did not swallow it all down."
+
+"The scamp was capable of doing that. Feel about in his throat. After
+that we shall sound the chest and bowels." So said, so done. The two
+monsters put the corpse through a shocking butchery. Finally their
+ferocious cupidity was satisfied. After a series of revolting
+profanations, they withdrew from the bleeding intestines of the corpse
+three diamonds, a ruby and five besans of gold, small thick pieces but
+barely the size of a denier. While the two vagabonds were finishing
+their ghoulish work, black clouds of thick and nauseous smoke rose from
+a pyre, started close by, by the other vagabonds, with green branches of
+turpentine tree. These fellows, instead of disemboweling the corpses,
+burned them, in order to look among the ashes for the gold and precious
+stones which the Saracens might have swallowed. These monstrosities
+having been gone through, the vagabonds proceeded to the neighboring
+spring where they washed their bloody bodies, and donned their clothes
+again, or decked themselves with the spoils of the Saracens. The booty
+was then divided--clothes, arms, turbans, shoes--and they wended their
+steps towards the gate of Agra. At the moment of entering the city, the
+King of the Vagabonds, mounting a heap of ruins, said to his men, who
+gathered around him: "Vagabonds, my sons and beloved subjects! We are
+about to enter Marhala, with booty on back and bysantins in pocket. I
+expect, I will it, I order it, in the name of wine, dice and wenches,
+that, before leaving Marhala, we shall have become again as beggarly as
+the vagabonds that we are! Never forget our rule: 'A true vagabond,
+twenty-four hours after a pillage, must have nothing left but his skin
+and his knife.' He who keeps a denier becomes cold to the quarry. He is
+expelled from my kingdom!"
+
+"Yes, yes! Long live our King! Three cheers for wine, dice and wenches!"
+responded the bandits. "The devil take the vagabond, who, rich to-day,
+keeps for the morrow aught but his skin and his knife! Long live our
+great King, Corentin the Gibbet-cheater!"
+
+And the savage troop marched towards the gate of Agra and entered the
+city of Marhala shouting and singing: "Glory to the brave Crusaders!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE MARKET-PLACE OF MARHALA.
+
+
+Luckily disentangled from the fury of the guests of the Duke of
+Aquitaine by the nocturnal attack of the Saracens, Fergan the Quarryman
+had profited by the confusion to escape from the Emir's palace with Joan
+and Colombaik. While the Crusaders were hurrying to the ramparts of the
+gate of Agra, the serf turned his steps with wife and child, far away
+from the spot of the battle. Before sunrise, quiet reigned again in
+Marhala. Descrying one of those numerous taverns, that generally sprang
+up after the capture of a city, and were set up in some Saracen house by
+the camp-followers of the army, Fergan stepped in. To the great
+astonishment of Joan, he pulled out of his belt a gold piece, which he
+exchanged with the tavern-keeper for silver coin, to pay for his
+lodging. Once more alone with his family, the quarryman could give a
+loose to his tender feelings and relate to them how, after being
+separated from them by the sand-spout, he found himself half buried
+under the sand, and losing consciousness. In the darkness of the night
+he was shaken out of his lethargy by a sharp scratch on his shoulder. It
+was a hyena, that, pawing up the sand under which he lay, prepared to
+devour him, taking him for dead, but instantly fled seeing him sit up.
+Thus, delivered from a double danger, the serf had wandered about during
+dark, amidst the mournful yelpings of the wild beasts at their quarry
+over the corpses that they dug up. At dawn he saw, already half
+devoured, the remains of Neroweg VI.
+
+After vainly searching for Joan and his child, Fergan considered them
+lost forever, and followed the route marked out by the human bones. At
+the end of several hours' marching, he came across the corpse of some
+seigneur, to judge by the richness of his clothes, torn to shreds by the
+beasts of prey. Among the tatters was an embroidered purse full of gold.
+He appropriated it without scruple, and was soon joined by a troop of
+travelers bound for Marhala. He journeyed in their company. Upon his
+arrival in the city, and learning that several other travelers who
+escaped the disaster of the sand-spout had come in ahead of him, he
+inquired after a deformed woman with a child. A beggar, who had
+accidentally seen Joan and her son enter the palace of the Emir, gave
+him the information, and he was enabled to arrive in time to wrest them
+from the danger they were just threatened with.
+
+After a recital of his adventures, and leaving his wife and Colombaik in
+the tavern, Fergan went out at sunrise to purchase some clothing at the
+market-place, where booty was constantly sold at auction. Fearing to be
+met by some of the guests of the Duke of Aquitaine, the serf had smeared
+soot mixed with grease over his face. Rendered thus unrecognizable, he
+entered the market-place. Instead, however, of finding the place
+occupied by traffickers in booty, he saw a large gang of men hastily
+engaged in the construction of a pyre under the overseership of several
+prelates. A cordon of soldiers, placed at a distance from the pyre, kept
+the inquisitive from drawing too near. Fergan had just elbowed himself
+to the front of the mob, when a deacon, clad in black, said aloud: "Are
+there among you any strong men who wish to earn two deniers, and help
+finish the pyre quickly? They shall be paid the moment the work is
+done."
+
+"I shall help, if wanted," answered Fergan. Two deniers were worth
+earning. They would eke out his treasury.
+
+"Come," said the priest, "you seem to be a lusty fellow. The faggots
+will weigh like straws on your broad shoulders." Five or six other
+wretches, having volunteered to join Fergan, the deacon took them to the
+center of the place, where, resting upon a large bundle of trunks of
+olive trees, palmettos and dried brushes, the pyre was being erected for
+the accomplishment of the miracle announced by Peter Barthelmy, the
+Marseilles priest and possessor of the Holy Lance. This Barthelmy
+derived a large revenue from his relic by exhibiting it for money to the
+veneration of the Crusaders. Other priests, jealous of the receipts
+pocketed by the Marseillan, had assiduously backbitten his lance.
+Fearing a decline of earnings, and wishing to furnish a proof of the
+virtue of his lance, and at the same time confound his detractors, he
+had promised a miracle. Fergan set to work with ardor to earn his two
+deniers. He soon perceived that a narrow path crossed the heap of
+kindling-wood, which, about thirty feet long and raised four or five
+feet on either side, sloped down towards the path that cut it in two.
+Thus, towards the middle and for a space about two yards wide, the pyre
+offered hardly any food to the fire. After a half hour's work, Fergan
+said to the deacon: "We shall make the heap even, and fill up the gap
+that crosses it, so that the pyre may burn everywhere."
+
+"Not at all!" the deacon hastened to say. "Your work is done on this
+side. We must now set up the stake and adjust the spit."
+
+Fergan, as well as his companions, curious to know the purpose of the
+stake and spit, followed the priest. A wagon hitched to mules, had just
+dumped several beams upon the place. One of these, about fifteen feet
+high, and furnished in some places with iron rings and chains, had at
+about its center a sort of support for the feet. Fergan's helpers
+followed the instructions of the deacon, and set up the stake at one of
+the corners of the pyre where the kindling wood was well heaped. Other
+workingmen placed not far away two iron X's, intended to support an iron
+bar about eight feet long and tapering into sharp points.
+
+"Oh! oh! What a terrible looking spit!" said Fergan to the priest,
+placing the iron bar on the two X's with no little labor. "Are they
+going to roast an ox?" Instead of answering the serf, the deacon
+listened in the direction of one of the streets that ran into the place,
+and, hastily fumbling in his pockets, said to Fergan and the other men,
+while handing to each the promised wages: "Your work is done. You may
+now go. The procession is approaching."
+
+Fergan and his assistants withdrew to the mob which the file of soldiers
+was holding back from the pyre. Church songs were heard, at first from a
+distance, but drawing ever nearer, and soon the religious procession
+issued into the market-place. Monks marched at the head, after them
+clergymen carrying crosses and banners, and then, in the midst of a
+group of high dignitaries of the Church, whose mitres and gold
+embroidered copes sparkled in the sun of the Orient, came the Marseilles
+priest, Peter Barthelmy, bare-footed and robed in a white shirt. He held
+up triumphantly in his hands the holy and miraculous lance. This
+contriver of miracles, of a countenance at once sanctimonious, artful
+and sly, preceded other prelates carrying banners. Azenor the Pale came
+next, clad in a long black robe, her hands bound behind and supported by
+two monks. She had been convicted of the abominable crime of being a
+Jewess. She was convicted of this enormity, not alone by the revelation
+that, in a paroxysm of jealousy, she had made to William IX., but also
+by the testimony of the parchment that she had handed to him in order to
+dispel his doubts. In that parchment, written in the Hebrew language and
+dating several years back, the father of Azenor urged his daughter to
+die faithful to the law of Israel. A few steps behind the victim,
+William IX., the Duke of Aquitaine, his hair in disorder and covered
+with ashes, dragged himself on his naked knees in abject penitence. Clad
+in a rough sack, his feet bare and dusty like his knees, and holding a
+crucifix in his two hands, the penitent cried out ever and anon in a
+lamenting voice, while smiting his chest with his fist: "_Mea culpa, mea
+culpa!_ Lord God, have mercy upon my soul! I have committed the sin of
+the flesh with an unclean Jewess, I am damned without your grace! Oh,
+Lord, _mea culpa! mea culpa!_" On foot and in splendid raiment, the
+legate of the Pope and the archbishop of Tyre, marched on either side of
+the Duke of Aquitaine, repeating from time to time in a voice loud
+enough to be heard by the penitent:
+
+"My child in Christ, trust in the mercy of the Lord! Render yourself
+worthy of His clemency by your repentance!"
+
+"Remain faithful to your vow of chastity, you who were given to
+debauchery!"
+
+"Remain faithful to your vow of poverty, you who were given to
+prodigality and magnificence!"
+
+"Remain faithful to your vow of humility, you who were proud and
+arrogant!"
+
+"But that will not suffice! You must surrender to the Church your
+earthly riches--lands, domains, castles, slaves--to the end that the
+priests may implore the Eternal for the remission of your transgressions
+and your numerous sins!"
+
+Behind these followed a few Saracens who had been captured at the late
+night surprise of Marhala. They were led, pinioned, by soldiers. The
+King of the Vagabonds, his seneschal the Bacon-cutter and several of the
+men of their band had been joined to this escort by order of Bohemond,
+Prince of Taranto, and chief of the army, who himself closed the
+procession, accompanied by a large number of crusading seigneurs, casque
+on head and lance in hand.
+
+This funeral train marched around the market-place, surrounded by an
+ever-swelling crowd, and ranked itself before the pyre, where the stake
+and the spit were in readiness.
+
+"The miracle of the lance!" cried the crowd, impatient to see Barthelmy
+cross a flaming pyre in his shirt and without burning--"the miracle of
+the lance!"
+
+"Woe is me!" muttered William IX., redoubling the blows with which he
+was lacerating his breast. "Woe is me! I am so great a sinner that
+perhaps the Eternal will not deign to manifest His omnipotence by a
+prodigy before me!"
+
+"Be comforted, my son!" answered the papal legate. "The Eternal will
+manifest Himself in order to confirm your faith, seeing that you have
+been touched by grace, and humble yourself before His Church."
+
+"Yesterday, father, I was an unclean criminal, an infamous evildoer, a
+miserable blind man. To-day my eyes are open to the truth. I see the
+everlasting flames that await me. Have pity upon me!"
+
+"Give up all your goods to the Church, remain poor as Job, the Church
+will then intercede for your salvation," replied the legate, issuing his
+orders to his deacon to set fire to the pyre.
+
+Immediately, walking almost without danger over the length of the path
+that crossed the paling, hidden by the height of the flames kindled at
+the four sides of the pyre, Peter Barthelmy seemed in the eyes of the
+credulous multitude actually to traverse the lake of fire. The serf saw,
+across a thick cloud of smoke that helped to increase the illusion,
+Peter Barthelmy, looking as if he was wading through flames up to the
+hip, run rapidly across the full length of the pyre, from which he
+emerged again brandishing his lance. The crowd, blind and fanatic,
+clapped their hands and shouted: "A miracle! A miracle!" Shocked at the
+impudence of the friar, who so shamelessly imposed upon the credulity of
+those poor people, Fergan decided to administer to him a stinging
+lesson. Affecting to yield to religious enthusiasm, he cried out: "Peter
+Barthelmy is a saint, a great saint! Whoever can secure the smallest bit
+of his clothing, or of his blessed body, even if but one hair, will be
+delivered of all ills!" The mob received Fergan's suggestion with
+fanatic approval. The file of soldiers, that held the multitude far
+enough back from the pyre, was broken through, and the most maniacal of
+these fanatics rushed upon Peter Barthelmy at the moment when, leaving
+the pyre a few steps behind him, he was brandishing his lance. An
+incredible scene ensued thereupon, related by Baudry, archbishop of
+Dole, an eye-witness of the occurrence, as follows in his "History of
+the Capture of Jerusalem:"
+
+"When Peter Barthelmy emerged from the pyre with his holy lance, the
+crowd rushed upon him and trampled him under foot, each wishing to
+touch him and carry off a piece of his shirt. He received several wounds
+in the legs. Bits of flesh were cut from his body. His ribs were knocked
+in. His spine was fractured. He would, in our opinion, have died on the
+spot, had not Raymond, seigneur of Pelet, an illustrious cavalier,
+quickly gathered a platoon of soldiers, thrown himself with them into
+the midst of the mob, and, at the risk of his own life, saved poor Peter
+Barthelmy."
+
+After this rude lesson given the cheat, Fergan approached the group of
+soldiers that were transporting the contriver of miracles in a dying
+state to a neighboring house. "The accursed brutes! The savages!"
+murmured the Marseilles priest, gasping for breath: "Have you ever seen
+such bedeviled rascals! The idea of wishing to turn me into relics!"
+
+"It is but a condign punishment for the besotted state of mind that,
+with infamous calculation, you plunge these wretched people in," said
+Fergan leaning over Barthelmy. The Marseillan turned around with a
+sudden start, but the serf had disappeared in the crowd, and passed to
+the other side of the pyre, now fully ablaze. At one of its corners was
+Azenor, chained to the stake. Her feet rested on the tablet which the
+flames began to lick. A few steps from the victim, on his knees among
+the priests and joining them in their mortuary songs, crouched the Duke
+of Aquitaine, from time to time crying amid sobs: "Lord! Cleanse me of
+my sins! May my repentance and the just punishment of this unclean
+Jewess earn grace for me!"
+
+"Ah, William!" cried out the condemned woman with a voice still strong
+and penetrating, "I feel the heat of the flames. They are about to
+reduce my body to ashes. These flames are less consuming than those of
+jealousy. Yesterday, driven to extremity, I made certain of my
+vengeance. A few instants of suffering will rid me of life, and your
+credulous stupidity avenges me. Look at yourself now, brilliant Duke of
+Aquitaine, the sport of priests, your implacable enemies, and the dupe
+of those who laugh at your imbecile fears! If there is a hell we shall
+meet there."
+
+"Silence, you infamous and unclean beast!" cried out the legate of the
+Pope, "the flames that envelop you are as nothing to the everlasting
+fires where you are to burn through all eternity. A curse upon your
+execrable race, that crucified the Saviour of the world!"
+
+"A curse upon the Jews! Death to the Jews! Glory to God in heaven and to
+his priests on earth!" shouted the spectators.
+
+Suddenly, heart-rending screams rose above the din. Azenor the Pale,
+writhed with pain under her iron fetters as the flames, reaching her
+limbs, set her robe and long hair on fire. Presently the stake at which
+she was chained caught fire under her feet, swayed in the air for an
+instant, tumbled over into the furnace, and disappeared there with the
+victim in the midst of a wild flare of flames. The Duke of Aquitaine
+then embraced the knees of the papal legate and appealed to him
+imploringly: "Oh, my father in Christ, I vow to relinquish all my goods
+to our holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church! I vow to follow the Crusade
+barefooted in a sack! I vow to bury myself in the depths of a cloister
+upon my return to Gaul! I vow to die in the austerities of penance, to
+the end that I may obtain from God the remission of my sins and evil
+ways!"
+
+"In the name of the All-Powerful, I take cognizance of your vows,
+William IX., Duke of Aquitaine!" responded the legate in a ringing and
+solemn voice. "Only the observance of these vows can render you worthy
+of a day of celestial mercy, thanks to the intercession of the Church!"
+And the Duke of Aquitaine, bent low at the feet of the legate, his
+forehead in the dust, repeated his protestations and lamentations, while
+the King of the Vagabonds, stepping out of the file of soldiers that
+surrounded the Saracen prisoners, and accompanied by his seneschal the
+Bacon-cutter, approached the legate, saying:
+
+"Holy father in God, I have come with my seneschal and a few of my
+subjects for the purpose of spitting one of those Saracen miscreants
+over the fire. You have but to deliver the victim to me."
+
+"That belongs to Bohemond, Prince of Taranto," the legate answered the
+King of the Vagabonds, pointing with his finger to a group of crusading
+seigneurs who had just witnessed the miracle of Peter Barthelmy and the
+death of Azenor the Pale. The Prince of Taranto approached Corentin and
+speaking in a low voice led him to the side where the iron spit lay
+placed on the iron X's. Then, drawing near the escort that surrounded
+the prisoners, the prince made a sign. The soldiers parted ranks, and
+five bound Saracens faced Bohemond and the other Crusaders. Two of these
+prisoners, a father and son, were particularly remarkable, one by his
+noble and calm face, framed in a long white beard, the other by the bold
+and juvenile beauty of his lineaments. The old man, wounded in the head
+and arm at the night attack, had torn a few pieces of his long mantle of
+white wool to bandage his and his son's wounds. Their superb scarfs of
+Tyrian wool, their silk caftans, embroidered with gold, although soiled
+with blood and dust, announced the rank of the chiefs. Thanks to an
+Armenian priest, who served as interpreter, they held the following
+discourse with the Prince of Taranto, who, addressing himself to the old
+man, said:
+
+"Were you the chief of those infidel dogs who attempted to surprise the
+city of Marhala by night?"
+
+"Yes, Nazarean; you and yours have carried war into our country. We
+defend ourselves against the invaders."
+
+"By the cross on my sword! vile miscreant, dare you question the right
+of the soldiers of Christ to this land?"
+
+"The same as I inherited my father's horse and black tent, Syria belongs
+to us, the children of those who conquered it from the Greeks. Our
+conquest was not pitiless like yours. When Abubeker Alwakel, the
+successor of the Prophet, sent Yzed-Ben-Sophian to conquer Syria, he
+said to him: 'You and your warriors shall behave like valiant men in
+battle, but kill neither old men, women nor children. Destroy neither
+fruit trees nor harvests. They are presents of Allah to man. If you meet
+with Christian hermits in the solitudes, serving God and laboring with
+their hands, do them no harm. As to the Greek priests, who, without
+setting nation against nation, sincerely honor God in the faith of
+Jesus, the son of Mary, we used be to them a protecting shield, because,
+without regarding Jesus as a God, we venerate him as a great, wise man,
+the founder of the Christian religion. But we abhor the doctrine that
+certain priests have drawn from the otherwise so pure doctrine of the
+son of Mary.'"
+
+These words of the old emir, absolutely in keeping with the truth, and
+that contrasted so nobly with the cruelty of the soldiers of the cross,
+exasperated Bohemond. "I swear by Christ, the dead and resurrected God,"
+he cried out, "you shall pay dearly for these sacrilegious words!"
+
+"_Be faithful to your faith, even unto the peril of your life_, said the
+Prophet," the Saracen replied. "I am in your power, Nazarean. Your
+threats will not keep me from telling the truth. God is God!"
+
+"The truth," added emir's son, "is that you Franks have invaded our
+country, ravaging our fields, massacring our wives and children,
+profanating the corpses!"
+
+"Silence, my son!" resumed the emir in a grave voice. "Mahomet said it:
+_The strength of the just man is in the calmness of his reasoning and in
+the justice of his cause._" The young man held his peace, and his father
+proceeded, addressing the Prince of Taranto: "I told you the truth; I
+feel sorry for you if you are ignorant of, or deny it. Our people,
+separated from yours by the immensity of the seas and vast territories,
+could not harm your nation. We have respected the hermits and the
+Christian priests. Their monasteries rise in the midst of the fertile
+plains of Syria, their basilicas glisten in our cities beside our
+mosques. In the name of Abraham, the father of us all--Musselmen, Jews
+and Christians--we have welcomed like brothers your pilgrims, who came
+to Jerusalem to worship the sepulchre of Jesus, and his wise men. The
+Christians exercised their religion in peace, for Allah, the God of the
+Prophet, said through the mouth of Mahomet, the Prophet of God: _Injure
+no one on account of his religion_. But our mildness has emboldened your
+priests. They have incited the Christians against us; they have outraged
+our creed, pretending theirs alone is true and that Satan inspired our
+prayers. We long remained patient. A thousand times the stronger in
+numbers, we could have exterminated the Christians. We limited ourselves
+to imprisoning them. Those of your priests who outraged us and sowed
+discord in our country, were punished according to our laws. You then
+came by the thousands from beyond the seas, you invaded our country, and
+you have let loose upon us the most atrocious ills. Our priests then
+preached a holy war; we have defended ourselves, and we shall continue
+to do so. God protects the faithful!"
+
+The calmness of the old emir exasperated the Crusaders. He would have
+been torn to pieces, together with his son and companions, but for the
+intervention of Bohemond, who with gesture and voice reined in the
+seigneurs. Addressing himself thereupon to the Saracen by means of the
+interpreter, he said: "You deserve death a hundred times, but I forgive
+you!"
+
+"I shall report your generosity to my people."
+
+"Be it so! But you shall also say to them: 'The Prince governor of the
+city and the seigneurs have to-day decided in council that all Saracens,
+henceforth captured, shall be killed and roasted, to serve as meat with
+their bodies to the seigneurs as well as to the army.'"[C]
+
+The Prince of Taranto, while speaking and acting like a cannibal, was
+following the inspiration of an atrocious policy. He knew that the
+eating of human flesh inspired the Mahometans with extreme horror,
+seeing they professed for their dead a religious veneration.
+Accordingly, Bohemond expected to conjure up such fear among the
+Saracens that it would paralyze their resistance, and they would no
+longer fight, fearing to fall dead or alive in the hands of the
+soldiers of Christ, and be devoured by them.[D]
+
+At the order of the Prince of Taranto, the King of the Vagabonds seized
+the emir's son, and, while the soldiers held the other prisoners back to
+compel them to witness the revolting spectacle, the young Saracen was
+slaughtered, disembowelled, spitted and broiled over the burning embers
+of the pyre that had just been the theatre of the miracle of Peter
+Barthelmy and of the death of Azenor the Jewess; and in the presence of
+the crusading seigneurs, of the legate of the Pope and of the clergy,
+the Saracen youth was devoured by the band of Corentin the
+Gibbet-cheater, assisted by the other wretches, whom a fury of fanatical
+self-glorification drove to join the anthropophagous feast. This done,
+the father of the victim and his companions were freed from their bonds
+and set at liberty, a liberty, however, that the old man did not profit
+from. He dropped dead on the spot with grief and horror. Another Saracen
+went crazy with horror; the other two fled distracted from the fated
+city.
+
+The frightful scene was hardly over, when messengers from Godfrey of
+Boullion arrived, notifying Bohemond to depart with his troops without
+delay, and join under the walls of Jerusalem the main army of Godfrey,
+who had just begun the siege of the Holy City.
+
+Immediately the trumphets were sounded in Marhala; the cohorts formed
+themselves; and the army of the Prince of Taranto leaving a garrison
+behind in the Saracen city, set out on the march for Jerusalem, singing
+that now well-known refrain of the Crusaders, which was re-echoed in
+chorus by the mob that followed in the wake of the army:
+
+"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You
+are the object of the vows of the angels! You constitute their
+happiness! The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that
+banner, that marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost! God wills it!
+God wills it! God wills it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE FALL OF JERUSALEM.
+
+
+Fergan left the city with wife and child clad in new raiment, thanks to
+the purse he had found in the desert. An ass carried their provisions--a
+large pouch of water and a bag of dates. He also took precautions of
+arming himself for defence against marauders. To drop out of the stream
+of the Crusaders would at that season have been insanity. After the
+capture of Jerusalem, large numbers of Crusaders were expected to return
+to Europe, taking ship at Tripoli on Genoese or Venetian vessels.
+Fergan's little treasure would enable him to pay for the passage of
+himself and family to either of those cities, whence he planned to cross
+Italy, return to Gaul and settle down at Laon in Picardy, where he
+confidently expected to find Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the
+Rich and joint descendant with the quarryman of Joel, the ancient Gallic
+Chief. Fergan felt a lively desire to see Jerusalem, the city where,
+over a thousand years before, his ancestress Genevieve had witnessed the
+agony of the carpenter of Nazareth, that humble artisan, that great and
+kindly sage, the friend of the slaves, of the poor and of the afflicted,
+the enemy of hypocrite priests, of the rich and of the powerful of his
+days. Joan and Colombaik alternately rode the ass when they were tired.
+The serf experienced a rare pleasure at seeing for the first time his
+wife and child properly clad, and steadily regaining the strength they
+had lost by their recent fatigues and privations.
+
+They followed the wake of the army. At its head marched a band of
+cavaliers carrying the banner of St. Peter, the disciple of Jesus.
+Behind Peter's banner came the train-bands under the command of their
+respective seigneurs, carrying the banner of each seigniory embroidered
+with coat-of-arms, or war cries, such as: "To Christ, the Victorious!"
+"To the Reign of Jesus!" The latter motto appeared on the standard of
+the Prince of Taranto. The legate of the Pope followed next, accompanied
+by the clergy; then the troops of soldiers, on foot and on horseback;
+and finally the multitude of ragged men, women and children who trailed
+after the army. Fergan journeyed with these. To the end of husbanding
+their little purse, he employed himself taking charge of the mules or
+guiding the wagons, for which he received a few deniers and his food.
+The journey from Marhala to Jerusalem was trying in the extreme. A large
+number of helpless people dropped out on the route and died of thirst,
+hunger and fatigue, and became the pray of hyenas and vultures. Thus
+their bleaching bones, together with those of so many other victims,
+traced also the route to Jerusalem. Half a day's journey from the city
+Colombaik came near dying. Thrown down by a horse, his leg was broken in
+two places. As the child suffered excruciating pains he could not be
+transported on the ass. Leaving the other stragglers to continue their
+march, Fergan was left behind with Colombaik and Joan. The soil at that
+place was arid and mountainous. The pain suffered by Colombaik was
+intolerable. Hoping to descry some habitation, Fergan climbed to the top
+of a palm tree. At a great distance off the road nestled a collection of
+peasant houses at the foot of a hill, hidden under clusters of date
+trees. Aware of the kindheartedness natural to the Saracen people, whom
+nothing but the ferocity of the Crusaders pushed to a desperate
+resistance, above all aware of the religious regard that this nation has
+for the laws of hospitality, Fergan decided to transport his son with
+the aid of Joan to one of those houses and ask for help. The decision
+was put with all the greater promptness into execution out of fear for
+the marauders and vagabonds, who, hovering at a distance, would have
+slain them for the booty.
+
+The dwellers of the little hamlet had all fled at the approach of the
+army of the Crusaders, except one Arab and his wife. Both of them, bent
+with age and seated at the threshold of their house, held their beads in
+their hands and were praying, in calm resignation awaiting death,
+certain that some soldier or other of Christ would come and pillage and
+ravage their home. The old Saracen and his mate, seeing Joan and Fergan
+approach carrying in their arms the child, who moaned piteously,
+realized that they need not fear them as enemies, and hastened forward
+to their encounter. Ignorant of the language of the travelers as these
+were of theirs, the Saracen couple exchanged a few words among
+themselves, pointing sympathetically to the child, and while the woman
+went towards a little garden, the man motioned to Fergan and Joan to
+follow him into the house. This dwelling was whitewashed without, after
+the fashion of the country; it was crowned by a terrace, and had no
+other opening than a narrow door. Two mats served for beds. After
+motioning Fergan and Joan to lay the child upon one of these and then to
+bare his leg, the host, who seemed gifted with certain surgical
+abilities, lengthily examined Colombaik's leg. He then stepped out,
+making a sign for Fergan and his wife to wait for him.
+
+"Oh, Fergan!" exclaimed Joan, kneeling beside Colombaik, "with what
+solicitude did not that Saracen and his wife look upon our child! And
+yet we are strangers to them, enemies. The Crusaders whom we follow,
+ravage their country, massacre them, torture them to death! And yet see
+with what kindness these worthy people receive us!"
+
+"It is natural. The Mohamedan priests, while preaching the sacred love
+of country and resistance to foreign oppression, also preach the holy
+laws of humanity towards God's creatures of whatever faith. Alack!
+Certain Christian priests order, and themselves set the example of, the
+extermination of those who do not share their beliefs. An atrocious
+creed!"
+
+The Arab returned with his wife. She carried in her hand a vase of
+water, some palm leaves just pulled off, and some herbs that she had
+pounded between two stones. The Saracen brought several splints of the
+length of Colombaik's leg, together with a long bandage of cloth, with
+the aid of which she bound the splints firmly around the child's leg,
+after having covered it with the crushed herbs. The leg being bandaged,
+the old Arab woman sprinkled it with fresh water, and covered the whole
+limb with the palm leaves. Colombaik felt eased as if by enchantment.
+Full of gratitude, and unable to express themselves in a tongue that was
+not theirs, Fergan and Joan kissed the hands of their hosts. A tear
+rolled down upon the aged man's long beard, and he gravely pointed to
+heaven, meaning undoubtedly to tell his guests it was God that their
+thanks were due to. He then took the ass, which had remained standing at
+the door, and led it to the stable. The old woman brought in honey,
+fresh dates, sheep's milk and a buttered roll of meal. Fergan and Joan
+felt deeply touched by such a generous hospitality. Their child's
+sufferings were momentarily abating. The old man made them understand by
+a significant gesture, opening and closing his ten fingers three times
+and pointing to the child upon the mat, that he had to remain down
+thirty days, in order no doubt that the bones of his broken leg could
+again grow together and become strong. Thanks to the solitude where this
+house was ensconced in, the period necessary for the healing of the
+child ran peacefully by. They were the happiest days the serfs had yet
+known. After having exercised his hospitality towards them without
+knowing them, the aged Arabian grew attached to Fergan, Joan and
+Colombaik, touched by the gratitude that, to the best of their ability,
+they sought to manifest, and also by the tender affection that united
+Fergan and his wife. One day he took Fergan by the hand, led him up a
+stony hill, whence he pointed to the horizon, shaking his head
+expressive of uneasiness; he then pointed towards the foot of the hill
+at the tranquil habitation where they had dwelt nearly a month. Fergan
+understanding that he was urged to stay in that retreat, looked
+astonished at the Arabian. The latter thereupon folded his arms on his
+breast, closed his eyes, and, melancholily shaking his head, pointed to
+the earth, indicating that he was old, that soon he and his wife would
+die, and that, if Fergan was so inclined, the house, the garden, and the
+little field attached to it, would be his.
+
+Fergan was but a poor serf, led to the Crusade by the urgency of
+escaping with wife and child the vengeance of his seigneur and the
+horrors of serfdom. Nevertheless, at that supreme moment, yielding
+obedience to the orders left by the Gallic chief Joel to his
+descendants, he achieved an act of self-sacrifice before which men more
+fortunately situated than himself might have recoiled. He might have
+accepted the aged Arabian's offer and ended his days free and happy in
+this retreat, in the company of his wife and child. But he was the
+depositary of a portion of the chronicles and relics of his family. He
+knew that Gildas, the elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich, held the
+archives of their family back to the invasion of Gaul by Caesar, while
+himself was charged with a latter portion of safe-keeping. Some day he
+hoped to be able, in obedience to the behest of Joel, to add to those
+chronicles the recital of his own and his family's ordeals during the
+terrible period of the feudal oppression, and, in his turn, narrate the
+events they witnessed during this Crusade, one of the momentous crimes
+of Rome. Accordingly, Fergan considered it a sacred duty to make every
+effort to return to Gaul, and join his relation Gildas the Tanner in
+Laon. Moreover, since his arrival in Syria, he had heard that the
+inhabitants of several large cities in Gaul, more enlightened and more
+daring than the poorer rustic plebs, were beginning to stir. He had
+heard accounts of the insurrection of several cities of Gaul against
+their seigneurs, bishops and abbots, masters of the places. Perchance,
+those bourgeois revolts might lead to revolts among the serfs of the
+field. He conceived as possible a general revolt against the hierarchy
+of Church, monarchy and seigneurs, and he considered it a crime not to
+strive to be in Gaul at that hour of uprising and general
+enfranchisement. Fergan declined the Arab's offer.
+
+July 15, 1099, arrived. Forever indelibly fixed remained that fatal date
+upon the serf's mind. Towards noon, leaning upon his mother and Fergan,
+Colombaik had been essaying his strength. For the first time in thirty
+days he had risen from his bed, and the two venerable hosts followed
+with tender solicitude the movements of the child. Suddenly the tramp of
+a horse was heard descending at a gallop the hill that rose above the
+house. The aged Saracen exchanged a few words with his wife and both
+stepped out precipitately. A few instants later they re-entered,
+accompanied by another grey-bearded Musselman covered with dust. His
+pale and disconcerted features expressed terror and despair. He spoke to
+the aged couple in abrupt words and panting for breath. Blood-stained
+bandages of linen around his right arm and leg betokened two recent
+wounds. Several times, in the midst of his excited words, the word
+"Jerusalem" was heard--the only word that the serfs could understand. As
+he spoke, fear, indignation and horror reflected themselves on the
+features of the aged Saracen and his wife, until presently their
+venerable faces were bathed in tears, and they fell upon their knees,
+moaning and raising their hands to heaven. At that moment the stranger,
+who in his pre-occupation had not noticed the serfs, recognized them by
+their clothes as Christians, emitted a cry of rage and drew his cimeter.
+Quickly rising to their feet, both the hosts ran to him, and after a few
+words, pronounced in a voice of tender reproach, the Saracen warrior
+returned his sabre to its scabbard and exchanged a few sentences with
+the aged couple. The latter seemed to conjure the stranger to remain
+with them; but he shook his head, pressed their hands in his, rushed
+out, threw himself upon his steaming horse, invoked the vengeance of
+heaven with a gesture, climbed the hill at a gallop, and vanished from
+sight. This friend of the aged couple had come to inform them of the
+capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders. The recital of the massacres, the
+pillage, the unspeakable atrocities that the soldiers of Christ had
+soiled and dishonored their victims with, threw the aged couple into
+consternation. Anxious to ascertain the fact, Fergan addressed them,
+uttering the word "Jerusalem" in a sad and interrogating tone. Instead
+of answering, however, both drew brusquely away as if they extended to
+him the horror that the Crusaders inspired them with. Fergan exchanged a
+sad glance with Joan, when the host, no doubt regretting his first
+impulse, returned to the serfs, leaned over Colombaik, who had been laid
+down again, and kissed him on the forehead. Joan and Fergan,
+understanding the delicacy of the sentiment thus expressed, were moved
+to tears. The old Saracen took Fergan for one of the soldiers of that
+ferocious and impious Crusade, and deposited a kiss of pardon and
+oblivion upon the innocent brow of the child of the reputed malefactor.
+The aged Saracen then left the house with his wife.
+
+"Jerusalem has fallen into the power of the Crusaders," Fergan said to
+Joan. "I can reach the city in a few hours. I desire to go there. There
+is nothing for me to fear. I shall be back early to-morrow morning. We
+shall then decide what to do."
+
+Although uneasy at the prospect of his departure, the sweet Joan sought
+not to keep her husband back. After embracing her and entrusting to her
+his little treasury and the belt containing his family records and
+relics, Fergan left for Jerusalem. Hardly upon the road, which passed at
+quite a distance from his late retreat, he encountered a troop of
+pilgrims. They were also hastening to the holy city, whose domes,
+towers, minarets and even ramparts they began to perceive from afar
+after four hours march.
+
+That vast city formed a square a league long. The enclosure dominated
+from the west by the high mount of Zion, contained the four rocky hills
+on which Jerusalem was built in an amphitheatre,--to the east, Mount
+Moriah, on which rose the Mosque of Omar, built upon the site of the old
+Temple of Solomon; to the southeast, Mount Acra, to the north, Mount
+Bezetha; and further to the west the Mount of Golgotha, the Calvary
+where the young man of Nazareth was crucified under the eyes of Fergan's
+ancestress Genevieve. At the summit of Calvary rose the Church of the
+Resurrection, built on the very spot where Jesus died, a magnificent
+church until then religiously respected by the Saracens, together with
+its treasures, despite the war of the Crusaders. Within the church stood
+the sepulchre of Christ, the pretext for this unhallowed war. Such was
+the distant view of Jerusalem. As the travellers approached, they saw
+more distinctly, within the ramparts of walls, the outlines of
+amphitheaters of white square houses, surmounted with terraces, and here
+and yonder, standing out against the deep blue of the sky, the domes of
+mosques, the steeples of Christian basilicas, and several bouquets of
+palm trees. Not a tree was visible in the environs of the city. The
+reddish, stony and parched ground, radiated the torrid heat of the sun
+that was westerning behind the hills. In the neighborhood of the camp,
+whose tents glistened only a short distance from the ramparts, a large
+number of Crusaders were seen dead or dying of the wounds that they
+received at the sortie made by the besieged. The wounded filled the air
+with pitiful wails, vainly imploring help. All the men, not the
+able-bodied alone, but even those whose wounds allowed them to walk, had
+precipitated themselves upon the city, in order to share in the sack.
+The abandoned camp contained only corpses, the dying, horses and beasts
+of burden. As the travelers drew still nearer to the city, whose gates
+had been knocked in after the siege, a confused and formidable noise
+struck their ears. It was a frightful mixture of cries of terror, of
+rage and of desperate supplication, above which ever and anon rose the
+fanatical clamor: "God wills it! God wills it!" After staggering and
+stumbling over thousands of corpses, strewn near the approaches of the
+gate of Bezetha, Fergan arrived at the entrance of a long street that
+issued into a vast square, in the middle of which rose the marvelous
+Mosque of Omar on the very site where once stood the ancient Temple of
+Solomon. It was as if the serf had stepped into a river of blood, red
+and reeking, and carrying in its current thousands of mutilated corpses,
+heads and disjointed members.
+
+The street that Fergan stepped into belonged to the new ward, the
+richest of the city. Stately dwellings and not a few marble palaces,
+surmounted with balustraded terraces, rose on either side of this vast
+thoroughfare paved with wide slabs of stone. A furious multitude--soldiers,
+men, women and children, all belonging to the Crusade--swarmed over this
+long street, uttering ferocious yells. A young Saracen woman rushed out
+of the door of the third house to the right of Fergan. She was deadly
+pale with terror, her hair streamed behind her, and her rich clothes
+were in shreds. In her arms she carried two children, two or three years
+old. Behind her an aged man, already wounded, appeared on the threshold,
+walking backward and striving to defend her. The flow of blood covered
+his visage and clotted his long white beard, while he struggled to keep
+back two Crusaders. One of these, carrying on his left shoulder a bundle
+of costly clothes, pursued the aged Saracen with sword thrusts, and
+finally ran him through the breast, throwing him dead at the feet of the
+young mother. The second Crusader, who, no doubt disdaining to carry a
+heavy booty, had strung around his neck several gold chains pillaged in
+this house, immediately seized the young woman by the throat and rolled
+her over on a heap of corpses, while the first crushed under his
+iron-tagged heels the heads of the two children that had dropped from
+their mother's arms. At that instant, one of the women who followed the
+army hastened by, a hideous and savage-looking hag, brandishing in her
+hand the stump of a knife, red with blood. A lad, about the age of
+Colombaik, accompanied the fury. "Each one his turn," said she to the
+soldier; "leave for me those whelps of the devil, my son will dispatch
+them!" And placing the knife in the lad's hand, she added: "Cut off
+their heads, disembowel those infidel dogs!" The child obeyed the hag's
+orders and disemboweled the two little children.
+
+Further away, a band of vagabonds and wenches, drunk with wine and
+carnage, was besieging a palace that the men of Heracle, seigneur of
+Polignac, had seized. As the symbol of possession, these had raised the
+embroidered banner of their seigneur upon the terrace of the splendid
+building. After throwing a shower of stones at the soldiers of the
+seigneur of Polignac, the vagabonds and wenches assailed the soldiers
+with sticks, pikes and cutlasses, shouting hoarsely in the midst of the
+bloody melee: "Death! To the sack! This house and its riches belong to
+us as well as to the seigneurs! To the sack! Death! Death!"
+
+"Exterminate this band of vagabonds!" shouted back the soldiers,
+thrusting about them with their lances and swords. "Death to these
+jackals who mean to devour the prey of the lion!"
+
+As Fergan advanced along this street he witnessed shocking scenes. The
+sight of a gigantic soldier carrying, strung on his upright lance, three
+little children from five to six months old, was a spectacle never to be
+forgotten. Suddenly he found himself shoved hither and thither, and
+presently shut in within a circle of armed men who seemed to be arranged
+in some kind of order before the entrance of one of the most splendid
+palaces on the street. Lemon and oleander trees, planted in boxes, but
+now broken in two and upset, still ornamented the moresque balustrades
+of the terrace. The band, among which there were several women, and that
+left a wide empty space free between itself and the walls, emitted yells
+of savage impatience. Presently, the sleeves of his brown frock rolled
+back to the elbows, and his hands red with blood, a monk leaned forward
+over the balustrade of the terrace. It was Peter the Hermit, the
+companion of Walter the Pennyless. The identical Cuckoo Peter, whose
+hollow eyes glistened with savage fanaticism, now called out to the
+crowd in a hoarse voice: "My brothers in Christ, are you ready? Draw
+near and receive your share of the booty."
+
+"We are ready, holy man, and have been long waiting," answered several
+bandits; "we are losing our time here; they are pillaging elsewhere,
+holy father in God! We want our share of the booty."
+
+"Here comes your share of this great feast, my brothers in Christ. The
+vapor of the infidels' blood rises towards the Lord like an incense of
+myrrh and balsam! Let not one of the miscreants, that we are about to
+throw down to you from this terrace, escape with his life!"
+
+Peter the Hermit vanished and almost immediately the bust of a Saracen,
+clad in the purple caftan embroidered in gold, appeared above. Although
+bound hands and feet, the wild jumps of the unhappy man showed that he
+resisted with all his might the efforts of those who strove to throw him
+down into the street. A few minutes later, however, half his body had
+been forced over the balustrade. He straightened up once more, but
+immediately was hurled into space and dropped, head foremost, thirty
+feet below. A joyous clamor broke out at the man's fall, and redoubled
+when, with a dull thud, his skull struck the pavement and broke. He
+lived a few seconds longer, and strove to turn on his side while
+emitting violent imprecations. But soon, riddled with sword thrusts,
+broken with clubs and mauled with stones, there remained of him but a
+mangled lump in the midst of a pool of blood. "Father in God," cried out
+the mob, "the job is done! Hurry up! Send us another!"
+
+The hideous figure of Peter the Hermit re-appeared above the balustrade.
+He leaned his head forward and contemplated the remains of the Saracen.
+"Well done, my children!" The monk had hardly disappeared again, when
+two youths of fifteen to sixteen years, brothers no doubt, and bound
+face to face, were thrown down from the terrace. The violence of the
+fall snapped the bands that held them together. The elder was killed on
+the spot, the younger's legs were broken. For a few moments he dragged
+himself on his hands, moaning piteously and seeking to approach his
+brother's corpse. The Crusaders pounced upon these new victims. Women,
+monsters in human form, pulled out their entrails, indulged in obscene
+and infamous mutilations upon the two corpses, and throwing into the air
+the bleeding parts, cried out exultingly: "Let's exterminate the
+infidels! God wills it!"
+
+Twenty times did Peter the Hermit re-appear on the terrace, and twenty
+times were bodies thrown down over the balustrade, and torn to pieces by
+the crowd, drunk with bloodshed. Among these victims were five young
+girls and two other boys from ten to twelve years of age.
+
+All the inhabitants of Jerusalem who were captured, even those who had
+paid ransom for their lives--men, women and children--all, to the number
+of seventy thousand human beings, were thus massacred. The extermination
+lasted two days and three nights, obedient to the following order of the
+seigneur Tancred, one of the heroes of the Crusade: "_We consider it
+necessary to put to the sword without delay both the prisoners and those
+who paid ransom._"
+
+The last of the victims, cast at the mob by Peter the Hermit, were being
+massacred, when another band of Crusaders, running up from the other end
+of the street and marching towards the large square, passed by shouting:
+"The people of Tancred are pillaging the Mosque of Omar. * * * By all
+the saints of Paradise and all the devils of hell, we want our part of
+the booty!"
+
+"And we stay here amusing ourselves with corpses!" cried out the
+butchers under Peter the Hermit's terrace. "Let's on to the mosque! To
+the sack! To the sack!"
+
+Again Fergan was carried by the torrent of the crowd and arrived upon a
+spacious square littered with Saracen corpses, seeing that, after the
+assault had succeeded, the Saracens had retreated, fighting from street
+to street, and drawn themselves up before the mosque, where a last
+battle was delivered. At that place, these heroes were all killed
+defending the temple, the refuge of the women, the children and the old
+men, too feeble to fight, and who relied upon the pity and mercy of the
+vanquishers. Easier far had it been to excite the pity of a hungry tiger
+than that of the Crusaders.
+
+Several tiers of marble stairs led down to the Mosque of Omar, whose
+floor was about three feet below the level of the street. Such had been
+the butchery indulged in by the Crusaders, and so much blood had run
+down into the temple, which measured more than one thousand feet in
+circumference, that the blood, rising above the first stairs, began to
+run over into the square. The interior of the Mosque of Omar offered to
+the eye but one vast sheet of blood, still warm, and the vapor of which
+rose like a light mist above an innumerable mass of corpses, here
+wholly, yonder only partially submerged in the red lake, where heads and
+members hacked from the trunk with hatchets, were seen floating at
+large. Of the Crusaders who entered the Mosque of Omar for pillage, some
+waded in blood to their waists. The warmth of the flowing blood and the
+site of the shocking butchery made Fergan reel with dizziness. His heart
+thumped against his ribs and his strength gave way. In vain he sought
+support against one of the porphyry columns at the facade of the mosque.
+He dropped down unconscious, his legs steeped in blood.
+
+Fergan knew not how long he remained in that condition. When he regained
+consciousness it was night. The brightness of a large number of torches
+struck his eye. Religious songs, repeated in chorus by thousands of
+voices, fell upon his ears. Flanked by two files of soldiers, who
+marched in measured tread with torches in their hands, he saw a long
+procession pass by the temple. The procession wended its way to the
+Mount of Golgotha, close to the Church of the Resurrection, where stood
+the sepulchre of Jesus. At the head of the procession triumphantly
+marched the legate of the Pope, Peter the Hermit and the clergy,
+chanting praises to the All-powerful; after them the chiefs of the
+Crusaders, among them William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, clad in an old sack
+and smiting his breast. These were followed by the train-bands of the
+seigneurs, together with a multitude of soldiers, men, women, children
+and pilgrims, singing in chorus _Laudate Creator_. The crowd was so
+numerous that when the prelates and the chiefs of the Crusade, who
+headed the procession, reached the front of the Church of the
+Resurrection, the last ranks were still crowding upon each other in the
+middle of the square of the mosque. Other Crusaders marched outside of
+the two files of torch-bearing soldiers.
+
+When Fergan approached the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
+brilliantly lighted within, he heard loud roars of laughter mingled with
+maudlin imprecations. The King of the Vagabonds and his band, in company
+with their wenches, all drunk with wine and carnage, had taken
+possession of the holy place, and had begun to pillage it of its
+ornaments. At the center of the sanctuary stood Perrette the Ribald, her
+hair disheveled like a Bacchante's.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+THE COMMUNE OF LAON.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE RISE OF THE COMMUNES.
+
+
+For centuries Laon had for its temporal seigneur the bishop of the
+diocese, and figured from the start among the foremost cities of
+Picardy. Since the Frankish conquest, and down to the date of the events
+here narrated (1112), Laon constituted a part of the special domains of
+the kings. Clovis made himself master of the city through the treason of
+Saint Remy, who baptized that crowned bandit at Rheims. Clovis' wife,
+Clotilde, founded in the city the collegiate church of Saint Peter, and
+later Brunhild built a palace there. A bishop of Laon, Adalberon, the
+paramour of Queen Imma, was her accomplice in the poisoning of Lothair,
+the father of Louis the Indolent,--a homocidal example that was soon
+imitated upon himself by his Queen, Blanche, another adulterous
+poisoner, who, through the murder committed by her, confirmed the
+usurpation of Hugh Capet, to the injury of the last Carlovingian king.
+Charles, Duke of Lorraine, the uncle of Louis the Indolent, having
+become through the latter's death the heritor of the crown of the
+Frankish kings, took possession of Laon. Hugh Capet besieged him there,
+and, after several assaults, succeeded in capturing the city, thanks to
+the connections that Adalberon, the adulterer and poisoning bishop, had
+preserved in the place. Since then, Laon continued as a sovereign
+ecclesiastical seigniory, but always under the suzerainty of the French
+King. In the year 1112, the date of this narrative, the reigning king
+was named Louis the Lusty. As obese as, but much less indolent than his
+father, Philip I, the excommunicated lover of the handsome Berthrade who
+died in 1108, Louis the Lusty did not, like his father, submit to the
+affronts and vexations of the feudal seigneurs; he waged war to the
+knife against them to the end of extending with their spoils his own
+domains, that then took in only Paris, Melun, Compiegne, Etampes,
+Orleans, Montlhery, Puiset and Corbeil. Thus, in addition to the scourge
+of the private wars among the seigneurs, the people bent under the
+affliction of the wars of the king against the seigneurs, and of the
+Normans against the king. The Normans, the descendants of old Rolf the
+Pirate, had conquered England under their duke William. But, although
+settled down in that ultramarine country, the Kings of England preserved
+in Gaul the duchy of Normandy and Gisors, and from thence dominated the
+territory of Vexin, almost to the gates of Paris, waging incessant war
+upon Louis the Lusty. Thus Gaul continued to be ravaged by bloody
+strifes, with none other than the people, the serfs and villeins, as the
+perpetual victims. The wretched agricultural plebs, decimated by the
+execrable craze of the Crusades, that held out despite the recapture of
+Jerusalem by the Turks, found itself crushed by a double burden, their
+decreased numbers being compelled by increased labor to provide for the
+needs, the prodigalities and the debaucheries of the clergy and the
+seigneurs.
+
+The bourgeois and other townsmen, better organized, better able to
+realize their power, above all more enlightened than the serfs of the
+fields, had revolted in many cities against their lay or ecclesiastical
+seigneurs, and, by dint of daring, of energy and stubbornness, had, at
+the price of their own blood, regained their freedom and secured the
+abolition of the degrading and shameful rights that the feudal families
+had been long enjoying. A small number of cities, even without resorting
+to arms, had, by virtue of great pecuniary sacrifices, purchased their
+enfranchisement from the seigniorial rights, with round sums of money.
+Delivered from their former secular and creed servitude, the city
+populations celebrated with enthusiasm all the circumstances connected
+with their emancipation. Thus, on April 15, 1112, the bourgeois
+merchants and artisans of the city of Laon were in gala since early
+morning. From one side to the other of the streets, male and female
+neighbors called one another from their windows and exchanged gladsome
+salutations.
+
+"Well, neighbor," said one, "the bright anniversary of the inauguration
+of our Commune Hall and belfry has arrived!"
+
+"Do not mention it, neighbor; I have not slept all night! With my wife
+and children we were up till three o'clock in the morning burnishing up
+my iron casque and coat of mail. Our armed militia will add great luster
+to the ceremony. May God be praised for this great day!"
+
+"And the procession of our artisans' guilds will be no less superb!
+Would you believe it, neighbor, that I, who during all my life of a
+carpenter have not, as you may imagine, ever held a needle in my hands,
+helped my wife to sew together the stripes of our new banner?"
+
+"Thank God, the weather will be beautiful for the ceremony. Look how
+clear and brilliant the dawn is!"
+
+"Couldn't be otherwise! Such a feast could not lack good weather. I
+expect that when I shall hear for the first time the peals from our
+communal belfry every clank will make my heart bound!"
+
+These dialogues and many others, naive testimony of the joy of the
+inhabitants of Laon, took place along the length of all the streets from
+house to house, from the humblest to the richest. Almost all the
+windows, opened since the break of day, exposed to view the laughing
+faces of men, women and children, all actively engaged with preparations
+for the festivities.
+
+The gladsome stir in almost all the quarters of the city, rendered all
+the more striking the gloomy and sombre and, so to say, sullen aspect of
+a certain number of dwellings of ancient architecture, and whose gates
+were, as a rule, flanked by two turrets with pointed roofs, surmounted
+with a weather-vane. Not a chink of these dwellings, blackish with age,
+was open on this morning. They belonged to the ecclesiastical
+dignitaries of the metropolitan church, or to noble knights, who, not
+owning estates large enough to live in the country, inhabited the
+cities, and ever sided against the bourgeois and with the lay or
+ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, in Laon, these clergymen and
+knights were designated as the _episcopals_, while the inhabitants, who,
+according to the language of the day, "took the oath of the Commune,"
+were called the _communiers_. The antique turrets of the dwellings of
+the episcopals were at once a species of fortification and a symbol of
+the nobility of their origin. On that morning, these dwellings, silent
+and shut up, seemed to denote the displeasure given to the noble
+episcopals by the rejoicings of the Laonese laboring classes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE CHARTER OF LAON.
+
+
+But there were other dwellings, also flanked with turrets, besides those
+of the nobles. These others were gaily decorated, and the whiteness of
+their masonry, contrasting with the aspect of the ancient architecture
+of the nobles, to which they seemed to be annexes, bespoke a more recent
+date.
+
+One of these establishments, thus fortified only a short time since, lay
+at the corner of Exchange street, the leading mercantile thoroughfare of
+the city. The old door, whose threshold and lintels were of stone, and
+at either side of which rose two white and high turrets recently built,
+had been thrown open at the very first break of day, and several
+townsmen were seen going in and out. They came for certain instructions
+on the ceremonies. In one of the chambers of this dwelling sat Fergan
+and Joan the Hunchback. It was about twelve years since they had left
+the Holy Land. The hair and beard of Fergan, now over forty years of
+age, began to betray streaks of gray. He was no longer the serf of olden
+days--restless, savage, tattered. His features breathed happiness and
+serenity. Equipped almost wholly as a soldier, he wore a jacket of iron
+mail and a corselet of steel. He was seated near a table at which he
+wrote. Joan, clad in a robe of brown wool, and wearing on her head a
+sober bonnet, from under which a long white veil fell upon her
+shoulders, looked no less blissful than her husband. On the sweet face
+of this brave mother, once so severely tried, the expression of profound
+felicity was depicted. At the request of Fergan she had just drawn from
+an old oaken cabinet a little iron casket, which she placed upon the
+table where Fergan was writing. The casket, an inheritance from Gildas
+the Tanner, contained several parchment scrolls, yellow with the age of
+centuries, besides the several relics so dear to the family of the
+Gallic chief Joel, and among which was the silver cross of Genevieve,
+together with the pilgrim's shell that Fergan had taken from Neroweg VI
+in the desert of Syria. Fergan had just finished transcribing on a
+parchment a copy of the communal charter, under which, for the last
+three years, the city of Laon was free and led a peaceful and
+flourishing existence. The quarryman wished to join the copy of that
+charter to the archives of the family of Joel, as a witness of the
+awakening spirit of freedom of his own days, and of the inexorable
+resolution of the people to battle against the kings, the clergymen and
+the seigneurs, descendants or heritors of the Frankish conquest. For the
+last fifteen or twenty years back, other cities besides Laon, driven to
+extremities by the horrors of feudalism, had, some through insurrection,
+others through great sacrifices of money, obtained similar charters,
+under shelter of which they governed themselves like republics, similar
+to the heroic and brilliant days of Gaul's independence, centuries
+before the invasions of the Romans. The copy of the communal charter of
+Laon, the original of which, deposited in the Mayor's office, bore the
+name and signature of Gaudry, bishop of the diocese of Laon, and of
+Louis the Lusty, King of the French, ran as follows:
+
+     CHARTER OF THE COMMUNE OF LAON.
+
+     I.
+
+     All men, domiciled within the walls of the city and in its suburbs,
+     belonging to any seigneur who holds as a fief the territory which
+     they inhabit, shall swear allegiance to this Commune.
+
+     II.
+
+     Throughout the full extent of the city each shall render assistance
+     to the other, loyally and to the best of his ability.
+
+     III.
+
+     The men of this Commune shall be free holders of their goods.
+     _Neither the King, nor the Bishop, nor any other, shall be entitled
+     to make any levy upon them_, except by the judgment of their own
+     town council.
+
+     IV.
+
+     Each shall, on all occasions, observe fidelity towards those who
+     shall have taken the oath of the Commune, and shall aid them with
+     deed and advice.
+
+     V.
+
+     Within the limits of the Commune, all the men shall mutually help
+     one another, according to their power; and they shall in no wise,
+     whatever it be, suffer the seigneur, Bishop or any other, to
+     distrain any property from them, or compel them to pay imposts.
+
+     VI.
+
+     Thirteen _Councilmen_ shall be elected by the Commune. One of these
+     councilmen shall be elected _Mayor_ by the suffrage of all those
+     who shall have taken the oath of the Commune.
+
+     VII.
+
+     The Mayor and the Councilmen shall make oath to favor no person by
+     reason of friendship, and to render an equitable decision in all
+     matters, according to their powers; all others shall take the oath
+     of obedience and to sustain with arms the decisions of the Mayor
+     and Councilmen. When the bell of the belfry shall sound to assemble
+     the Commune, anyone who does not attend shall pay a fine of twelve
+     sous.
+
+     VIII.
+
+     If anyone injure a man who shall have taken the oath of the Commune
+     of Laon, a complaint being lodged with the Mayor and Councilmen,
+     they shall, after due trial, enforce justice upon the body and
+     property of the guilty party.
+
+     IX.
+
+     If the guilty party takes refuge in a fortified castle, the Mayor
+     and Councilmen shall notify the seigneur of the castle, or his
+     lieutenant. If in their opinion satisfaction shall have been
+     rendered against the guilty party, that will suffice; but if the
+     seigneur refuses satisfaction, _they shall themselves enforce
+     justice upon the property and upon the men of said seigneur_.
+
+     X.
+
+     If any member of the Commune shall have entrusted his money to some
+     one of the city, and he to whom the money has been so entrusted
+     takes refuge in some strong castle, the seigneur having been
+     notified, shall either return the money, or drive the debtor from
+     his castle. If the seigneur does neither, justice shall be enforced
+     upon his goods and his men.
+
+     XI.
+
+     Whenever the Mayor and the Councilmen shall desire to fortify the
+     city, they shall be free to do so on whatever seigneur's territory
+     it may be.
+
+     XII.
+
+     The men of the Commune shall be free to grind their corn, and bake
+     their bread wherever they please.
+
+     XIII.
+
+     If the Mayor and Councilmen of the Commune require money for the
+     use of the city, and raise a tax, they may levy the same on the
+     inheritances and property of the townsmen, and on the sales and
+     profits made in the city.
+
+     XIV.
+
+     No stranger, a copy-holder of any Church or seigneur, and
+     established _outside of the city and its suburbs_, shall be
+     included in the Commune without the consent of his seigneur.
+
+     XV.
+
+     Whosoever shall be received in this Commune shall build a house
+     within the space of one year, or shall purchase vineyards, or shall
+     bring into the city moveable property, to the end that justice may
+     be enforced, should a complaint be raised against him.
+
+     XVI.
+
+     If anyone slander the Mayor in the exercise of his functions, the
+     slanderer's house shall be demolished, or he shall pay ransom for
+     the same, or he shall deliver himself to the mercy of the
+     Councilmen.
+
+     XVII.
+
+     No one shall molest or vex the strangers of the Commune. If any
+     dare do so, he shall be deemed a violator of the Commune, and
+     justice shall be enforced upon his person and his property.
+
+     XVIII.
+
+     Whosoever shall have wounded with arms any one who, like himself,
+     shall have taken the oath of the Commune, then, unless he justifies
+     his act under oath or with witnesses, he shall lose his hand, and
+     shall pay nine livres; six for the fortifications of the city and
+     of the Commune, three for the ransom of his hand. If he is unable
+     to pay, he shall leave his hand at the mercy of the Commune.
+
+Fergan had just finished transcribing the charter, when the door of his
+room opened. Colombaik stepped in. A young and comely wife of eighteen
+years at the most accompanied him. The son of the quarryman, a fine
+strapping young man of twenty-two, united in the expression of his face
+the sweetness of his mother and the energy of his father. Like the
+latter, he also was clad half townsman half soldier. His casque of black
+steel, ribbed with shining iron, imparted a martial air to his pleasing
+and open countenance. He carried a heavy cross-bow on his shoulder. From
+his right side hung a leather holster that held the bolts needed for his
+weapon. His wife, Martine, only daughter of the old age of Gildas, the
+elder brother of Bezenecq the Rich, was of the age and endowed with the
+charms of Isoline, a victim like her father of the cupidity of Neroweg
+VI.
+
+"Father!" Colombaik cried out joyfully upon entering the room and
+alluding to his war-like outfit, "in your quality of constable of our
+bourgeois and artisan militia, do you find me worthy of figuring in the
+troop? Does Colombaik, the soldier, make you forget by his martial
+outfit Colombaik, the townsman and tanner?"
+
+"Thank heaven, Colombaik the soldier will not, I hope, have occasion to
+blot out Colombaik the tanner," put in Joan with her sweet smile, "any
+more than Fergan the constable will have occasion to blot out Fergan the
+master quarryman. You will both continue to battle, you with your
+beaters against the hides in the tannery, your father with his pick
+against the stones of his quarry. Is not that your hope and desire, dear
+Martine?" Joan added, turning to the wife of her son.
+
+"Certainly, my good mother," responded Martine. "Fortunately they are
+far behind, those evil days when the bourgeois and artisans of Laon, in
+order to escape the exactions of the bishop, of the clergymen, and of
+the knights, often had to barricade themselves in their houses and
+sustain a regular siege; and when, but too often, despite their
+resistance, their houses were entered and they were carried to the
+episcopal palace, where they were tortured for ransom. What a
+difference, my God, since we have been living under the Commune! We now
+are so free, so happy!" But Martine added with a sigh: "Oh, I regret
+that my poor father did not live to witness the change! His last moments
+would not have been saddened by the uneasiness that our future gave him.
+Seeing the terrible acts of violence indulged in by Bishop Gaudry,
+together with the nobles, against the inhabitants of Laon, acts that
+might any day have reached us as they reached so many others among our
+neighbors, my father always had before him the frightful fate of my
+uncle Bezenecq and his poor daughter Isoline!"
+
+"Be at ease, my dear wife," rejoined Colombaik; "those accursed days
+shall not return! No, no! To-day old Gaul bristles with free Communes,
+as three hundred years ago it bristled with feudal castles. The Communes
+are our fortresses! Our belfry tower is our donjon. We no longer have to
+fear the seigneurs!"
+
+"Ah, Martine, my sweet child," said Joan with deep emotion to the wife
+of her son, "happier than we, you happy youngsters will not see your
+children and your husbands enduring the horrors of servitude."
+
+"Yes, we, the bourgeois and artisans of the cities are emancipated,"
+Fergan rejoined pensively; "but serfdom presses as cruelly now as in the
+past upon the serfs of the fields. I fought, for that reason, with all
+my power, the clause in our charter that excludes from the Commune the
+serfs living outside of the village, or those who do not possess money
+enough to build a house here. Is it not to exclude them, when the
+consent of their seigneurs, or a sufficient sum with which to build a
+house in the city is required from them, who own not even their own
+arms? And yet, that sole wealth of the industrious man is equal to any
+other." Turning then to Martine: "Oh, the father of your father and of
+Bezenecq spoke like a whole-souled and wise man when, years ago, while
+vainly inciting the townsmen to the insurrections that are to-day
+breaking out in so many cities of Gaul, he aimed, not at the revolt of
+the bourgeois and artisans merely, but also at that of the serfs. Serfs
+and bourgeois united would not be long in crushing the seigniories. But
+reduced to its own forces, the task of the bourgeoisie will be long and
+arduous.... We must be prepared for fresh struggles...."
+
+"And yet, father," interposed Colombaik, "since the day when, in
+consideration of a good round sum, the bishop renounced his seigniorial
+rights and sold us our freedom for cash, has he ever dared to ride the
+high horse against us,--he, that brutal Norman warrior, who, before the
+establishment of the Commune, had the eyes of townsmen put out and often
+killed them for the mere offense of having condemned his acts of
+shameful debauchery,--he, who in his own cathedral, only four years
+ago, killed with his own hands the unhappy Bernard des Bruyeres? No, no;
+despite his wickedness, Bishop Gaudry knows full well that, if, after
+pocketing our money as a consideration for giving his consent to our
+Commune, he were to try to return to his former practices, he would pay
+dear for his perjury. Three years of freedom have taught us to prize the
+sacred boon. We would know how to defend it, arms in hand, like the
+Communes of Cambrai, Amiens, Abbeville, Noyon, Beauvais, Rheims, and so
+many others."
+
+"For all that, Colombaik," remarked Martine, "I cannot help trembling
+when I see Black John, that African giant, who once was the bishop's
+hangman, cross the streets of our city. That negro seems ever to be
+plotting some act of cruelty, like some savage beast, that but waits for
+some opportune moment to snap his chain."
+
+"Be at ease, Martine," Colombaik answered with a smile. "The chain is
+solid, no less solid than that which holds that other bandit, Thiegaud,
+the serf of the Abbey of St. Vincent, and favorite of Bishop Gaudry, who
+familiarly calls him his friend 'Ysengrin,' a name given by children to
+the companion of the wolf. But, would you believe it, mother, that
+Thiegaud, a fellow stained with all imaginable crimes, that abominable
+reprobate, yet adores his daughter."
+
+"Even the wild beasts love their young ones," answered Joan. "Did not
+Worse than a Wolf, our former seigneur, with whom your father fought
+when we were in Palestine, weep when he thought of his son?"
+
+"That's true, mother; and so it is with this other wolf Thiegaud. The
+tenant of the little farm that your father left us, my dear Martine, was
+telling me yesterday that a short time ago Thiegaud's daughter came near
+dying, and he was almost crazed with grief. Moreover the wretch is as
+jealous of the chastity of his daughter as if he himself had led a clean
+life! The scamp tried to rob us, I am sure. When our tenant mentioned
+Thiegaud's name to me it was because the fellow pretended to want to
+buy in the name of the bishop, who is a passionate hunter, as you know,
+a young colt raised on our meadow."
+
+"Take care!" said Fergan warningly. "The bishop is over head and ears in
+debt. If you sell the horse you will receive no money."
+
+"I know the fine sire! I told our tenant: 'If Thiegaud pays cash for the
+horse, sell it to him; if not, don't.' The days are gone by when the
+seigneurs had the right to buy on credit, which is to say, the right to
+buy without ever paying. To try and compel them to pay was tantamount to
+placing liberty and even life in jeopardy. To-day, however, if the
+bishop should dare rob a communier, the Commune would enforce justice
+upon the episcopals, whether they willed it or not. That's the text of
+our charter, signed, not by the bishop only, but also by King Louis the
+Lusty--a signature, 'tis true, that we paid dearly for."
+
+"We paid for it through the nose," rejoined Fergan. "That gross king
+chaffered and haggled for two days on a stretch. Our friend Robert the
+Eater was one of the communiers sent to Paris three years ago to secure
+our charter. What a gang of cut-throats make up that court! To start
+with, it was necessary to generously oil the palms of the royal
+councilors in order to dispose them in our favor. Louis the Lusty then
+wanted to have the proposed sum increased by a fourth, then by a third.
+Finally, over and above the redemption of his ancient rights of quarters
+and stabling for himself and his army, whenever he visited the city, he
+demanded the annual use of three houses, and if he did not avail himself
+of them, an equivalent of twenty livres a year, and three years in
+advance. You must admit, my children, that it is selling rather dear
+those 'rights of crown,' as they call them, monstrous rights, born of
+the iniquitous and bloody deeds of the conquest."
+
+"So it is, father," answered Colombaik; "we may well say that, in
+selling to us for their weight in silver, what they please to call their
+rights, the king and his seigneurs act like highwaymen, who put the
+dagger to your throat and say: 'I robbed you yesterday; now give me your
+purse, and I shall not rob you to-morrow.'"
+
+"It is better to yield your money than your blood," said Joan. "By dint
+of work and privation one may recover his savings, and one is at least
+freed from those fearful savages, whom I cannot think of without
+shuddering."
+
+"Moreover, father," put in Martine, "it seems to me we need all the less
+fear the return of the tyranny of the seigneur, seeing that the king
+hates them as much as we, and fights them to the knife. We hear every
+day of his wars against the large vassals, of the battles he fights with
+them, and of the provinces he plucks them of."
+
+"But, children, who profits by war? Who is it that pays the piper for
+the ravages it causes? The people. Yes, the King hates the seigneurs
+because from century to century they seized upon a large number of
+provinces, that one time belonged to the Frankish crown when it
+conquered Gaul. Yes, the King fights the seigneurs to the knife, but
+likewise does the butcher wage relentless war against the wolves who
+devour the cattle intended for the shambles. That's the reason of the
+hatred of Louis the Lusty and the prelates towards the lay seigneurs.
+Church and royalty desire to annihilate the seigneurs in order
+themselves to lead at will the plebs cattle, bequeathed to them by the
+conquest. Oh, my children, my heart is full of hope. But so long as
+serfs, artisans and bourgeois shall not stand united against their
+hereditary enemies, the future looms up before me big with new perils.
+Happier than our forefathers, we have initiated a holy struggle, our
+children will have to continue it through centuries to come."
+
+"And yet, father, are we not now living in absolute peace and
+prosperity, free from crushing imposts, governed by magistrates of our
+own choice, who have no object other than the public weal? Our city
+becomes daily more industrious and affluent. The bishop and his
+episcopals can not be hair-brained enough to seek to restore old
+conditions and assail our liberty. We have weapons wherewith to defend
+ourselves!"
+
+"My child, if we wish to preserve our franchises, we must redouble our
+vigilance and energy, and keep ourselves ever ready for the fray."
+
+"Why pre-occupy ourselves so much about the future, father? Why should
+we have to redouble our vigilance?"
+
+"Bishop Gaudry and the nobles of the city used to subject us, at their
+will and without mercy, to crushing imposts and hateful rights. We said
+to them: 'Renounce forever your rights and your annual taxes; emancipate
+us; subscribe to our Commune; we shall give you a considerable sum in
+full future payment.' Now, then, these idle people, wasteful and
+covetous, thought only of the present and accepted our offer. By this
+time, however, the money has been spent, or there is little of it left.
+They are regretting that, in the language of the story, they killed the
+goose that lay the golden eggs. They are seeking to break the contract."
+
+"What!" cried out Colombaik. "They would contemplate breaking the pact
+that they freely entered into--"
+
+"Listen to me," interposed Joan. "I do not wish to exaggerate the
+apprehensions of your father for the future. Nevertheless, I believe to
+have noticed--" but breaking off she continued: "After all, I may have
+been mistaken--"
+
+"What have you in mind, mother?"
+
+"Can it be that you have not noticed that for some time back the
+knights, the city clergy, in short, all the folks of the party of the
+bishop, whom they call the episcopals, have been deporting themselves
+with a swaggering air towards the townsmen and artisans in the streets?"
+
+"You are right, Joan," remarked Fergan pensively. "I have been struck,
+less, perhaps, by the swagger of the episcopals, than by the insolence
+of their menials. It is a grave symptom, an indication of their
+resentment."
+
+"Good! A ridiculous rancor, and nothing else!" said Colombaik smiling
+disdainfully. "Those holy canons and their noble pursuivants do not
+forgive the bourgeois for being free like themselves, and for having,
+like themselves, and when they please, turrets to their houses--a
+pleasure that I have bestowed upon myself, thanks to the finest stones
+of your quarry, father. Thus, our tannery could now sustain a siege
+against those ill-tempered episcopals. Besides, I have contrived for
+Martine a pretty little alcove in one of the turrets, and her initials,
+cut by me in copper, glisten in the weather-vane from the top of our
+turrets, just as the initials of a lady of rank."
+
+"It will, no doubt, be more than ever well to have a strong house,"
+observed Fergan. "It is not the weather-vanes on our turrets, but thick
+walls that trouble the episcopals."
+
+"They will have to become accustomed to our strong houses. If not, by
+heaven--"
+
+"No passion, Colombaik," put in the benign Joan, again interrupting the
+impetuous young man. "Your father has made the same observation that I
+did; and since the retainers of the knights look provoking, their
+masters must be near becoming so themselves. This morning's ceremony
+will surely, for more reasons than one, attract a large number of
+episcopals along the line of the procession. For heaven's sake, my
+child, no rashness!"
+
+"Do not alarm yourself, Joan," rejoined Fergan, "we are too conscious of
+our good rights and of the strength of the Commune, not to keep cool in
+sight of mere insolence. But prudence does not exclude firmness."
+
+Hardly had the quarryman pronounced these words when the door flew open,
+and a young and attractive woman entered with a pert air. She was a
+brunette, sprightly and handsomely dressed, like the rich bourgeois that
+she was. An orange-colored silk petticoat was fastened to her exquisite
+waist with a silver belt; her skirt, made of fine Arras cloth and
+bordered with marten fur, hardly reached her knees; on her black hair,
+that shone like jet, she wore a bonnet, red like her stockings, which
+set off her well-shaped calves; finally, her feet were shod in smart
+shoes of shining Morocco leather. Simonne, that was her name, was the
+wife of Ancel Quatre-Mains, a master baker, renowned throughout the city
+of Laon and even the suburbs, for the excellence of his bread, his cream
+tarts, his honey cakes, his almond wafers and other dainties that were
+confectioned in his shop. He also drove the trade of flour merchant, and
+the Commune had chosen him one of its Councilmen. Ancel
+Quatre-Mains[E]--the name was due to his prodigious quickness in
+kneading the dough--presented a singular contrast to his wife,--as calm
+and thoughtful as she was pert and giddy-headed, as chary of words as
+she was loquacious, as corpulent as she was lithesome. His physiognomy
+betokened imperturbable good-nature, coupled in his instance with a
+lively sense of justice, a generous heart, and extraordinary skill at
+his trade.
+
+Wishing to please his pretty wife, whom he loved as much as he was loved
+by her, the master baker had harnessed himself in war accoutrements. A
+large number of townsmen, until then deprived of the right to carry
+arms--a right exclusively reserved to the seigneurs, the knights and
+their pursuivants--found a pleasure and a triumph in such martial
+arrays. Ancel Quatre-Mains only slightly shared their taste; but in
+order to suit Simonne, who was greatly captivated by the military garb,
+he had put on a gobison, a species of strongly bolstered and thick
+leather corselet, that, not having been measured for him, pressed in his
+chest and caused his prominent stomach to protrude still more. On the
+other hand, his iron casque, much too large for him, kept falling over
+his eyes, an inconvenience that the worthy baker corrected from time to
+time by pushing his unlucky headgear to the back of his head. At times
+his legs also got entangled with the long sword that swung from a buff
+shoulder-belt, embroidered with red silk and silver thread by Simonne
+herself, who wished to imitate the tokens of approval bestowed by the
+noble ladies upon their gallant knights. Ancel had long been the friend
+of Fergan, who loved and esteemed him greatly. Simonne, brought up with
+Martine and slightly her senior, cherished her like a sister. Thanks to
+their close neighborhood, the two young women visited each other every
+day after the routine of their household and even trade duties had been
+attended to, because, if Martine helped Colombaik in several departments
+of his tannery, Simonne, who was no less industrious than lovable,
+leaving to Ancel and his two apprentices the care of preparing the
+bread, would confection with her own pretty hands, as white as the wheat
+flour that they handled, the delicious cakes that the townsmen and even
+the noble episcopals were so fond of.
+
+Simonne stepped in the house of her neighbor with her habitual pertness.
+But her charming face, no longer smiling and happy as usual, was now
+expressive of lively indignation, and entering a few steps ahead of her
+husband, she cried out: "The insolent wretch! As true as Ancel is called
+Quatre-Mains, I would have wished, 'pon the word of a Picardian woman,
+that I had four hands to slap her face, noble dame though she be! The
+old hag, as ugly as she is wicked and quarrelsome!"
+
+"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Fergan smiling, knowing well the nature of Simonne,
+"you, ordinarily so gay and full of laughter! You seem highly incensed,
+neighbor!"
+
+"What has happened, Simonne? Who has excited your anger to such a
+pitch?" added Martine.
+
+"Trifles," said the baker, shaking his head and answering the
+questioning looks of Fergan, Joan and Colombaik; "it is nothing, good
+neighbors."
+
+"How so?... Nothing!" cried out Simonne, turning with a start to her
+husband. "Oh! According to you such insolence must pass unperceived!"
+
+The baker again shook his head, and, profiting by the opportunity to be
+rid of his casque, that pressed him heavily, he placed it under his arm.
+"Oh! It is nothing!" proceeded Simonne, now addressing Fergan and Joan.
+"I take you for judges. You are wise and thoughtful people."
+
+"And what are we two, Martine and I?" queried Colombaik, laughing
+merrily. "So, then, you discard us?"
+
+"I do not take you for judges, neither you nor Martine, because you
+would be too much of my opinion," replied Simonne; "Master Fergan and
+his wife are not, as far as I know, suspected of being hot-heads! Let
+them decide whether I am angry at nothing," she said, shooting a fresh
+look of indignation at the baker, who, greatly incommoded by his long
+sword, had sat down, placing it across his knees after laying his casque
+on the floor. "This is what happened," Simonne proceeded: "Agreeable to
+the promise I yesterday made to Martine of coming for her this morning
+to assist at the inauguration of our belfry, Ancel and I left the house
+early. Going up Exchange street we passed before the window of the
+fortified house of Arnulf, a nobleman of Haut-Pourcin, as he styles
+himself."
+
+"I know the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin," observed Colombaik; "he is one of
+the bitterest episcopals in town."
+
+"And his wife is one of the most brazen she-devils that ever joined a
+caterwauling!" cried out Simonne. "Judge for yourselves, neighbors. She
+and her maid were standing at one of the lower windows when Ancel and I
+went by. 'Look at her,' she said in a loud voice to her maid, laughing
+obstreperously; 'look at the baker's wife, how she struts in new clothes
+with her petticoat of Lombard silk, silver belt and skirt bordered with
+marten fur! May God pardon me! To see such creatures daring to put on
+silk and rich furs like us noble ladies, instead of humbly keeping to a
+petticoat of linsey-woolsey and a skirt hemmed with cat's skin, the
+proper clothing for the base station in life of these villeins! What a
+pity! Fortunately her yellow dress is of the color of her pastry and her
+bannocks! It will serve them for ensign!'"
+
+"That's only in favor of the excellent baking of Simonne's cakes, no
+so, neighbors?" put in the baker, "because, when the bannock comes out
+of the oven, it should be yellow as gold."
+
+"See what a fool I am! I failed to take the words of the noble woman for
+a compliment!" Simonne resumed, saying: "But I answered her insolence
+plump and plain: 'The word of a Picardian woman, upon it, Dame
+Haut-Pourcin, if my petticoat is the ensign of my bannocks, your face is
+the ensign of your fifty years, despite all your cosmetics, and all your
+affectations of youth, of maidenhood and of freshness!'"
+
+"Oh!" Colombaik broke out laughing. "An excellent answer to the old
+fairy, who, indeed, is always dressing like a young girl. There you have
+the nobility! The pretty dresses of our women trouble them as much as
+the turrets of our houses. Let them split with rage!"
+
+"My answer struck home," proceeded Simonne. "The dame of Haut-Pourcin
+shook like a fury at the bars of her window, yelling: 'You
+street-walker!... You gallows-bird!... To dare to talk that way to
+me!... You vile emancipated serf!... But patience!... Patience!... I
+shall soon have you cow-hided by my servants!'"
+
+"'Oh, oh! As to that,' I answered her, 'do not talk nonsense, Dame
+Haut-Pourcin,'" put in the baker; "'the days are gone by when the noble
+dames had the woman of the bourgeois beaten!'"
+
+"Yes," added Simonne with indignation, "and do you know what that harpy
+replied, while shaking her fist at Ancel? 'Off with you,' said she, 'you
+lumbering churl! The vile bourgeoisie will not much longer talk so big!
+Soon we will no longer see clowns wearing the casques of knights, and
+jades like your wife, wearing silk petticoats paid for by their
+paramours,'" saying which, Simonne, whose anger had until then been
+shaded with frolicsome animation, became purple with confusion. Two
+tears rolled down her large black ayes, and she added in a moved voice:
+"Such an outrage ... to me.... And Ancel says that's nothing! Such an
+outrage exasperates me!"
+
+"Come now, be cool. Are you not as honorable a woman as you are an
+industrious housekeeper?" said the baker affectionately approaching
+Simonne, who was wiping off her tears with the back of her hand. "That
+stupid insult cannot touch you, my dear, and does not even deserve to be
+remembered."
+
+"Ancel is right," said Fergan. "That old woman is gone crazy. Crazy
+people's words do not count. But, friends, there is this about it. We
+must recognize that the insolence of the episcopals increases from day
+to day. Those allusions to former times foreshadow an evil intent on
+their part. It is well to be forewarned."
+
+"What, father, will those people be so badly advised as to think of
+attacking our Commune? Is their insolence to be taken notice of? Will it
+be necessary for us to place ourselves on our guard against their evil
+designs?"
+
+"Yeast that ferments is always sour, my child," replied the baker,
+reclining his head pensively. "The remark of your father is just. The
+provocations of the episcopals have a secret cause. I was just saying to
+Simonne: 'It is nothing!' I now say: 'It is something!'"
+
+"Very well! Let it be so! Let them dare!" cried out Colombaik. "We are
+ready for those noblemen and clergymen, for all the tonsured fraternity
+and their bishop to boot!"
+
+"And if the women take a part, as at the insurrection of Beauvais,"
+exclaimed Simonne, clenching her little fists, "I, who have no children,
+shall accompany my husband to battle, and the dame of Haut-Pourcin will
+pay dear for her insults. 'Pon the word of a Picardian woman, I shall
+slap her insolent face as dry as an Easter wafer!"
+
+The good baker was smiling at the heroic enthusiasm of his pretty wife
+when the peal of a large bell was heard from a distance. Fergan, his
+family and neighbors, listened to the sonorous and prolonged sound with
+a tremor of joy.
+
+"Oh, my friends!" said Fergan with emotion, "do you hear it sound for
+the first time from the belfry of our Commune? Do you hear it? To-day
+it summons us to a feast; to-morrow it will call us to the meeting of
+the council where we attend to the business of the city; some day it
+will give us the signal for battle. A belfry of the people! Your voice
+of bronze, at last awakening ancient Gaul from her slumber, has given
+the signal for the insurrection of the Communes!"
+
+While the quarryman was speaking, all the bells of the churches of Laon
+began to chime in with the peals of the belfry. The deafening clangor
+soon dominated and completely drowned the isolated tinkling of the
+communal bell. This rivalry of bell-ringing was no accident, nor yet a
+token of sympathy. It was an affront, premeditated by the bishop and his
+partisans. They realized the patriotic importance that the communiers of
+Laon attached to the inauguration of the symbol of their emancipation,
+and decided to mar the festivity.
+
+"Oh, those friars! Always spiteful and hypocritic until the day when
+they deem themselves strong enough to be merciless!" exclaimed
+Colombaik. "Have your way, ye black-gowns! Ring at your loudest! The
+canting bells of your churches shall not silence our communal belfry!
+Your bells ring mankind to servitude, to imbecility, to the renunciation
+of their dignity; the belfry gathers them to fulfil their civic duties
+and to defend freedom! Come, father, come! The bourgeois militia must by
+this time be assembled around the pillars of the market-place. You are
+constable and I a captain-of-ten. Let's start. Do not let us be waited
+for. Liberty or death!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+EPISCOPALS AND COMMUNIERS.
+
+
+Fergan put on his casque, and presently giving his arm to Joan the
+Hunchback, as Colombaik gave his to Martine, and Quatre-Mains to his
+wife Simonne, the three couples sallied forth from Colombaik's tannery,
+followed by his apprentices, who, likewise were members of the Commune.
+
+The rivalry of the bells continued undiminished. At intervals the bells
+of the churches intermitted their clangor, no doubt in the hope of
+having silenced the belfry. Its sonorous and regular peal proceeded,
+however, unchecked, and the clerical clangor was renewed with redoubled
+fury. The incident, puerile in seeming, but serious at bottom, produced
+a deep resentment towards the party of the nobles. It was a long
+distance from the tannery of Colombaik to the market-place, the
+rendezvous of the bourgeois militia. Large crowds blocked the streets,
+moving towards the communal Town Hall, that had been three years
+building and was recently finished. Only the casting and hanging of the
+bell in its campanile had retarded the inauguration of the monument so
+dear to the townsmen. More than once did Joan turn back to look, not
+without uneasiness, in the direction where her son followed with
+Martine, together with Quatre-Mains and Simonne. Joan's apprehensions
+were well founded. A large number of the domestics of the noble and
+clerical households were dispersed among the crowd, and from time to
+time hurled some vulgar insult at the communiers, upon which they would
+immediately take to their heels. Knights, clad in full armor, crossed
+and re-crossed the streets, their fists upon their hips, their visors
+up, and casting disdainful and defiant looks upon the people. These
+provocations increased particularly in the vicinity of the rendezvous of
+the militia, at the head of which, and armed as if for battle, the Mayor
+of Laon and his twelve Councilmen were to march in procession to the
+Town Hall in order to inaugurate by a solemn session the meeting of
+these magistrates, held until then at the house of John Molrain, the
+Mayor.
+
+The market-place of Laon, like that of all the cities of Gaul, consisted
+of large stalls, where, on Saturdays, occasionally also on other days of
+the week, the merchants, leaving their everyday shops, exposed their
+products for sale. Outsiders and the suburb population, who drew their
+supplies from Laon, thus found at one place all that they might want.
+But on that day the market served as the gathering place for a goodly
+number of bourgeois and artisans, who had armed themselves to join the
+procession and impart to it an imposing appearance. In case of war,
+every communier was obliged to furnish himself with a pike and an axe,
+or club, at the first call from the belfry, and hasten to the
+rendezvous. As a rule the crowd seemed indifferent to the insolent gibes
+and provocations of the episcopals. The communiers, at least a majority
+of them, felt themselves strong enough to despise the challenges to
+riot. A few, however, yielded to a certain sense of fear for the
+iron-clad nobles, who were accustomed to the use of weapons, and with
+whom the Laonese, who owed their enfranchisement to a contract and not
+to an insurrection, had not yet had occasion to measure themselves.
+Finally and moreover, hardly freed from their rude and base servitude,
+many of the townsmen still preserved, involuntarily, a certain habit, if
+not of respect, yet of dread for people whose cruel oppression they had
+so long been subject to. Shortly, the captains-of-tens, commanding
+squads of tens, and the captains-of-hundreds, commanding companies of
+hundreds, all under the command of Fergan, who had been chosen
+constable, or chief of the militia, drew up their ranks along the stalls
+of the market-place. Colombaik was a captain-of-ten, his body was
+complete except for one lad called Bertrand, the son of Bernard des
+Bruyeres, a rich bourgeois who, three years previous, was assassinated
+in the cathedral by Gaudry, bishop of Laon.
+
+"Probably," said Colombaik, "poor Bertrand will not join us to-day. This
+is a feast day, and there are no more feast days for the poor fellow
+since the murder of his father."
+
+"Yet there comes Bertrand!" cried out one of the militiamen, pointing at
+a young man, who, pale, frail and sickly-looking, of a timid and kind
+appearance, wearing a steel casque and armed with a heavy axe that
+seemed to weigh down his shoulder, was approaching from a distance.
+"Poor Bertrand!" the militiaman added, "so feeble and wretched! He is
+excused for not having avenged the death of his father upon our accursed
+bishop!" Cordially received by his companions, Bertrand answered their
+solicitous inquiries with some embarrassment, and silently took his
+place in the ranks. The Mayor arrived soon after, accompanied by his
+Councilmen, some unarmed, others armed like Ancel Quatre-Mains, who
+joined them there. John Molrain, the Mayor, a man in the vigor of life
+and of a countenance at once calm and energetic, marched at the head of
+the magistrates of the city. One of them carried the banner of the
+Commune of Laon,--if the steeple of the people's belfries rose daringly
+in the teeth of the feudal donjons, the communal banners floated no less
+high than those of the seigneurs. The banner of Laon represented two
+embattled towers, between which rose a naked sword. The emblem
+signified: "Our city, fortified by walls, will know how to defend itself
+by arms against its enemies." Another Councilman carried in a vermillion
+casket, lying upon a silk cushion, the communal charter, signed by the
+bishop and the nobles, and confirmed by the signature of Louis the
+Lusty, King of the French. Finally, a third carried, also upon a
+cushion, the silver seal of the Commune, which served to attest the acts
+and decrees rendered by the town Council in the name of the Commune.
+This large medal, cast in bass relief, represented the Mayor, who, clad
+in his long robe and with his right hand pointing heavenward, seemed to
+be taking the oath, while his left hand held a sword with the point
+resting on his breast. "I, Mayor of Laon, have sworn to maintain and
+defend the franchises of the Commune: sooner die than betray my
+trust!"--such was the patriotic meaning of the communal seal, in short,
+"Liberty or death!"
+
+When the city magistrate arrived, Fergan, who was issuing his last
+orders to the militiamen, saw a priest, the archdeacon of the cathedral,
+called Anselm, step out of the crowd. Fergan held the tonsured
+fraternity in singular aversion, yet greatly esteemed Anselm, a true
+disciple of Christ. "Fergan," whispered the archdeacon to the quarryman,
+"press your friends to redouble their calmness and their prudence, I
+conjure you. Prevent them from replying to any provocation. I can tell
+you no more. The time is short. I must proceed to the episcopal palace."
+Saying this, Anselm disappeared in the crowd. The advice of the
+archdeacon, a wise man, beloved by all, and, due to his office, in a
+position to be reliably informed, struck Fergan. He no longer doubted
+there was a conspiracy, secretly hatched by the episcopals against the
+Commune. Profoundly preoccupied, he placed himself at the head of his
+militiamen, in order to escort the Mayor and the Councilmen to the Town
+Hall. The obscure names of this magistracy, taken from Fergan's family
+archives, and over which he inscribed the exhortation: "May they be ever
+dear to your memory, ye sons of Joel!" were: John Molrain, Mayor.
+Councilmen: Foulque, the son of Bomar; Raoul Cabricoin; Ancel,
+son-in-law of Labert; Haymon; Payen-Seille; Robert; Remy-But;
+Menard-Dray, Raimbaut the sausagemaker; Payen-Oste-Loup; Ancel
+Quatre-Mains, and Raoul-Gastines.
+
+The procession started amidst the joyful acclamations of the crowd, who
+enthusiastically shouted their rallying-cry: "Commune! Commune!"
+swollen by the sonorous peals from the belfry, the clerical clangor
+having finally ceased, due to the apprehension of the episcopals, lest
+the prolonged ringing of their bells was taken for their participation
+in the festivities. Before arriving at the place where the Town Hall
+stood, the procession defiled before the house of the knight of
+Haut-Pourcin, a large and fortified dwelling, flanked with two thick
+towers, that were joined by an embattled terrace, projecting above the
+door. Upon this species of balcony were gathered a large number of
+knights, clergymen, nobles and elegantly bedezined ladies, some young
+and handsome, others old and ugly. Among the least old of the latter and
+yet ugliest of all, the dame of Haut-Pourcin was conspicuous. A gaunt
+virago of about fifty, bony, of parchment skin, and of arrogant mien,
+she wore a violet cloak with gold buttons and a cape of peacock
+feathers; on her grizzly hair she had coquettishly fastened a chaplet of
+lillies of the valley in full bloom, like a shepherdess. The whiteness
+of her floral ornaments heightened the yellowish color of the dame's
+bilious complexion, a complexion, however, that was less yellowish than
+her long teeth. At sight of the procession, headed by the Mayor and his
+Councilmen, she turned to those near her, crying out in a sour and
+piercing voice that was distinctly heard by the communiers, the terrace
+lying only twelve or fifteen feet above the street: "Mesdames and
+messeigneurs, have you ever seen a pack of asses tramping to their mill
+with a more triumphant air?"
+
+"Oh!" answered one of the knights aloud, laughing and pointing with his
+switch at the Mayor, John Molrain: "And look at the master-ass that
+leads the rest! How he prances under his furred saddle-cloth!"
+
+"Pity his headgear conceals his long ears from us!"
+
+"Blood of Christ! What a shame to see these Gallic clowns, made slaves
+by our ancestors, now carrying swords like us of the nobility!" put in
+the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin. "And we, the descendants of the
+conquerors; we knights tolerate such villainy!"
+
+"Halloa, there, Quatre-Mains the baker!" yelled the dame of Haut-Pourcin
+in a squeaky voice, leaning over the railing of the terrace, "Seigneur
+Councilman, trotting cuckolded and content while armed for war! The last
+bread that my butler fetched from your shop was not baked enough, and I
+suspect you of having cheated me in the weight!"
+
+"Halloa, there, Remy the currier!" added a bulky canon attached to the
+cathedral, "Seigneur Councilman, who are there loitering about,
+administering the affairs of the city, why are you not at work on the
+mule saddle that I ordered?"
+
+"Oh, messeigneurs, there comes the cavalry!" exclaimed a young woman
+laughing and smelling at a nosegay of sweet marjorams. "Look at the
+swagger of the vagabond who commands his braves, would you not think he
+was about to hew down everything in sight?"
+
+"Oh, messeigneurs, look at that hero yonder! Oppressed by his visor, he
+is carrying his casque front side back and his sabre on his shoulder!"
+
+"And that one, who holds his sword like a wax-taper! Guess he is a
+Pope's soldier!"
+
+"And yonder goes one who came near putting out the eye of his neighbor
+with his pike! What a ridiculous set! What silly people!"
+
+"For heaven's sake, messeigneurs, are you not frozen with terror at the
+thought that, some day, we may find ourselves face to face and lance in
+hand, with this bourgeoisie, this formidable rabble-rout of shaven
+fronts, big paunches and flat feet?"
+
+At first, patiently endured by the communiers, these insults,
+accentuated with outbursts of contemptuous laughter and disdainful
+gestures, ended, nevertheless, by irritating the more impetuous. Dull
+murmurs rose from the crowd; the procession halted, despite the
+entreaties of Fergan, who urged upon the militiamen the silence of
+contempt. Some threatened the episcopals with their fists, others with
+their arms; but their tormentors redoubled their gibes at the sight of
+such signs of irritation. Suddenly John Molrain, the Mayor, rushing to
+one of the stone benches, common near the doors of dwellings to assist
+riders in mounting their horses, jumped upon it, ordered silence, and
+addressed the crowd in a sonorous voice, that reached the ears of the
+episcopals:
+
+"Brothers, and all those who have taken the oath of the Commune of Laon,
+make no reply to impotent insults! Let any dare attack the Commune with
+deeds and not with words, then will we, your Mayor and Councilmen,
+summon the offender before our tribunal, and justice will be enforced
+upon our enemies--prompt and energetic justice! Until then, let us
+answer all provocation with disdain. The resolute man, strong in his
+rights, despises insults. At the hour of judgment, he condemns and
+punishes!"
+
+These wise and measured words quieted the excitement of the crowd, but
+they also reached the ears of the nobles, assembled on the terrace of
+the house of the seigneur of Haut-Pourcin, and added fuel to their rage.
+They menaced the communiers with their canes and swords, while
+redoubling their gibes. "Your swords are not long enough, they do not
+reach us!" Colombaik cried out to them, while passing under the balcony
+with his division of the militia. "Come down into the street! We shall
+then see whether iron is heavier in the hands of a bourgeois than in
+that of a knight!"
+
+This challenge was answered by the episcopals with fresh insults.
+However, they dared not descend into the street, where they would have
+been seized and taken prisoners by the militia. For a moment delayed on
+its march, the procession resumed its way and arrived at the place of
+the Town Hall, a monument dear to the artisans and other townsmen.
+
+The edifice, a spacious and handsome structure recently erected, formed
+an oblong square. Elaborate sculptures ornamented its facade and the
+lintels of its numerous windows and architrave, which consisted of three
+ogive arcades sustained by elegant sheaves of stone columns. But the
+portion of the edifice upon which particular care had been devoted, both
+in point of construction and ornamentation, was the tower of the belfry
+and the campanile, where hung the bell. This tower, proudly rising above
+the roof, stood out in full view. From tier to tier a slender sheet
+supported rounds of small columns surmounted with ogives chiseled in
+trefoil, so that across the network of chiseled stone the spiral of the
+staircase was visible that led up to the campanile, veiled in white
+cloth up to the moment when the procession issued upon the place. When
+the covering dropped off and the campanile stood unveiled, a shout of
+admiration and patriotic enthusiasm rose from all breasts. Nothing so
+airy as that campanile, looking like a gilded cage of iron, whose
+outlines stood out against the blue of the sky like a lace-work of gold,
+glittering in the rays of the sun. Above the dazzling dome, the communal
+banner floated in the spring breeze of that beautiful April morning. The
+enthusiastic cheers of the crowds rose again and again, and the north
+wind must have carried to the ears of the episcopals the cry, a thousand
+times repeated:
+
+"Commune! Commune! Long live the Commune!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE ECCLESIASTICAL SEIGNIORY OF GAUDRY.
+
+
+The episcopal palace of Laon rose close to the cathedral. Thick walls,
+fortified with two heavy towers, between which stood the gate,
+surrounded the dwelling from all sides. From the view-point of the
+benign morality of Jesus--the friend of the poor and the
+afflicted--nothing was less episcopal than the interior of this palace.
+One would imagine himself in the fortified castle of some feudal
+seigneur, a broiler and hunter. The singular contrast between the place
+and the character that it should have presented, left a painful
+impression upon all upright hearts, and such, indeed, was the feeling
+experienced by archdeacon Anselm, when, shortly after engaging Fergan to
+urge upon the communiers indifference towards the provocations of the
+episcopals, that disciple of Christ crossed the yard of the bishop. Here
+falconers were engaged washing and preparing the raw meat destined for
+the falcons, or cleaned up their roosts; yonder, the huntsmen, their
+horns on their guard-chains and whip in hand, led for pastime a pack of
+large dogs of Picardy, prized so highly by hunters. Further away, serfs
+of the episcopal domain were being drilled in the handling of arms under
+the command of one of the bishop's equerries. This last circumstance
+struck the archdeacon with amazement, and increased his fears for the
+peace of the city. The venerable man was overcome with sadness and two
+large tears dropped from his eyes.
+
+Although an associate of clergymen, Anselm was a man of great kindness
+of heart, pure, disinterested, austere and of rare learning. He was
+called "doctor of doctors." He declined the episcopacy several times,
+fearing, it was said, to seem to censure, by the Christian meekness of
+his nature and the chastity of his habits, the conduct of most of the
+bishops of Gaul. His face, at once pale and serene, his hair thinned by
+study, imparted a distinguished aspect to his person, tempered by the
+kindliness of his eyes. Modestly dressed in his black gown, Anselm was
+slowly crossing the yard of the abbey, contrasting their noisy tumult
+with the repose of his own studious retreat, when he saw, approaching
+him from a distance, a negro of giant stature, dressed in Oriental garb,
+his head covered with a red turban. This African slave, of mean and
+savage physiognomy, was named John since his baptism. He was, many years
+before, given as a present to Bishop Gaudry by a Crusader seigneur,
+returned from the Holy Land. By little and little Black John grew to be
+the favorite of his new master, the intermediary of the latter's
+debaucheries, or the instrument of his cruelties, before the
+establishment of the Commune. Since that transformation, the persons and
+property of the communiers had become safe. If an injury was done to
+either, the Commune obtained or itself enforced justice against the
+wrong-doer. Accordingly, the bishop and the nobles had been forced to
+renounce their habits of violence and rapine.
+
+When the archdeacon saw Black John, the latter was descending a
+staircase that ended in a door, wrought under a vault closed with a
+grating, that separated the first two walks of a green reserved for the
+bishop. A woman, wrapped in a mantle that completely concealed her face,
+accompanied the slave. Anselm could not restrain a gesture of
+indignation. Knowing the dwellers of the palace, and aware that the
+staircase under the vault led to the apartments of the bishop, he had no
+doubt that the veiled woman, leaving the palace at so early an hour and
+under the guide of Black John, the bishop's regular procurer, had passed
+the night with the prelate. Blushing with chaste confusion, the
+archdeacon had turned his head away with disgust at the moment when,
+having opened the grated gate, the slave and his female companion
+passed close by him. Stepping into the vault, the archdeacon entered the
+green,--a spacious enclosure, that, swarded and planted with trees,
+spread before the windows of the private apartments of Bishop Gaudry.
+
+This man, a Norman by extraction and descended from the pirates of old
+Rolf, after having fought in the ranks of William the Bastard, when he
+conquered England, was later, in 1106, promoted to the bishopric of
+Laon. Cruel and debauched, covetous and prodigal, Gaudry was, besides
+all, a passionate huntsman. Still agile and vigorous, although beyond
+the prime of life, he was at that moment trying a young horse and
+breaking it in to step on the green that Anselm had just entered. In
+order to feel more at ease, the bishop had taken off his long morning
+robe, lined with fur, and kept on nothing but his sock-pointed shoes,
+his hose and a short jacket of flexible material. Bare-headed, his gray
+hair to the wind, still an able and bold cavalier, and riding bare-back
+the young stallion, that had for the first time come from the paddock,
+Gaudry was pressing his nervy knees against the flanks of the mettlesome
+animal, resisting its boundings and kicking, and forcing it to run in a
+circle over the sward of the green. The bishop's equerry applauded with
+voice and gesture the skill of his master, while a serf of robust frame
+and gallows-bird countenance followed the riding lesson with cunning
+eyes. This serf, who belonged to the abbey of St. Vincent, a fief of the
+bishopric, was named Thiegaud. The fellow--originally charged with the
+collection of toll over a bridge near the city, a dependency of the
+castellan Enguerrand de Coucy, one of the most ferocious feudal tyrants
+of Picardy who was dreaded for his audacity and cruelty--had been guilty
+of a number of extortions and even murders. Gaudry, struck by the
+resolute character of the scamp, demanded him from the castellan of
+Coucy in exchange for another serf, and charged him with the collection
+of the arbitrary taxes that he imposed upon his vassals, a charge that
+Thiegaud filled with remorseless severity. Thus the bishop treated the
+serf with great familiarity, habitually called him his "friend
+Ysengrin"--the wolf's companion--and, at a pinch, used him for a
+go-between in his debaucheries, not, however, without awakening the
+vindictive jealousy of Black John, who felt secretly enraged at the
+sight of another than himself in the secret confidence of his master.
+
+Gaudry, while riding around the green, saw the archdeacon, made the
+stallion suddenly face about, and after a few more boundings the
+impetuous animal brought the bishop close to Anselm. Lightly jumping
+off, the bishop said to his equerry, throwing the bridle over to him:
+"I'll keep the horse; take him to my stables; he will be matchless in
+the hunt of stags and boars!"
+
+"If you keep the horse, seigneur bishop," answered Thiegaud, "give me a
+hundred and twenty silver sous. That's the price they demand."
+
+"That's all right. What's the hurry?" rejoined the bishop, and turning
+to his equerry: "Gerhard, take the horse to the stable."
+
+"Not so," said Thiegaud, "the tenant-farmer is waiting at the gate of
+the palace. He has been ordered to take the horse back or receive its
+price in money. It is the orders of the owner of the stallion."
+
+"The impudent scamp who gave that order deserves to receive as many
+lashes as his horse has hairs in his tail!" cried out the bishop. "Have
+I not, as a matter of right, six months' credit in my own seigniory?"
+
+"No," coolly answered Anselm, "that seignioral right has been abolished
+since the city of Laon is a free Commune. Never forget the difference
+between the present and the past. The seignioral rights are abolished."
+
+"I am reminded of that but too often!" answered the bishop with
+concentrated vexation. "However that may be, Gerhard, obey my orders and
+take the horse to the stable."
+
+"Seigneur," said Thiegaud, "the owner is waiting, I tell you. He must
+have the money, a hundred and twenty silver sous, or the animal back."
+
+"He shall not have the horse!" answered the bishop angrily striking the
+ground. "If the farmer dares to grumble, tell him to send me his master.
+We shall see whether he will have the audacity to appear on such an
+errand before his bishop."
+
+"He will surely have the audacity, seigneur bishop," replied Thiegaud.
+"The owner of the horse is Colombaik the Tanner, a communier of Laon and
+son of Fergan, master quarryman of the mill hill. I know these people. I
+notify you that the father and son are of those ... who dare ...
+anything."
+
+"Blood of Christ! and devil's horns! we have had words enough!" cried
+out the bishop. "Gerhard, take the stallion to the stables!"
+
+The equerry obeyed, and the archdeacon was on the point of remonstrating
+with Gaudry on the injustice and danger of his conduct, when, hearing a
+great noise in the yards contiguous to the green, the bishop, already in
+a bad humor and yielding to the passion of his temperament, rushed out
+of the green, without taking time to put on his robe again and leaving
+it behind on a bench. He had hardly crossed the first yard, followed by
+the equerry, who led the horse, and by Thiegaud, who in his perversity
+was smiling at this latest iniquity of his master, when he saw a crowd
+of the domestics of his household coming towards him. They were all
+yelling and gesticulating violently, and surrounded Black John, whose
+gigantic stature rose above them by the full length of his head. No less
+excited than his fellows, Black John also yelled and gesticulated,
+foaming at the mouth with rage and brandishing his Saracen dagger.
+
+"What means this hurly?" inquired the bishop of Laon stepping before the
+advancing crowd. "Why do you scream in that way?"
+
+Several voices answered at once: "We are crying out against the
+bourgeois of Laon! The dogs of the communiers!"
+
+"What has happened? Answer quick!"
+
+"Black John will tell monseigneur!" several voices called in great
+excitement.
+
+The African giant turned towards his fellows, motioned them to be
+silent, and wiping on his sleeves the bloody blade of his dagger, said
+to the bishop in an excited voice, still trembling with rage, but not
+without calculatingly casting upon Thiegaud a look of rancorous hatred:
+
+"I had just led Mussine the Pretty to the outer gate--"
+
+"My daughter!" Thiegaud ejaculated stupefied at the very moment when,
+angrily stamping the ground, the prelate checked the indiscreet words of
+his slave with a silent gesture. Black John remained mute like one who
+understands too late the folly he committed, while the rest of the
+bishop's domestics stealthily giggled at the consternation of Thiegaud.
+Some dreaded him for his malignity, others envied him for his intimate
+relations with their master. Thiegaud, livid at the startling
+revelation, flashed at Gaudry a sinister look quick as lightning; his
+features thereupon as quickly reassumed their usual expression, and he
+started to laugh louder than the rest at the awkward blunder of Black
+John. He even went the length of indulging in ironical deference towards
+Gaudry. The latter, long acquainted with the criminal life of the serf
+of St. Vincent, was not surprised at seeing him remain so indifferent to
+the disgrace of his daughter. Nevertheless, yielding to that respect for
+man that even the most depraved characters never succeed in wholly
+stripping themselves of, the bishop silenced the suppressed merriment
+with an imperious gesture and said: "Those giggles are unseemly.
+Thiegaud's daughter came early in the morning, as so many other
+penitents do, to consult me on a case of conscience. After listening to
+her in the confessional, I ordered John to accompany her to the gate."
+
+"That's so true," added Thiegaud with perfect composure, "that, having
+to bring this morning a horse to our seigneur the bishop, I expected to
+return with my daughter. But she left by the vaulted door while I was
+still on the green."
+
+"Friend Ysengrin," resumed the prelate with a mixture a haughtiness and
+familiarity, "my words can dispense with your testimony." And wishing to
+cut off short this incident, which had the archdeacon, silent but
+profoundly indignant, for a witness, Gaudry said to the black slave:
+"Speak! What has happened between you and the communiers, whom may the
+pest carry off and hell confound! May Satan take them all!"
+
+"I was opening the gate for Mussine the Pretty, when three bourgeois,
+coming from the suburbs and bound for the principal entry of the city,
+to assist at the ceremonies announced by the belfry of those rogues,
+passed by the palace. Seeing a veiled woman come out, those scamps set
+up a malicious laugh, and nudged one another in the ribs while keeping
+on their way. I ran after them and asked: 'What are you laughing about,
+you dogs of communiers?' They gave me an insolent answer and called me
+the bishop's hangman. I then drew my dagger and stabbed one of them in
+the arm, and leaving his companions and him loudly threatening to demand
+justice from the Commune, I returned and locked the door after me. By
+Mahomet, I am proud of what I did. I avenged my master for the insults
+of those curs!"
+
+"Black John did well!" cried the domestics of the bishop. "We can no
+longer go out without being shamed by the communiers of Laon."
+
+"The other day," put in one of the falconers, "the butcher of Exchange
+street, one of the Councilmen of the Commune, refused to give me meat on
+credit for the falcons!"
+
+"At the taverns we are compelled to pay before drinking! The shame and
+humiliation of it!"
+
+"It was not thus three years ago!"
+
+"Those were good days! A retainer of the bishop then took without paying
+whatever he wanted from the merchants; he caressed their wives and
+daughters; and none dared say a word. By the womb of the Virgin Mary, we
+were then masters! But since the establishment of the Commune it is the
+bourgeois who command! The devil take the Commune! Three cheers for the
+good old times!"
+
+"To hell with the communiers, they make us die of shame for our seigneur
+the bishop!" exclaimed one of the young serfs who had been shortly
+before exercising in the use of arms. And resolutely addressing the
+prelate, who, so far from quieting down the excitement of his people,
+seemed delighted at their recriminations, and encouraged them with a
+smile of approval: "Say the word, our bishop! There are here fifty of us
+who have learned to manage the bow and pike! Place a few knights at our
+head, and we will descend upon the city, leaving not a stone upon
+another of the houses of that bourgeois and artisan rabble!"
+
+"Say the word!" cried out Thiegaud, "and I will bring you, my holy
+patron, a hundred woodsmen and colliers from the forest of St. Vincent.
+They will make a bonfire of the houses of those bourgeois and artisans
+fit to roast Beelzebub! Death and damnation to the communiers!"
+
+If the bishop of Laon had entertained any doubt upon the indifference of
+the serf of St. Vincent regarding his daughter's shame, it was removed
+by the man's words. Accordingly, doubly satisfied with the tokens of
+Thiegaud's devotion, the bishop addressed his people in these words: "I
+am glad to find you in such a frame of mind. Remain so. The hour for
+going to work will arrive sooner than you may think. As to you, my brave
+John, you have avenged me on the insolence of those communiers. Fear
+not. Not a hair of your head shall be touched. As to you, friend
+Ysengrin, notify the farmer that I keep the horse, and I shall pay him
+if I choose. Then, see our friends the woodsmen and colliers of the
+forest. I may need them any day. When that day shall come, they shall
+be free, in reward for their good will, to plunder at their pleasure the
+houses of the bourgeois of Laon." Turning thereupon towards the
+archdeacon, who had witnessed this scene without uttering a word, he
+said to him: "Let's go in. What has just taken place under your own eyes
+will have prepared you for the interview we are to have, and for which I
+summoned you hither."
+
+Anselm followed the prelate, and both entered the bishop's apartments.
+
+"Anselm, you have just seen and heard things that, doubtlessly, left a
+disagreeable impression upon your mind. We shall take that up
+presently," said Gaudry to the archdeacon when they were closeted
+together. "I summoned you to the palace because I am aware of your
+foible for the common folks of the bourgeoisie, and in order to afford
+you the opportunity to render a signal service to your favorites. Listen
+to me carefully."
+
+"I shall strive to meet your intentions, seigneur bishop."
+
+"You shall go to the bourgeois and artisans of the city and say to them:
+'Renounce, good people, that execrable spirit of novelty, that
+diabolical passion that drives the vassal to rise against his master.
+Abjure, soon as possible, the brazen and impious pride that persuades
+the artisan and townsman to withdraw from the seignioral authority and
+to govern themselves. Return to your trades, to your shops. The
+administration of public affairs can get along very well without you.
+You quit the Church for the Town Hall; you open your ears to the sound
+of your own belfry, and shut them to the chimes of the church bells.
+That is not good for you. You will end by forgetting the submission you
+owe to the clergy, to the nobles and to the King. Good people, never
+allow the distinctions of the stations in life to be confounded; each to
+his rights, each to his duties. The right of the clergy, of the nobility
+and of the King is to command and to govern; the duty of the serf and
+the bourgeois is to bow before the will of their natural masters. This
+communal and republican comedy, that you have been playing for now
+nearly three years, has lasted too long. Abdicate willingly your roles
+of Mayor, Councilmen and warriors. People at first laughed at your silly
+pranks, hoping you would return to your senses. But it takes too long;
+one's patience is exhausted. The time has come to put an end to the
+Saturnalia. In order to avoid a just punishment, return of your own
+accord to the humility of your station in life. Cut your Councilmen's
+robes into skirts for your wives; return your arms to people who know
+how to handle them; respectfully surrender to the Church, as an homage
+of atonement, that ear-splitting bell of that belfry of yours; it will
+enrich the chimes of the cathedral. Your superb banner will make a
+becoming altar-cloth, and as to your magnificent silver seal, melt it
+back into money wherewith to purchase some hogsheads of old wine which
+you will empty in honor of the restoration of the seigniory of your
+bishop in Jesus Christ. Do so, and all will be well, good people. The
+past will be forgiven you upon condition that you will henceforth be
+submissive, humble and penitent towards the Church, the noblemen and the
+King, and that of your own accord, you renounce your pestiferous
+Commune.'"
+
+Anselm listened to the bishop with a mixture of amazement, indignation
+and profound anxiety. He did not interrupt the speaker to the end,
+wondering how that man, whom he could not deny either cleverness or
+sagacity, yet could be so untutored upon men and things as to conceive
+such a project. So profound was the emotion of the archdeacon that he
+remained silent for a while. Finally he answered the bishop in a grave
+and clear voice: "You solicit my assistance to advise the inhabitants of
+Laon to give up their charter, that very charter that both you and they
+have agreed to and sworn to uphold by a common accord?"
+
+"That agreement was concluded by the chapter and council of seigneurs
+who governed during my absence, while I was away in England."
+
+"Must I remind you that, upon your return from London, and in
+consideration of a large sum paid by the bourgeoisie, you signed the
+charter with your own hand, that you sealed it with your own seal, and
+that you swore upon your faith that it would be faithfully observed?"
+
+"I was wrong in doing so. The Church holds her seigniories from God
+alone. She may not alienate her rights. I am absolved from such
+engagements."
+
+"Have you returned the money that you received for your consent to the
+Commune? Has restitution been made?"
+
+"The money I received represented, at the most, four years' revenues
+that I habitually drew from the inhabitants of Laon. Three years have
+elapsed since the establishment of this Commune. I am only one year in
+advance of my vassals. My right is to tax at will and mercy. I shall
+double the tax of the current year, and being quits, I shall, if I
+please, demand the tax for the next year."
+
+"Yours would be such a right had you not alienated it. But you cannot
+repudiate your signature, your seal and your oath. Your engagement is
+binding."
+
+"What is there in a signature? One or two words placed at the bottom of
+a parchment! What is a seal? A lump of wax! What is an oath? A breath of
+air that is lost in space, and which the wind carries off!"
+
+Although highly wrought up by the prelate's answer, Anselm restrained
+his indignation and proceeded: "You, then, persist in your purpose to
+break your oath and abolish the Commune of Laon?"
+
+"Yes, I intend to smash it."
+
+"You refuse to keep your sacred engagement? Be it so! But the communiers
+of Laon have had their charter confirmed by the present King. They will
+turn to him to compel you to respect its clauses. You will have two
+foes to face--the people and the King."
+
+"To-morrow," answered the bishop, "Louis the Lusty will be here at the
+head of a goodly number of knights and men-at-arms,--all resolved to
+crush those miserable bourgeois if they dare defend their Commune. It is
+all settled between us."
+
+"I can hardly believe what you say, seigneur bishop," replied the
+archdeacon. "The King, who confirmed and swore to the charter for the
+enfranchisement of the bourgeois of Laon, and who received the price
+agreed upon, he surely will not be ready to perjure himself and commit
+such an infamy."
+
+"The King begins to listen to the voice of the Church. He understands
+that, though it be good politics and profitable withal, to sell charters
+of emancipation to the cities that are subject to lay seigniories, his
+rivals and ours, it is to seriously compromise his own power if he were
+to favor emancipation from the ecclesiastical seigniories. The King is
+determined to restore to the episcopal authority all the ecclesiastical
+cities that have been enfranchised, and to exterminate their inhabitants
+if they dare oppose his pleasure. To-morrow, perhaps this very day, the
+King will be in the city at the head of armed men. The nobles of the
+city have been apprised, like myself, of the pending arrival of the
+King. We shall notify our will to the people."
+
+"My presentiments did not deceive me when I urged the communiers to
+redouble their self-control and prudence!"
+
+"You were on the right road. It is, therefore, that, aware of your
+influence with those clowns, I sent for you, to commission you to induce
+them to renounce their hellish Commune of their own free will, if they
+would escape a terrible punishment. We demand absolute submission."
+
+"Bishop of Laon," Anselm answered solemnly and with a tremulous voice,
+"I decline the mission that you charge me with. I do not wish to see the
+blood of my brothers flow in this city. If your projects were but
+suspected, an uprising would break out on the spot among the people,
+and yourself, the clergy and the knights in the city would be the first
+victims of the rage of the communiers. Your houses would be burned down
+over your heads."
+
+"There is no insurrection to be feared," put in the bishop laughing
+loudly. "John, my negro, will take by the nose the wildest of those
+clowns and will bring him on his knees to my feet, begging for mercy,
+trembling and penitent. I need but to say the word."
+
+"If you dare touch the rights of the Commune, then you, the priests and
+the nobles will all be exterminated by the people in arms. Oh, may
+heaven's curse fall upon me before I shall by a single word help to
+unchain such a storm!"
+
+"So, then, you, Anselm, a subordinate to my authority, you refuse the
+commission that I charge you with?"
+
+"I swear to you upon the salvation of my soul, you are staking your life
+at a terrible game! May I not have to dispute your bleeding remains from
+the popular fury in order to give them Christian burial!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+BOURGEOIS AND ECCLESIASTICAL SEIGNEUR.
+
+
+The Bishop of Laon had long remained steeped in revery. The tone of
+conviction, the imposing authority of the archdeacon's character, left a
+profound impression upon the man. Though there was no crime he would
+recoil at in the satisfaction of his passions, yet he fervently clung to
+life. Accordingly, his blind contempt for the common people
+notwithstanding, he wavered for a moment in his projects, and, recalling
+to memory the triumphant revolts, that under similar circumstances, had
+in recent years been witnessed in other Communes of Gaul, he was lost in
+sombre, silent perplexity, when the sudden entry of Black John awoke him
+from his quandary.
+
+"Patron," said Black John, breaking into the room with a malefic grin,
+"one of the bourgeois dogs has himself walked into the trap. We are
+holding him, as well as his female, who, by Mahomet, is of the comliest.
+If the husband is a mastiff, the wife is a dainty greyhound, worthy of a
+place in the ecclesiastical kennels!"
+
+"Quit your jokes!" remarked the bishop with impatience. "What is the
+matter now? Speak up!"
+
+"A minute ago there was a rap at the main gate. I was in the yard with
+the serfs who are exercising in arms. I peeped through the wicket and
+saw a burly fellow, with a casque that fell over his nose, and bursting
+in his steel corselet, and as incommoded by his sword as a dog to whose
+tail a kettle has been tied. A young and pretty woman accompanied him.
+'What do you want?' said I to the man. 'To speak with the seigneur
+bishop, and on the spot, too, on grave matters.' To hold one of these
+dogs of communiers in pawn, struck me as timely. After sending one of
+the men to see through the loopholes in the tower whether the bourgeois
+was alone, I opened the door. Oh, you would have laughed," Black John
+proceeded, "had you seen the good man embrace his wife before crossing
+the threshold of the palace, as though he were stepping into Lucifer's
+house, and heard his wife say: 'I shall wait for you here; my uneasiness
+will be shorter than if I had remained at the Town Hall.' By Mahomet! I
+said to myself, my patron is too fond of receiving pretty penitents to
+leave this charmer outside; and taking her up like a feather I carried
+her into the yard. I had a good mind to shut the gate in the husband's
+face, but I considered it was better to keep him too here. His little
+wife, furious like a cat in love, screamed and scratched my face when I
+took her up in my arms, but after she was allowed to join her gander of
+a husband, she put on airs of bravery and spat in my face. They are both
+in the next room. Shall they be brought in?"
+
+The announcement of the arrival of one of the communiers, the objects of
+the bishop's hatred, revived the anger of the seigniorial ecclesiastic,
+that had been checked for a moment by the words of Archdeacon Anselm.
+The bishop jumped up, crying out: "By heaven! By the Pope's navel! That
+bourgeois arrives in time! Bring him in!"
+
+"His wife too?" asked the negro, opening the door. "She will act as a
+counter-irritant to your worship," and without waiting for his master's
+answer, the negro vanished.
+
+"Take care!" Anselm said, more and more alarmed. "Take care what you are
+about to do! The Councilmen are elected by the inhabitants! To do
+violence to one of their chosen men would be a moral offence!"
+
+"We have had enough remonstrances!" cried out Gaudry with haughty
+impatience. "You seem to forget that I am your superior, your bishop!"
+
+"It is your conduct that would make me forget it. But it is for the sake
+of the episcopacy, for the sake of the salvation of your soul, for the
+sake of your own life that I adjure you not to apply the match to a
+conflagration that neither yourself nor the King might be able to
+extinguish!"
+
+"What!" exclaimed the bishop with a wrathful sneer; "What! That
+conflagration could not be extinguished even in the blood of those
+damned dogs, of the revolted clowns, themselves?"
+
+The prelate had just pronounced these execrable words, when Ancel
+Quatre-Mains entered, accompanied by his wife, Simonne, and preceded by
+Black John, who, leaving them at the door of the apartment, withdrew
+again with a smile on his cruel lips. The Councilman was pale and deeply
+moved. The good nature, habitual to his features, had now made place to
+an expression of deliberate firmness. It must, nevertheless, be admitted
+that his casque thrown too far back on his head and his stomach
+protruding below his steel corselet imparted to the townsman an almost
+grotesque appearance that could not fail to strike the Bishop of Laon.
+Accordingly breaking out in a loud guffaw, not unmixed with rage and
+disdain, and pointing to Ancel, he said to the archdeacon: "Here have
+you a bright sample of the gallant men who are to cause bishops, knights
+and kings to tremble and retreat. By the blood of Christ, what a
+grotesque appearance!"
+
+The Councilman and his wife, who drew close to him, looked at each
+other, unable to understand the words of the bishop. No less alarmed
+than her husband, two distinct sentiments seemed to fill Simonne's
+mind--fear of some danger to Ancel and horror for Gaudry.
+
+"Well, now, seigneur Councilman, august elective magistrate of the
+illustrious Commune of Laon!" said the prelate in a jeering and
+contemptuous accent. "You wanted to see me. Here I am. What do you
+want?"
+
+"Seigneur bishop, I have had no ambition, and so I haven't, of coming
+here. I'm merely fulfilling a duty. This month I'm the judicial
+Councilman. As such, I am charged with the trials. It is in that
+capacity that I have come here to fill my office."
+
+"Oh, oh! Greetings to you, seigneur prosecutor!" replied the prelate
+sneeringly, bowing before the baker. "May we at least know the subject
+of the process?"
+
+"Certes, seigneur bishop, seeing the action is against yourself and
+against John, your African servant, I shall inform you of the charge."
+
+"And while my husband is fulfilling a judicial mission," pertly put in
+Simonne, "he shall also demand justice and indemnity for the insults
+hurled at me by the noble dame of Haut-Pourcin, the wife of one of the
+episcopals of the city, so please your seigneur bishop!"
+
+"By heaven, my negro John was right, I have never seen a prettier
+creature!" observed the dissolute bishop, attentively examining the
+baker's wife, whom until that instant he had taken little notice of; and
+seeming to reflect for a moment he asked: "How long have you been
+married, little darling? Answer your bishop truthfully!"
+
+"Five years, monseigneur."
+
+"My good man," resumed Gaudry addressing the Councilman, "you must have
+ransomed your wife from the right of the first night at the time when
+the canon of Amaury was charged with its supervision?"
+
+"Yes, seigneur," answered the baker, while his wife, casting down her
+eyes, blushed with shame at hearing the bishop refer to that infamous
+right of the bishop of Laon, who, before the establishment of the
+Commune had the right to demand "first wedding night of the bride"--a
+galling shame, that, occasionally, the husband managed to redeem with a
+money payment.
+
+"That miserable beggar of old Amaury!" exclaimed the prelate with a
+cynical outburst of laughter. "It was all in vain for me to tell him:
+'When a bride and bridegroom come to announce at church their
+approaching wedding, inscribe on a separate roll the names of the brides
+that are comely enough to induce me to exact from them the amorous tax
+of nature.' But there were none of these according to Amaury; and yet I
+have before my eyes a striking proof of his fraudulence or his
+blindness. Almost all the brides were homely, according to him!"
+
+"Happily, seigneur bishop, those evil days are gone by," answered Ancel,
+hardly able to restrain his indignation. "Those days will never return
+when the honor of husbands and wives was at the mercy of bishops and
+seigneurs!"
+
+"Brother," put in the archdeacon, painfully affected by the words of the
+bishop, and addressing Ancel, "believe me, the Church herself blushes at
+that monstrous right, that prelates enjoy when they are at once temporal
+seigneurs."
+
+"What I do know, Father Anselm," the baker answered with judicial
+deliberateness and raising his head, "is that the Church does not forbid
+the ecclesiastics to use that monstrous right, we see them using it and
+deflowering young brides."
+
+"By the blood of Christ!" cried out the bishop, while the archdeacon
+remained silent, unable to gainsay the baker; "that right proves better
+than any argument how absolutely the body of the serf, the villein or
+the non-noble vassal is the absolute and undisputed property of the lay
+or ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, so far from blushing at that
+right, the Church claims it back for its own seigneurs, and
+excommunicates those who dare contest it."
+
+The archdeacon, not daring to contradict the bishop, seeing the bishop
+spoke the truth, lowered his head in mute pain. The Councilman resumed
+with a mixture of sly good nature and firmness: "I am, seigneur bishop,
+too ignorant in matters of theology to discuss the orthodoxy of a right
+that honorable folks speak of only with indignation in their hearts and
+shame on their brows. But, thanks be to God, since Laon has become an
+enfranchised Commune, that abominable right has been abolished, along
+with many others. Among the latter is the right of demanding goods
+without money, and of taking some one else's horse without paying for
+it. This, seigneur bishop, leads me to the matter that has brought me
+here."
+
+"You, then, mean to start a process against me?"
+
+"I am fulfilling my functions. An hour ago, Peter the Fox, tenant farmer
+of Colombaik the Tanner, deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen
+assembled at the Town Hall that you, Bishop of Laon, kept, against all
+right, a horse belonging to the said Colombaik, and that you refuse to
+pay the price demanded by the owner."
+
+"Is that all?" the bishop asked laughing. "Have I committed no other
+sin? Have you no other charges to bring against me?"
+
+"Germain the Strong, master carpenter of the suburb of Grande-Cognee,
+supported by two witnesses, has deposed before the Mayor and Councilmen
+that, while passing before the gate of the episcopal palace, he was
+first insulted and then stabbed in the arm by Black John, a domestic of
+your household, which constitutes a grave crime."
+
+"Well, then, seigneur justiciary," said the bishop still laughing,
+"Condemn me, brave Councilman. Formulate your judgment and sentence."
+
+"Not yet," coldly answered the baker. "The suit must first be entered;
+then the witnesses must be heard; next comes the judgment; and fourth
+its enforcement. Everything in its order."
+
+"Just see! I am instructed! Let it be, I shall be patient. Yet I am
+curious to see how far your audacity will lead you, communier of Satan.
+Go ahead and to work!"
+
+"My audacity is that of a man who fulfills his duty."
+
+"An honest man, who dares not allow himself to be intimidated," put in
+Simonne with deftness; "a man who will know how to cause the rights of
+the Commune to be respected, who is not troubled by disdain. A man of
+sense and of action."
+
+"I love to see your rogish face," replied the bishop, turning to the
+young woman; "it gives me the necessary humor to listen to this loafer,
+I swear it by your round and plump throat, by your beautiful black eyes,
+and by your secret charms!"
+
+"And I swear by the poor eyes of Gerhard of Soisson, whom you have so
+cruelly deprived of sight, that the sight of you is odious to me, Bishop
+of Laon! You, whose hands are still red with the blood of Bernard des
+Bruyeres, whom you murdered in your own church!" And uttering these
+imprudent words, drawn from her by an impulse of generous indignation,
+the baker's wife brusquely turned her back upon the bishop.
+
+Enraged at hearing himself reproached in such a manner for two of his
+crimes, the Bishop of Laon became livid with rage, and half rising from
+his seat, whose arms he clutched convulsively, he cried out: "Miserable
+serf! I shall teach you to control your viper's tongue!--"
+
+"Simonne!" said the Councilman to his wife in a tone of earnest reproof,
+interrupting the prelate. "You should not speak that way. Those past
+crimes belong before the bar of God, not of the Commune, as are the
+misdemeanors that I am prosecuting. The bishop is summoned to answer
+only the two charges that I have preferred."
+
+"I shall save you half your trouble!" cried out Gaudry in a towering
+rage, and dropping his jeering tone towards the Councilman. "I declare
+that I am keeping a farmer's horse; I declare that my negro John stabbed
+a clown of the city this morning. Now, then, decide, you stupid brute!"
+
+"Seeing you admit these wrong-doings, seigneur Bishop of Laon, I decide
+that you return the horse to its owner, or that you pay him his price, a
+hundred and twenty silver sous; and I decide that you render justice for
+the crime committed by your black slave John."
+
+"And I shall keep the horse without paying for it; and I hold that my
+servant John did justly punish an insolent communier! Now, pronounce
+your sentence."
+
+"Bishop of Laon, those are very serious words," answered the Councilman
+with emotion. "I conjure you, deign to think that over while I shall
+read to you aloud two clauses from our charter, sworn to by yourself,
+signed with your own hand, and sealed with your own seal; do not forget
+that; and moreover confirmed by our seigneur the King." Whereat the
+Councilman, producing a parchment from his pocket, read as follows: "'If
+anyone injure a man who shall have taken the oath of the Commune of
+Laon, a complaint being lodged with the Mayor and Councilmen, they
+shall, after due trial, enforce justice upon the body and upon the
+property of the guilty party.... If the guilty party takes refuge in a
+fortified castle, the Mayor and Councilmen shall notify the seigneur of
+the castle, or his lieutenant. If in their opinion satisfaction shall
+have been rendered against the guilty party, that will suffice; but if
+the seigneur refuses satisfaction, they shall themselves enforce justice
+upon the property and upon the men of the said seigneur.' That, seigneur
+bishop, is the law of our Commune, agreed and sworn to by yourself and
+us. If, then, you do not return the horse, if you do not give us
+satisfaction for the crime of your servant John, we shall see ourselves
+forced to ourselves enforce justice upon you and upon your men."
+
+Certain of the support of the King, the bishop and the episcopals had
+for some time desired to provoke a conflict with the communiers. They
+felt certain of success, and looked in that way to reconquer by force
+their seigniorial rights, a one-time inexhaustible treasure, but
+alienated by them three years previous, for a considerable sum of money,
+that had by this time been dissipated. By refusing to satisfy the
+legitimate demands of the Councilmen, the bishop was inevitably bound to
+lead to a collision at the very moment when Louis the Lusty would arrive
+at Laon with a numerous troop of knights. Accordingly, making no doubt
+that the people would be crushed in the struggle, and considering
+himself seconded by circumstance, Gaudry, so far from angrily answering
+the baker, now replied with a sarcastic affectation of humility: "Alack,
+illustrious Councilman, poor seigneurs that we are, we shall have no
+choice but to try and resist you, my valiant Caesars, and to prevent you
+from enforcing justice upon our goods and our persons, as you
+triumphantly announce. We shall have to don our casques and cuirasses,
+and await you, lance in hand, mounted on our battle horses! Alack!"
+
+"Seigneur bishop," answered the baker, anxiously joining his hands,
+"your refusal to do justice to the Commune, is equivalent to a
+declaration of war between our townsmen and you!"
+
+"Alack!" replied Gaudry ironically imitating Ancel's gesture, "we shall
+then have to resign ourselves to battle. Fortunately the episcopal
+knights know how to manage the lance and sword wherewith they will run
+you through."
+
+"The battle will be terrible in our city," cried out the Councilman
+excitedly. "Why would you reduce us to such extremities, when it depends
+upon you to avert such a calamity by proving yourself equitable and
+faithful to your oath?"
+
+"I implore you, yield to these wise words," now put in the archdeacon
+addressing Gaudry. "Your refusal will unchain all the scourges of civil
+war, and cause torrents of blood to flow. Woe is us!"
+
+"Seigneur bishop," the Councilman resumed with insistence and in a sad
+yet firm tone: "What is it that we demand of you? Justice. Nothing more.
+Return the horse or pay for it. Your servant has committed a crime.
+Inflict exemplary punishment upon him. Is that asking too much of you?
+Are you ready by your resistance to hand over our beloved country to
+innumerable calamities, and cause the shedding of blood? Reflect on the
+consequences of the conflict. Think of the women whom you will have
+widowed, the children whom you will have orphaned! Think of the
+calamities that you will conjure over our city!"
+
+"I'm bound to think, heroic Councilman," replied the bishop with a
+disdainful sneer, "that you are afraid of war!"
+
+"No, we are not afraid!" cried out Simonne, unable longer to control her
+impetuous nature. "Let the belfry summon the inhabitants to the defense
+of the Commune, and you will see that, as at Beauvais, as at Noyons, as
+at Rheims, the men will fly to arms and the women will accompany them to
+nurse the wounded!"
+
+"By the blood of Christ, my charming Amazon, if I take you prisoner, you
+will pay the arrears due to your seigneur."
+
+"Seigneur bishop," interposed the Councilman, "such words ill-become the
+mouth of a priest, above all when the issue is bloodshed. We dread war!
+Yes, undoubtedly, we dread it, because its evils are irreparable. I fear
+war as much or more than anyone else, because I wish to live for my
+wife, whom I love, and to enjoy in peace our modest means, the fruit of
+our daily labor. I fear war by reason of the disasters and the ruin that
+follow upon its wake."
+
+"But you will fight like any other!" cried out Simonne almost irritated
+at the sincerity of her husband. "Oh, I know you! You will fight even
+more bravely than others!"
+
+"More bravely than others is saying too much," naively interposed the
+baker. "I have never fought in my life. But I shall do my duty, although
+I am less at home with the lance or the sword than with the poker of the
+furnace in my bakery. Each to his trade."
+
+"Admit it, good man," retorted the bishop laughing uproarously, "you
+prefer the fire of your furnace to the heat of battle?"
+
+"On my faith, that's the truth of it, seigneur bishop. All of us good
+people of the city, bourgeois and artisans that we are, prefer good to
+evil, peace to war. But, take my word for it, there are things we prefer
+to peace, they are the honor of our wives, our daughters and sisters,
+our dignity, our independence, the right of ourselves and through
+ourselves to administering the affairs of our city. We owe these
+advantages to our enfranchisement from the seigniorial rights.
+Accordingly, we shall all allow ourselves to be killed, to the last man,
+in the defence of our Commune and in the protection of our freedom.
+That's why, in the name of the public peace, we implore you to do
+justice to our demand."
+
+"Patron," broke in at this point Black John who entered the room
+precipitately, "a forerunner of the King has just arrived. He announces
+that he precedes his master only two hours, and that he comes
+accompanied with a strong escort."
+
+"The King must have hastened his arrival!" cried out the prelate
+triumphantly. "By the blood of Christ, everything is working according
+to our wishes!"
+
+"The King!" exclaimed the Councilman with joy, "The King in our city!
+Oh, we now have nothing more to fear. He signed our charter, he will
+know how to compel you to respect it, Bishop of Laon. Your wicked
+intentions will now be paralyzed."
+
+"Certes!" answered Gaudry with a sardonic smile. "Count with the support
+of the King, good people. He comes in person, followed by a large troop
+of knights armed with strong lances and sharp swords. Now, then, my
+valiant bourgeois, go and join your shop heroes, and carry my answer to
+them. It is this: 'Gaudry, bishop and seigneur of Laon, certain of the
+support of the King of the French, awaits in his episcopal palace to see
+the communiers come themselves to enforce justice upon his property and
+his men!'" And turning then to Black John: "Order my equerry to saddle
+the stallion that was brought here this morning. I know no more
+mettlesome horse to ride on ahead of the King and in the beard of those
+city clowns. Let the knights of the city be notified, they shall serve
+for my escort. To horse! To horse!" Saying which, the prelate stepped
+off into another room, leaving the baker as stupefied as he was alarmed
+at the sight of his crumbling hopes. He heard the bishop's words
+regarding the King's intention, yet hesitated to give them credence.
+The townsman remained thunderstruck.
+
+"Ancel," said the archdeacon to him. "There is no doubt about it. Louis
+the Lusty will side with the episcopals. A conflict must be avoided at
+any price. Recommend the other Councilmen to redouble their prudence. I
+shall, on my part, endeavor to conjure off the storm that threatens."
+
+"Come, my poor wife," said the Councilman, whose eyes were filling with
+tears! "Come! Woe is us, the King of the French is against us. May God
+protect the Commune of Laon!"
+
+"As to me," answered Simonne, "upon the faith of a Picardian woman, I
+place my reliance upon the stout hearts of our communiers, upon the
+pikes, the hatchets and the swords in our hands!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GATHERING STORM.
+
+
+Louis the Lusty had made his entry into the city of Laon on the eve of
+Holy Thursday of the year 1112. On the day following the arrival of the
+Prince, Colombaik, his mother and his wife were seated together in the
+basement chamber of their house. Dawn was about breaking. Fergan's son,
+Martine and Joan the Hunchback had watched all night. A lamp threw its
+light upon them. The two women, uneasy in the extreme, were stripping
+old linen into bandages and lint, while Colombaik, together with his
+three apprentices, plying their saws and planes, were actively engaged
+in fashioning pike-shafts, four feet long, of oak and ash branches
+recently lopped off. Colombaik did not seem to share the apprehension of
+his mother and his wife, who silently pursued their work, listening from
+time to time in the direction of the little window that opened on the
+street. They awaited, with as much impatience as anxiety, the return of
+Fergan, absent since the previous evening. What tidings would he bring?
+
+"Lively, my lads," Colombaik was jovially saying to his apprentices,
+"ply your planes and your saws with dispatch! It does not much matter if
+these pike-shafts be rough. They are to be used by hands as callous as
+our own. May there be a chance to use them!"
+
+"Oh, master Colombaik," remarked one of the young apprentices laughing,
+"as to that, these handles will be less smooth to the touch than the
+fine doe skins that we tan for the embroidered gloves of the noble dames
+and their elegant young ladies."
+
+"The ornament of a pike is its iron head," rejoined Colombaik; "but
+little Robin the Crumb-cracker, the apprentice of the blacksmith, is
+long in fetching us those ornaments. However, with him it will not be as
+with the little apprentice of our friend the baker. There is no fear of
+Robin's nibbling at his goods on the way." The lads laughed at the joke
+of Colombaik. But accidentally turning his eyes in the direction of Joan
+and Martine, he was struck by the increasing uneasiness of their looks.
+"Good mother," said he to Joan in a tender and beseeching voice, "pardon
+me if I have saddened you with jokes that may be out of season at this
+time."
+
+"Oh, my child," answered Joan, "if I look sad, it is not on account of
+your jokes, but the result of thoughts suggested by the sight of men
+shaping weapons, and women preparing lint for the wounded."
+
+"And when we consider," put in Martine, unable to keep back her tears,
+"that a father, a son, a husband may happen to be among the wounded!
+Confound the people who brought war upon the city! Confound this clergy
+of the devil and their train of churchmen!"
+
+"Dear Martine, and you, good mother," Colombaik rejoined, seeking to
+calm the two women, "to prepare for war is not to wage it. It is prudent
+to be on one's guard, just in order to secure peace, honorable peace."
+
+"Your father!... Here is your father!" Joan cried out abruptly, hearing
+a rap at the street door. She rose, together with Martine, while one of
+the apprentices ran to open the door. But the expectation of the two
+women was not verified. They heard a childish voice cry out gleefully:
+"It burns!... It burns!... Who wants buns.... It burns!" And Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, the blacksmith's apprentice, a lad about twelve years of
+age, wide awake, but all black with the smoke of the forge, stepped in,
+holding in his little leather apron about twenty pike-heads which he
+dropped on the floor. "Who wants fire-buns!... They are hot!... They
+just come from the furnace!..."
+
+"Master Colombaik feared you had been nibbling the goods on the way,"
+one of the young tanners observed with a laugh. "We hold you quite
+capable of doing so, little Robin!"
+
+"You are right. I took my bite on the way!" laughingly answered the
+urchin. "But in order to chew my pretty piece of pointed iron, I need
+one of your fine ash branches. Let me have one."
+
+"What the devil would you do with a pike?" asked Colombaik, smiling upon
+him. "You are barely twelve years old. That is no toy for urchins."
+
+"I want to use it, if there be blows coming. My master,
+Paynen-Oste-Loup, will tap the backs of the great episcopals; so will I!
+I shall roll over the little noblemen in my best style. Those scamps
+have hurt my feelings quite often, pointing their finger at me and
+calling out: 'Look at the little villain with the black face! He looks
+like a blackamoor!'"
+
+"Hold, my bold lad," said Colombaik to Robin; "here is a good oak handle
+for you. Give us the news. What is doing in the city?"
+
+"They are rejoicing as on Christmas eve. Light is seen at all the
+windows. The forges are shooting up flame. The anvils ringing. They are
+making an infernal racket. One would think that the blacksmiths,
+locksmiths and armorers were all working at their master-pieces; and one
+would think all the shops are smithies."
+
+"This time it is your father!" Joan cried out to her son, hearing a
+second rapping at the door. Fergan soon appeared. He entered at the
+moment when Robin was leaving, brandishing his oak branch and shouting:
+"Commune! Commune! Death to the episcopals!"
+
+"Oh!" said the quarryman, following the blacksmith's apprentice with his
+eye. "How could we fear for our cause when even the children--"; and
+interrupting himself to address his wife, who ran with Martine to meet
+him: "Come, now, dear bundles of timidity! The news makes for peace."
+
+"Can it be true!" exclaimed the two women, folding their hands together.
+"There is to be no war?" And running to Colombaik, on whose neck she
+threw herself, Martine cried out: "Did you hear your father? There is to
+be no war! What happiness! It is over! Let's rejoice!"
+
+"Upon my soul, dear Martine, so much the better!" remarked the young
+tanner, returning the embrace of his wife. "We shall not recoil before
+war, but peace is better. So, then, father, everything is adjusted? The
+bishop pays, or surrenders the horse? Justice will be enforced against
+that scamp of a Black John? And the King, true to his oath, backs the
+Commune against the bishop?"
+
+"My friends," answered the quarryman, "we must, all the same, not hope
+for too much."
+
+"But what about what you said just before," replied Joan with returning
+uneasiness, "did you not tell me the news was good?"
+
+"I said, Joan, that the news was favorable to peace. Here is what
+happened last night: You heard the insolent answer of the bishop,
+reported at the meeting of the Councilmen by our neighbor Quatre-Mains,
+the baker, an answer that was rendered all the more threatening by the
+entry of the King into our city at the head of an armed troop of men.
+The Councilmen decided to take measures of resistance and safety. As
+constable of the militia, I ordered watchmen placed at all the towers
+that command the gates of the city, with orders to close them and allow
+none to enter. I likewise issued orders to the guilds of the
+blacksmiths, locksmiths and armorers to turn out quickly a large number
+of pikes, to the end of being able to arm all the male inhabitants.
+Quatre-Mains, like a man of foresight and good judgment, proposed
+sending under a good escort for all the flour in the mills of the
+suburbs, fearing the bishop may have them pillaged by his men to starve
+out Laon. These precautions being taken, they were reported to the
+Council. We did not recoil before war, but did all we could to conjure
+it away. It was agreed that John Molrain was to appear before the King
+and pray him to induce the bishop to do us justice, and to promise
+henceforth to respect our charter. The Mayor went to the house of the
+Sire of Haut-Pourcin, where the King had taken quarters. Unable,
+however, to see the Prince, he conferred long with Abbot Peter de la
+Marche, one of the royal counselors, and showed him that we demanded
+nothing but what was just. The abbot did not conceal from John Molrain
+that the bishop, having ridden ahead with the King, had entertained him
+for a long time, and that Louis the Lusty seemed greatly irritated
+against the inhabitants of Laon. John Molrain had had dealings with the
+Abbot de la Marche on the confirmation of our Commune. Knowing the
+abbot's cupidity, he said to him: 'We are resolved to maintain our
+rights with arms, but before arriving at such extremities we desire to
+try all the means of conciliation. No sacrifice will be too great for
+us. Already have we paid Louis the Lusty a considerable sum to obtain
+his adhesion to our charter, let him deign to confirm it anew and to
+order the bishop to do us justice. We offer the King a sum equal to that
+which he received before. And to you, seigneur abbot, a handsome purse
+as a testimony of our gratitude.'"
+
+"And attracted by such a promise," put in Colombaik, "the abbot surely
+accepted?"
+
+"Without making any promises, the tonsured gentleman agreed to
+communicate our offer to the King when he retired, and he made an
+appointment with John Molrain for eleven in the evening. The Councilmen,
+having approved the proposition of the Mayor, went over the city,
+soliciting each of our friends to contribute according to his power
+towards the sum offered to the King. This last sacrifice was expected to
+roll away from our city the threatened dangers of war. All the
+inhabitants hastened to put in their quota. Those who had not enough
+money, gave some vessel of silver; women and young girls offered their
+trinkets and their collars; finally, towards evening, the sum or its
+equivalent in articles of gold and silver was deposited in the communal
+treasury. John Molrain returned to the King to hear his answer. The
+Abbot de la Marche informed the Mayor that the King did not seem
+indisposed to accept our propositions, but that he desired to wait till
+morning before taking a definite resolution. There is where matters now
+stand. In a hurry to make the rounds of our watchmen, and having no time
+to come here for money, I requested our good neighbor the baker to pay
+for us our share of the contribution. Colombaik shall take to Ancel the
+money he advanced for our family."
+
+"Surely the King will accept the offer of the Councilmen," observed
+Joan, "what interest could he have in refusing to profit by so large a
+sum? He is a greedy prince. He will accept our money."
+
+"What a wretched trader that Louis the Lusty is!" exclaimed Colombaik.
+"He has us pay him to confirm our charter, and he has us pay him a
+second time to re-confirm it. Patient people that we are! We must pay,
+and pay again!"
+
+"What does it matter, my child," said Joan; "provided no blood flows,
+let us pay a double tribute, if necessary!"
+
+"'It is with iron that tribute should be paid to kings,' said our
+ancestor Vortigern to that other tonsured representative sent by Louis
+the Pious," rejoined Colombaik, looking almost with regret at the iron
+pikes that his apprentices, who had not intermitted their work, were
+engaged upon. "Oh, those times are long gone by!"
+
+"Fergan!" suddenly Joan called out, inclining her head towards the
+street; "listen! Is not that the bell, and the voice of a crier. Let's
+find out what is up--"
+
+At these words the quarryman's family approached the open window. The
+sun had just risen. A crier of the bishop, distinguishable by the arms
+embroidered on the breast of his coat, was seen passing the house. He
+alternately rang his bell and then cried out: "In the name of our
+seigneur the King! In the name of our seigneur the Bishop! Inhabitants
+of Laon assemble in the market-place at the eighth hour of the day!" and
+the crier rang anew his bell, the sound of which was soon lost in the
+distance. For an instant the family of the quarryman remained silent,
+each seeking to guess the object of the King and the bishop in ordering
+the assemblage. Joan, always yielding to hope, said to Fergan: "The King
+probably wishes to assemble the inhabitants in order to announce to them
+that he accepts the money and confirms the charter anew."
+
+"If such was the intention of Louis the Lusty, if he had accepted the
+offer of the Commune, he would have notified the Mayor," the quarryman
+answered, sadly shaking his head.
+
+"Perhaps he has done that. We may expect him to have done so, father."
+
+"In that case the Mayor would have issued orders to ring the belfry
+bell, in order to assemble the communiers and announce to them the happy
+tidings. I do not like this convocation, made in the name of the King
+and the bishop. It presages nothing good. We have everything to fear
+from our enemies."
+
+"Fergan!" replied Joan alarmed, "must we, then, renounce all hope of an
+accommodation? Is it war? Is it peace?"
+
+"We shall soon be clear upon that. It will not be long before the eighth
+hour will sound," whereupon Fergan resumed his casque and his sword,
+which he had put away upon entering, and said to his son: "Arm yourself
+and let's go to the market-place. As to you, my young ones," said he,
+turning to the apprentices, "continue adjusting the pike-heads to the
+shafts."
+
+"Fergan!" exclaimed Joan anxiously, "you foresee war?"
+
+"Oh, Colombaik," said Martine, weeping and throwing herself upon the
+neck of her husband, "I die with fear, when I think of the dangers that
+you and your father are about to run!"
+
+"Be comforted, dear wife, by ordering these preparations of resistance
+to continue, my father only adopts a measure of prudence," answered
+Colombaik. "The situation is not desperate."
+
+"My dear Joan," the quarryman said sadly, "I have seen you bear up more
+bravely on the sands of Syria. Remember what perils you, your child and
+I escaped during our long journey in Palestine, and when we were serfs
+of Neroweg VI--"
+
+"Fergan," Joan broke in, overcome with anguish, "the dangers of the past
+were terrible, and the future looks menacing."
+
+"We were all so happy in this city!" muttered Martine. "Those wicked
+episcopals, so anxious to turn our joy into mourning, have,
+nevertheless, the same as the communiers, wives, mothers, sisters,
+daughters!"
+
+"That is true," said Fergan bitterly; "but those men of the nobility and
+their families, driven by the pride of station and living in idleness,
+are furious at no longer being able to dispose of our hard labor. Oh! If
+they tire our patience and if they mean to reconquer their hateful
+rights, woe be unto the episcopals! Terrible reprisals await them!" And
+embracing Joan and Martine, the quarryman added: "Good-bye, wife;
+good-bye, my child."
+
+"Good-bye, good mother; good-bye, Martine," Colombaik said in his turn,
+"I accompany my father to the market-place. Soon as we shall have
+definite information, I shall return to let you know. Remain at ease and
+without any apprehensions."
+
+"Come, daughter," said Joan to Martine, after once more embracing her
+husband and her son, who forthwith went out, "let's resume our sad task.
+For a moment I had hoped we could drop it."
+
+The two women began anew to prepare lint and bandages, while the young
+apprentices, resuming their work with renewed ardor, continued shafting
+the iron pikes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+"TO ARMS, COMMUNIERS!"
+
+
+An ever increasing crowd flowed into the market-place. Not now, as on
+the previous day, did joy and the breath of security brighten the faces
+of men, women and children gathering to celebrate the inauguration of
+the communal Town Hall and belfry, the symbol of the emancipation of the
+inhabitants. No; neither women nor children assisted at this gathering,
+so different from the first. Only the men met, sombre, uneasy, some
+determined, others crestfallen, and all foreseeing the approach of a
+public danger. Assembled in large groups around the pillars of the
+market-place, the communiers discussed the latest tidings--not yet known
+by Fergan at the time when, in the company of his son, he left his
+house--significant and alarming tidings. The watchmen on the towers,
+between which one of the gates of the city opened on a promenade that
+extended between the ramparts and the episcopal palace, had seen a large
+troop of woodmen serfs and colliers, with Thiegaud, the bandit and
+favorite of Bishop Gaudry, march into the palace at daybreak. A short
+time after daybreak, the King, accompanied by his knights and
+men-at-arms, had also retired into the fortified dwelling of the
+prelate, leaving Laon by the south gate, which the sentinels had not
+dared to refuse to open to the royal cavalcade. The courtiers of the
+King having warned him that the inhabitants of the city had been up all
+night, and that the blacksmiths' and locksmiths' anvils had constantly
+rung under the hammer in the manufacture of a large number of pikes,
+such preparations of defence, such a nocturnal excitement, all so
+contrary to the peaceful habits of the townsmen, awoke the royal
+suspicions and fears, and he had hastened to transfer his quarters to
+the episcopal palace, where he considered himself safer. Instructed on
+the departure of the Prince, the Mayor, John Molrain had himself run to
+the episcopal palace, where admission was refused him. Foreseeing as
+much, the Mayor had provided himself with a letter to the abbot
+counselor of the King, in which Molrain repeated his propositions of the
+previous day, and implored the King to accept them in the name of public
+peace. Molrain added that the Commune held the promised sum at the
+disposal of the King. To a letter so wisely framed and so conciliating,
+the King sent for answer that in the morning the inhabitants of Laon
+would be apprized of his pleasure. During that same night, it had been
+noticed in the city that the episcopals, entrenched in their fortified
+and solidly barricaded houses, had frequently exchanged signals among
+themselves by means of torches placed at their windows and alternately
+lighted and extinguished. These alarming tidings demolished almost
+completely the hope of an accommodation, and threw the communiers into a
+state of increasing anxiety. The Councilmen had been the first to appear
+at the market-place, where they were soon joined by the Mayor. The
+latter, grave and resolute, ordered silence, mounted one of the stands
+in the deserted stalls and said to the crowd:
+
+"The eighth hour of the day will soon sound. I have ordered the
+messenger of the King to be allowed into the city when he presents
+himself at the gate. The King and the bishop have ordered us to meet
+here, at the market-place, to hear their pleasure. We prefer to receive
+the royal message at our Town Hall. That is the seat of our power. The
+more that power is contested from us, all the more zealous should we
+show ourselves in holding it high."
+
+The Mayor's proposition was received with acclamation, and while the
+crowd followed the magistrates, Fergan and his son, commissioned to wait
+for the King's messengers, saw Archdeacon Anselm approaching with
+hurried steps. Thanks to his goodness and his uprightness, the prelate
+was beloved and venerated by all. Making a sign to the quarryman to
+draw near, he said to him in an agitated voice: "Will you join me in an
+endeavor to avert the frightful misfortunes that this city is threatened
+with?"
+
+"The King has not, then, been moved even by the last sacrifice that we
+imposed upon ourselves? He refused the offer of John Molrain?"
+
+"The bishop, learning that the Mayor had offered the King a considerable
+sum for the re-confirmation of your charter, offered Louis the Lusty
+twice as much to abolish the Commune, and promised rich presents to the
+King's counselors."
+
+"And the King gave ear to such an infamous auction sale?"
+
+"He gave ear to the suggestions of his own cupidity. He listened to the
+counselors that surround him, and he accepted the bishop's offer."
+
+"The oath that Louis the Lusty took, his signature, his seal affixed to
+our charter--all that is then nullified?"
+
+"The bishop absolved the King of his oath, by virtue of his episcopal
+power of binding and unbinding here on earth. A sacredotal chicanery."
+
+"The King is in error if he expects to receive the price of that
+infamous traffic. The treasure of the bishop is empty. How could the
+King, so astute a trader, rely upon the promises of Gaudry?"
+
+"Once the bishop's seigniorial power is restored, he will clap upon the
+townsmen, who will have again become taxable and subject to any imposts
+at his mercy, a tax to pay the sum promised to the King, and the latter
+himself will lend armed assistance to the bishop to levy the new
+contributions."
+
+"Fatality!" cried out Fergan in an outburst of rage. "We shall,
+accordingly, have paid to obtain our enfranchisement, and are to pay
+over again to fall back into servitude!"
+
+"The projects of the bishop are as criminal as insane. But if you desire
+to ward off even greater dangers, you will try to allay the popular
+effervescence when the decision of the King shall be announced to the
+Councilmen."
+
+"You advise a cowardly act! No, I shall not seek to pacify the people,
+when the insolent challenge shall have been thrown in their faces! You
+will hear me the first to cry out: 'Commune! Commune!' and I shall march
+at the head of my forces against the bishop. It will be a battle to the
+knife!"
+
+"Will you promise me not to precipitate so bloody a solution, that I may
+make new efforts to lead the bishop back to more equitable sentiments?"
+
+Anselm had hardly finished speaking when a man on horseback, preceded by
+a sergeant-at-arms, covered with iron and the visor of his casque up,
+appeared at the entrance of the street.
+
+"Here is the royal messenger," said the quarryman to the archdeacon,
+advancing towards the two cavaliers; "if the resolution of the King and
+the bishop is such as you have just informed me of, let the blood that
+is to run fall upon them!" Addressing then the royal messenger:
+
+"The Mayor and the Councilmen are awaiting you in the large reception
+room of the Town Hall of the Commune."
+
+"Monseigneur the King and monseigneur the Bishop commanded the
+inhabitants to assemble here at the market-place, in order to hear the
+rescript that I bring," answered the messenger; "I must obey the orders
+given me."
+
+"If you wish to fulfil your mission, follow me," replied the quarryman.
+"Our magistrates, representing the inhabitants of the city, are
+assembled at the Town Hall. They have not chosen to wait here." Fearing
+some trap, the King's messenger hesitated to follow Fergan, who,
+surmising his thoughts, added: "Fear nothing; your person will be
+respected; I answer for you with my head."
+
+The sincerity that breathed through the words of Fergan reassured the
+envoy, who, from greater prudence, ordered the knight, by whom he was
+escorted, to accompany him no further, lest the sight of an armed man
+should irritate the crowd. The royal messenger then followed the
+quarryman.
+
+"Fergan," the archdeacon called in a penetrating voice, "a last time I
+conjure you, seek to curb the popular anger. I return to the King and
+the bishop to renew my endeavors against the fatal course they are
+starting on."
+
+With that the archdeacon precipitately left the quarryman, who, leaving
+the market-place, reached the Town Hall, and stepping ahead of the
+messenger into the crowd repeated several times, while elbowing his way
+through: "Room and respect for the envoy; he is alone and unarmed!"
+
+Arrived at the threshold of the Town Hall, the envoy left his horse in
+charge of Robin the Crumb-cracker, who pressed forward offering to guard
+the palfrey; and accompanied by the quarryman he went up to the large
+reception hall where were gathered the Mayor and the Councilmen, some in
+arms, others merely in the robes of their office. The faces of the
+magistrates were at once grave and uneasy. They misgave the approach of
+events disastrous to the city. Above the Mayor's seat stood the Communal
+banner; on a table before him, lay the official silver seal. The
+gathering was silent and wrapt in thought.
+
+"Mayor and Councilmen! Here is the royal envoy who wishes to make a
+communication to you."
+
+"We shall listen to him," answered the Mayor, John Molrain; "let him
+communicate to us the message he is charged with."
+
+The King's man seemed embarrassed in the fulfillment of his errand. He
+drew from his breast a parchment scroll, sealed with the royal seal, and
+unfolding it he said in a tremulous voice: "This is the pleasure of our
+seigneur the King. He has ordered me to read this rescript to you aloud,
+and to leave it with you, to the end that you may not remain in
+ignorance upon its contents. Listen to it with respect."
+
+"Read," said John Molrain; and turning to the Councilmen: "Above all, my
+friends, whatever our sentiments, let us not interrupt the envoy during
+the reading."
+
+The King's man then read aloud:
+
+     "Louis, by the Grace of God, King of the French, to the Mayor and
+     inhabitants of Laon, Greeting:--
+
+     "We order and command you strictly to render, without contradiction
+     or delay, to our well-beloved and trusty Gaudry, Bishop of Laon,
+     the keys of this city, which he holds under us. We likewise order
+     and command you to forward to our well-beloved and trusty Gaudry,
+     Bishop of the diocese of Laon, the seal, the banner and the
+     treasury of the Commune, which we now declare abolished. The tower
+     of the belfry and the Town Hall shall be demolished, within the
+     space of one month at the longest. We order and command you, in
+     addition, to henceforth obey the bans and orders of our
+     well-beloved and trusty Gaudry, Bishop of Laon, the same as his
+     predecessors and himself have always been obeyed before the
+     establishment of the said Commune, because we may not fail to
+     guarantee to our well-beloved and trusty bishops the possession of
+     the seigniories and rights which they hold from God as
+     ecclesiastics and from us as laymen.
+
+     "This is our will.
+
+     "LOUIS."
+
+The recommendation of John Molrain was religiously observed. The King's
+envoy read his message in the midst of profound silence. In the measure,
+however, as he proceeded with the reading of the act, every word of
+which conveyed a threat and was an outrage, an iniquity, a perjury
+towards the Commune, the Mayor and Councilmen exchanged looks
+successively expressive of astonishment, rage, pain and consternation.
+Overwhelming, indeed, was the astonishment of the Councilmen, to whom
+Fergan had not yet had time to communicate his conversation with the
+archdeacon. However, aware of the evil intentions of the King, yet they
+had not been able to imagine such a flagrant violation of the rights
+that had been granted, acknowledged and solemnly sworn to by the Prince
+and the bishop. Great, indeed, was the anger that seized the Councilmen;
+the least bellicose among them felt his heart stirred with indignation
+at the insolent challenge hurled at the Commune, at the brazen robbery
+contemplated by the King and bishop in the attempt to restore their
+odious rights, the permanent abolition of which was proclaimed by a
+charter sold for heavy money. Great was also the pain felt by the
+Councilmen at the royal order to surrender to the bishop their banner,
+their seal and their treasury, and to tear down their Town Hall and its
+belfry. That belfry, that seal, that banner, such dear symbols of an
+emancipation obtained after so many years of oppression, of servitude
+and of shame,--all were to be renounced by the communiers. They were to
+fall back under the yoke of Gaudry, when, in their legitimate pride,
+they expected to bequeath to their children a freedom so painfully
+acquired. Tears of rage and despair rolled down from all eyes at the
+bare thought of such a disgrace. Great was the consternation of the
+Councilmen; even the more energetic of them, while caring little for
+their own lives, determined to defend the communal franchises unto
+death, nevertheless anticipated with profound pain the disasters that
+their flourishing city was threatened with, the torrents of blood that
+civil war was about to shed. Victory or defeat, what distress, what
+ravages, what a number of widows and orphans in prospect!
+
+At that supreme moment, some of the Councilmen, they later admitted it
+themselves, after having first triumphed over a transitory feeling of
+faintness, felt their resolution waver. To enter into a struggle with a
+King of the French was, for the city of Laon, an act of almost insane
+foolhardiness. It was to expose the inhabitants to almost certain deeds
+of retribution. Moreover, these magistrates--all of them husbands and
+most of them fathers, men of peaceful habits--were not versed in war.
+Undoubtedly, to submit to bear the yoke of the bishop and of the
+nobility meant abysmal degradation; it meant to submit for all future
+time themselves and their descendants to indignities and incessant
+exploitation. Life, it is true, would be safe, and by virtue of tame
+submission to the bishop some concessions might be obtained to render
+life less miserable. Fortunately, the instances where such unworthy
+wavering in the face of peril was experienced, had the advantage of
+unrolling before the shaken hearts the abysmal infamy that fear might
+drive them to. Promptly returning to their senses, these men realized
+that the fatal choice was between degradation and servitude on the one
+side, and, on the other, the dangers of a resistance sacred as justice
+itself; that they had to choose between shame or a glorious death. Their
+self-respect soon regained the upper hand, and they blushed at their
+own weakness. When the envoy of Louis the Lusty had finished reading the
+royal message, none of the Councilmen who had just been a prey to cruel
+perplexities raised the voice to advise the relinquishment of the
+franchises of the Commune.
+
+The reading of the King's rescript being ended, John Molrain said to the
+envoy in a solemn voice: "Are you authorized to listen to our
+objections?"
+
+"There is no room for objections to an act of the sovereign will of our
+seigneur the King, signed by his own hand and sealed with his own seal,"
+answered the messenger. "The King commands in the fullness of his power;
+his subjects obey with humility. Bend your knees, bow down your
+foreheads!"
+
+"Is the will of Louis the Lusty irrevocable?" resumed the Mayor.
+
+"Irrevocable!" answered the envoy. "And as a first proof of your
+obedience to his orders, the King herein orders you, Councilmen, to hand
+over to me the keys, the seal and the banner of the city. I have orders
+to take them to the bishop, in token of submission to the abolition of
+the Commune."
+
+These words of the messenger carried the exasperation of the Councilmen
+to its pitch. Some bounded from their seats or raised to heaven their
+threatening fists; others covered their faces in their hands. Threats,
+imprecations, moans, escaped from all lips. Dominating the tumult, John
+Molrain ordered silence. All the Councilmen resumed their seats. Then,
+rising full of dignity, calmness and firmness, the Mayor turned to the
+banner of the Commune, that stood behind his seat, pointed towards it
+with his hand and said to the messenger of the King: "On this banner,
+that the King commands us to give up like cowards, are traced two towers
+and a sword: The towers are the emblem of the city of Laon, the sword is
+the emblem of the Commune. Our duty is inscribed upon that banner--to
+defend with arms the franchises of our city. That seal, which the King
+demands as a token of relinquishment of our liberties," John Molrain
+proceeded, taking up from the table a silver medal, "this seal
+represents a man raising his right hand to heaven in witness of the
+sacredness of his oath; in his left hand he holds a sword, with the
+point over his heart. This man is the Mayor of the Commune of Laon. This
+magistrate is swearing by heaven to rather die than betray his oath.
+Now, then, _I, Mayor of the Commune of Laon, freely elected by my fellow
+townsmen, I swear to maintain and to defend our rights and our
+franchises unto death_!"
+
+"To that oath we shall all be faithful!" cried the Councilmen with
+frantic enthusiasm. "We swear sooner to die than to renounce our
+franchises!"
+
+"You have heard the answer of the Mayor and Councilmen of Laon," said
+John Molrain to the King's man when the tumult was appeased. "Our
+charter has been sworn to and signed by the King and by Bishop Gaudry in
+the year 1109. We shall defend that charter with the sword. The King of
+the French is all-powerful in Gaul, the Commune of Laon is strong only
+in its rights and in the bravery of its inhabitants. It has done
+everything to avoid an impious war. It now awaits its enemies."
+
+Hardly had John Molrain pronounced these last words when a deafening
+uproar rose outside the Town Hall. Colombaik had joined his father to
+accompany the royal messenger to the council hall. But after hearing the
+rescript of the King, he was not able longer to restrain his
+indignation. Hastily descending to the street, packed with a dense mass,
+he announced that the King abolished the Commune and re-established the
+bishop in the sovereignty of his so justly abhorred rights. While the
+news spread like wild-fire from mouth to mouth through the whole city,
+the crowd, massed upon the square, began to make the air resound with
+imprecations. The more exasperated communiers invaded the hall, where
+the council was gathered, and cried, inflamed with fury: "To arms! To
+arms! Down with the King, the bishop and the episcopals!"
+
+Sufficiently uneasy before now, the royal messenger grew pale with fear,
+and ran for protection behind the Mayor and Councilmen, saying to them
+in a trembling voice: "I have only obeyed orders; protect me!"
+
+"Fear nothing!" called Fergan. "I have answered for you with my head. I
+shall see you safe to the gates of the city."
+
+"To arms!" cried John Molrain, addressing himself to the inhabitants who
+had invaded the hall. "Ring the belfry bell to convoke the people to the
+market-place. From there we shall march to the ramparts! To arms,
+communiers! To arms!"
+
+These words of John Molrain caused the King's messenger to be forgotten.
+While several inhabitants climbed to the tower of the belfry to set the
+big bell ringing, others descended quickly to the street and spread
+themselves over the city crying: "To arms!" "Commune!" "Commune!" And
+these cries, taken up by the crowds, were soon joined by the clangor
+from the belfry.
+
+"Molrain," Fergan said to the Mayor, "I shall accompany the envoy of
+Louis the Lusty to the city's gate that opens opposite the episcopal
+palace, and I shall remain on guard at that postern, one of the most
+important posts."
+
+"Go," answered the Mayor; "we of the Council shall remain here in
+permanence to the end of deciding upon the measures to be taken."
+
+Fergan and Colombaik descended from the council hall. The King's man
+walked between them. The people, running home for their arms, had
+cleared the square; only a few groups were left behind. Little Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, who had been charged with the care of the messenger's
+palfrey, had hastened to profit by the opportunity of straddling a horse
+for the first time in his life, and was carrying himself triumphantly in
+the saddle. At sight of the quarryman, he quickly came down again and
+said, while placing the reins into his hands: "Master Fergan, here is
+the horse; I prefer the infantry to the cavalry. I shall now run for my
+pike. Let the little episcopals look out. If I meet any, I'll massacre
+them."
+
+The bellicose ardor of the stripling seemed to strike the royal envoy
+even more forcibly than anything he had yet seen. He remounted his horse
+escorted by Fergan and his son. The redoubled peals from the belfry
+resounded far into the distance. In all the streets that the King's man
+traversed on his way to the city gate, shops were hastily closing, and
+soon the faces of women and children appeared at the windows, following
+with anxious mien the husband, father, son or brother, who was leaving
+the house to meet in arms at the call of the belfry. The King's
+messenger, sombre and silent, could not conceal the astonishment and
+fear produced in him by the warlike excitement of that people of
+bourgeois and artisans, all running with enthusiasm to the defence of
+the Commune. "Before you arrived at the gate of the city," Fergan said
+to him, "you surely expected to meet here with a craven obedience to the
+orders of the King and the bishop. But you see it for yourself, here, as
+at Beauvais, as at Cambrai, as at Noyons, as at Amiens, the old Gallic
+blood is waking up after centuries of slavery. Report faithfully to
+Louis the Lusty and to Gaudry what you have witnessed while crossing the
+city. Perchance, at the supreme moment, they may recoil before the
+iniquity that they are contemplating, and they may yet save grave
+disasters to this city that asks but to be allowed to live peacefully
+and happy in the name of the faith that has been plighted."
+
+"I have no authority in the councils of my seigneur the King," answered
+the envoy sadly, "but I swear in the name of God, I did not expect to
+see what I have seen, and hear what I have heard. I shall faithfully
+report it all to my master."
+
+"The King of the French is all-powerful in Gaul, the city of Laon is
+strong only in its right and the bravery of its inhabitants. It now
+awaits its enemies! You see it is on its guard," added Fergan, pointing
+to a troop of bourgeois militia that had just occupied the ramparts
+contiguous to the gate by which the King's envoy made his exit.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+RETRIBUTION.
+
+
+The episcopal palace, fortified with towers and thick walls, was
+separated from the city by a wide space, lined with trees and that
+served as a promenade. Fergan and his son were busy organizing the
+transport of materials destined for the defence of the walls in case of
+an attack, when the quarryman saw the outer gate of the episcopal palace
+thrown open. Several of the King's men came out, looked around
+cautiously, as if to make sure that the promenade was clear, re-entered
+the palace in hot haste, and almost immediately a strong escort of
+knights rode out, and took the road that led to the boundary of Picardy.
+This vanguard was closely followed by a few warriors, clad in brilliant
+armor, one of them, notable for his enormous stomach; two ordinary men
+could have been easily held in this one's cuirass. The rider's casque
+was topped with a golden crown engraved with fleur-de-lis. The long
+scarlet saddle-cloth, that covered his horse almost wholly, was likewise
+embroidered in gold fleur-de-lis. These insignias, coupled with the
+extraordinary corpulence of the rider, designated Louis the Lusty to
+Fergan. A few steps behind the Prince the quarryman recognized the
+messenger, whom, shortly before, he had himself accompanied to the gate
+of the city, and who, now was engaged in an animated conversation with
+the Abbot de la Marche. The train closed with several baggage mules and
+servants; the rear was brought up by another squad of knights. The whole
+cavalcade soon fell into a gallop, and Fergan saw the King at a distance
+turning towards the ramparts of Laon, whose belfry bell did not cease
+ringing, and menace the city with a gesture of rage by shaking at it his
+closed fist, covered with a mailed gauntlet. Giving then the spurs to
+his horse, Louis the Lusty soon disappeared at the turning of the road
+in the midst of a cloud of dust.
+
+"You flee before the insurgent communiers, oh, King of the Franks, noble
+descendant of Hugh Capet!" cried out Colombaik in the passionate heat of
+his age. "Old Gaul is waking up! The descendants of the kings of the
+conquest flee before the popular uprisings! The day predicted by
+Victoria has arrived!"
+
+Ripened with age and experience, Fergan said to his son in a grave and
+melancholic voice: "My son, let us not take the first glimmerings of the
+approaching dawn for the light of the midday sun." At that very moment,
+the sound of the great bell of the cathedral, never rung but at certain
+great holidays, was suddenly heard. Instead, however, of ringing slowly
+and in measured ryhthm, as usual, its clang now was alternately rapid
+and then again at long intervals. The tolling lasted only a short time;
+soon the bell was silent. "To arms!" Fergan cried out in a thundering
+voice. "This must be a signal agreed upon between the knights of the
+city and the episcopal palace. While waiting for the re-inforcements
+that, undoubtedly, the King is gone after, the episcopals deem
+themselves able to overcome us. To arms! Cover the ramparts! Death to
+the episcopals!"
+
+At the call of Fergan and his son, the latter of whom ran to rally the
+insurgents, the communiers hastened near, some armed with bows, others
+with pikes, hatchets and swords--all ready to repel an attack. Others
+again lighted fires under caldrons full of pitch, while their companions
+rolled with great effort towards the ramparts certain engines of war,
+which, by means of turning pallets, fastened in the middle of a twisted
+rope, hurled enormous stones more than a hundred paces off. Suddenly a
+great noise, in which shouts were mixed with the clatter of arms,
+sounded from afar in the center of the city. As Fergan had forseen, the
+episcopals sallying forth from their fortified dwellings at the signal
+given by the great bell of the cathedral, had fallen upon the bourgeois
+in the city at the same time that, as agreed upon, the serfs of the
+episcopal palace, led by several knights, were to begin the siege of the
+ramparts. The communiers were, accordingly, to find themselves between
+two enemies, one within, the other without. In fact, Fergan saw the gate
+of the episcopal palace swing open once more, and there issued forth
+from it a huge four-wheeled wagon, pushed from behind with feet and
+hands. The wagon was filled with straw and faggots, heaped so high, that
+the mass of combustibles, raised twelve or fifteen feet above the rails
+of the wagon, completely hid and covered those who shoved it, serving
+them as a shelter against the projectiles that might be hurled at them
+from the walls. The assailants figured upon setting fire to the
+combustibles in the wagon, with the object of pushing it near enough to
+the gate so as to communicate its fire to the latter. The move, although
+skilfully planned, was baffled by the quick wit of Robin the
+Crumb-cracker, the blacksmith's apprentice. Armed with his pike, he was
+one of the first at the ramparts, and had noticed the chariot advancing
+slowly and always pushed from behind. Several insurgents, armed with
+bows, yielded to a thoughtless impulse, and hastened to shoot their
+arrows at the wagon. These, however, fastened themselves uselessly in
+the straw or the wood. Robin pulled off his shirt, tore it in shreds,
+and sighting a tall militiaman, who, seduced by the example of his
+fellows was also about to shoot uselessly upon the straw, the
+blacksmith's apprentice brusquely disarmed the townsman, seized the
+arrow, wrapped it in one of the shreds of his shirt, ran and plunged it
+into a caldron of pitch, already liquid, lighted it at the fire, and
+quickly placing it on the cord of the bow, fired the flaming arrow into
+the middle of the chariot filled with combustibles, and then but a short
+distance from the walls. Overjoyed at his own inspiration, Robin clapped
+his hands, turned somersaults, and while returning the bow to the
+astonished militiaman, set up the shout: "Commune! Commune! The
+episcopals prepare the bonfires, the communiers light them!" And the
+blacksmith's apprentice ran to pick up his pike.
+
+Hardly had the firebrand dropped upon that load of straw and fagots than
+it took fire, and offered to the eyes one mass of flames, overtopped by
+a dense cloud of smoke that the wind drove towards the episcopal palace.
+Noticing the circumstance, Fergan hastened to profit by it. "My
+friends!" cried he, "let's finish the work begun by little
+Crumb-cracker! That cloud of smoke will mask our movements from the
+episcopals. Let's make a sortie. Form into a column of armed men, and
+let's take the episcopal palace by storm. Death to the episcopals!"
+
+"Fall to!" was the insurgents' response. "To the assault! Commune!
+Commune!"
+
+"One-half of our troops will remain here with Colombaik to guard the
+walls," Fergan proceeded. "They are fighting in the village. The
+episcopals might try to attack the ramparts from behind. Let those
+follow me who are ready to storm the episcopal palace. Forward, march!"
+
+A large number of communiers hastened upon the heels of Fergan. Among
+them was Bertrand, the son of Bernard des Bruyeres, the ill-starred
+victim of Gaudry's murderous nature. Bertrand was silent, almost
+impassible in the midst of the seething effervescence of the people. His
+only thought was to avoid dropping his heavy axe that weighed down his
+shoulder. Fergan had cleverly led the sortie of the insurgents. Masked
+for a sufficient space of time to the eyes of the enemy by the flames
+and smoke of the burning wagon and its load, they soon reached the walls
+of the episcopal palace, found the gate open, and a crowd of armed serfs
+standing under the arch. Under the lead of several knights, they were
+preparing to march on the assault of the postern, their chief, as well
+as Fergan, having relied upon masking their attack behind the burning
+chariot. At the unexpected sight of the insurgents, the episcopals only
+thought of barring the entrance to the palace. It was too late. A bloody
+hand-to-hand encounter took place under the arch that joined the two
+towers on either side of the gate. The communiers, warming to the
+conflict, fought with fury. Many were killed, others wounded. Fergan
+received from a knight a blow with an axe that broke his casque and
+struck his forehead. After a stubborn struggle, the inhabitants of Laon
+threw the episcopals back and entered the vast yard where the combat
+proceeded with redoubled fury. Fergan, still in the hottest of the
+fight, despite his wound, for a moment thought himself and his men lost.
+Just as the fight was at its hottest, Thiegaud came in from the green of
+the bishopric at the head of a large body of woodmen serfs, armed with
+stout hatchets, and threw himself into the fray. The re-inforcement was
+intended to crush the insurgents. What was not the surprise of these,
+when they heard the serf of St. Vincent and his men set up the cry:
+"Death to the bishop! To the sack of the palace! To the sack! Commune!"
+
+The combat changed its aspect on the spot. The larger number of the
+bishop's serfs who had taken part in the struggle, hearing the woodmen
+cry: "Commune! Death to the bishop! To the sack of the palace!" dropped
+their arms. Deserted by a part of their men, the knights redoubled their
+efforts of valor, but in vain; they were all killed or disabled. Soon
+masters of the palace, the insurgents spread in all directions, yelling:
+"Death to the bishop!"
+
+Thiegaud approached Fergan with a mien of triumphant hatred brandishing
+his cutlass. "I answered Gaudry for the faithfulness of the woodmen of
+the abbey," cried the serf of St. Vincent, "but in order to revenge
+myself upon the wretch for having debauched my daughter, I caused our
+men to mutiny against him and his tonsured fellow devils!"
+
+"Where is the bishop?" the insurgents shouted, brandishing their
+weapons. "To death with him!"
+
+"Friends, your vengeance shall be satisfied, and mine also. Gaudry will
+not escape us," replied Thiegaud. "I know where the holy man lies in
+hiding. The moment you forced the gate of the palace, and fearing the
+issue of the fight, Gaudry put on the coat of one of the servants, in
+the hope of fleeing under cover of the disguise. But I advised him to
+lock himself up in his storeroom, and to crawl into the bottom of one of
+the empty hogsheads. Come, come!" he proceeded with savage laughter, "We
+shall stave in the head and draw red wine." Saying which, the serf of
+St. Vincent, followed by the mob of the insurgents who were exasperated
+at the bishop, wended his way to the storeroom. Among the furious crowd
+was the son of Bernard des Bruyeres. Having by the merest chance escaped
+unscathed from the melee, the frail youth marched close behind Thiegaud,
+endeavoring, despite the smallness of his stature and his feebleness,
+not to lose the post he had taken. His pale and sickly features were
+rapidly regaining their color; a feverish ardor illumined his eyes and
+imparted to him fictitious strength. No longer did his heavy battle axe
+seem to weigh on his puny arm. From time to time he lovingly
+contemplated the weapon, while he passed his finger along its sharp
+edge. At such times he would emit a sigh of repressed joy, while he
+raised his flashing eyes to heaven. Guiding the communiers, the serf of
+St. Vincent, threaded his way to the storeroom, a spacious chamber
+located at one of the corners of the first yard. Before reaching it, the
+inhabitants of Laon, having stumbled against the corpse of Black John
+that lay riddled with wounds, they threw themselves in a paroxysm of
+fury upon the lifeless body of the savage executor of Gaudry's
+cruelties. In the tumult that ensued upon these acts of reprisal, the
+son of Bernard des Bruyeres was, despite all stubborn resistance on his
+part, separated from Thiegaud, at the moment when the latter, helped by
+several of the insurgents, broke down and forced the door of the
+storeroom, that, for greater precaution, the prelate had bolted and
+barred from within. The mass emptied itself into the vast chamber that
+was barely lighted by narrow skylights and crowded with full and empty
+vats. A kind of alley wound its way between the numerous hogsheads.
+Thiegaud made a sign to the insurgents to halt and stay at a distance.
+Wishing to prolong the bishop's agony, he struck with the flat of his
+cutlass the head of several vats, calling out each time: "Anyone
+inside?" Of course he received no answer. Arriving finally near a huge
+hogshead that stood on end he turned his head to the communiers with the
+slyness of a wolf, and removing and throwing down the cover that had
+been lightly placed upon it, asked again: "Any one inside?"
+
+"There is here an unhappy prisoner," came from the trembling voice of
+the bishop. "Have mercy upon him in the name of Christ!"
+
+"Oho! my friend Ysengrin!" said Thiegaud, now taking his turn in giving
+the nickname to his master. "Is it you who are cowering down in that
+barrel? Come out! Come out! I want to see whether, perhaps, my daughter
+is there in hiding with you." Saying which, the serf of St. Vincent
+seized the prelate by his long hair with a vigorous clutch, and forced
+him, despite his resistance, to rise by little and little from the
+bottom of the ton into which he had crawled. It was a frightful
+spectacle. For a moment, always holding the bishop by the hair as the
+latter rose on his feet in the barrel, Thiegaud seemed to hold in his
+hand the head of a corpse, so livid was Gaudry's face. For a moment
+Gaudry stood upon his legs inside of the barrel, with his head and
+shoulders above the edge. But his limbs shook so that, wishing to
+support himself inside of the barrel, it tumbled over and the Bishop of
+Laon rolled at the feet of the serf. Stooping down, while the prelate
+was painfully trying to rise, Thiegaud affected to look into the bottom
+of the barrel, and cried out: "No, friend Ysengrin, my daughter is not
+there. The jade must have stayed in your bed."
+
+"Beloved sons in Jesus Christ!" stammered Gaudry, who, upon his knees,
+extended his hands towards the communiers. "I swear to you upon the
+gospels and upon my eternal salvation, I shall uphold your Commune! Have
+pity upon me!"
+
+"Liar, renegade!" yelled back the enraged communiers. "We know what your
+oath is worth. Swindler and hypocrite!"
+
+"You shall pay with your life for the blood of our people that has
+flowed to-day! Justice! Justice!"
+
+"Yes, justice and vengeance in the name of the women, who this morning
+had husbands, and this evening are widows!"
+
+"Justice and vengeance in the name of the children, who this morning had
+fathers, and this evening are orphans!"
+
+"Oh, Gaudry, you and yours have by dint of perjuries and untold outrages
+tired the patience of the people! Your hour has sounded!"
+
+"Which of us is it that wanted war, you or we? Did you listen to our
+prayers? Did you have pity for the peace of our city? No! Well, then,
+neither shall there be pity for you! Death to the bishop!"
+
+"My good friends ... grant me my life," repeated the bishop, whose teeth
+chattered with terror. "Oh! I pray you!... Grant me my life! I ... I
+shall renounce the bishopric.... I shall leave this city.... You shall
+never see my face again.... Only leave me my life!"
+
+"Did you show mercy to my brother Gerhard, whose eyes were put out by
+your orders?" cried a communier, seizing the prelate by the collar and
+shaking him with fury. "Infamous criminal! Did you have pity for him?"
+
+"Did you have mercy for my friend Robert of the Mill, who was stabbed to
+death by Black John?" added another insurgent. And the two accusers
+seized the prelate, who quietly allowed himself to be dragged upon his
+knees, "You shall die in the face of the sun that has witnessed your
+crimes!"
+
+Overwhelmed with blows and insults, Gaudry was pushed out of the
+storeroom. In vain did he cry: "Have pity upon me!... I shall restore
+your Commune!... I swear to you!... I swear!--"
+
+"Will you restore their husbands to the widows, their fathers to the
+orphans you have made?"
+
+"After having lived the life of a traitor and a homicide; after
+exasperating an inoffensive people that only asked to be allowed to
+live in peace in accordance with the pledge that was sworn, it is not
+enough to cry 'Pity!' in order to be absolved."
+
+"Clemency is holy, but impunity is impious! Death to the bishop!"
+
+"Heaven and earth!" cried Fergan. "The justice of the people is the
+justice of God! Death to the bishop! Death!"
+
+"Yes, yes! To death with the bishop!"
+
+The prelate was dragged in the midst of these furious cries outside of
+the storeroom. Suddenly a tremulous voice dominated the uproar: "What,
+shall not the son of Bernard des Bruyeres be allowed to avenge his
+father!" Immediately, by a simultaneous movement, the insurgents opened
+a path to the son of the victim. His face radiant, his eyes flashing,
+Bertrand rushed upon the prostrate bishop, and raising his heavy axe
+with his weak hands, cleaved the skull of Gaudry; then, casting off the
+blood-stained weapon, he cried: "You are avenged, my father!"
+
+"Well done, my lad! The death of your father and the dishonor of my
+daughter are avenged at one blow!" cried Thiegaud; and seeing the
+episcopal ring on the bishop's finger, he added: "I take my daughter's
+token of marriage!" Unable, however, to tear the ring off the prelate's
+finger, the serf of St. Vincent cut it off with a blow of his cutlass
+and stuck both finger and ring in his pocket.
+
+So legitimate was the hatred that Gaudry inspired the communiers, that
+it survived even the man's death. His corpse was riddled with wounds and
+covered with curses. The insurgents were in the act of throwing his
+lifeless body into a sewer close to the storeroom, when from another
+side the cry fell upon their ears: "Commune! Commune! Death to the
+episcopals!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+RESTING ON THEIR ARMS.
+
+
+While this tragic scene was enacting, another body of the people of
+Laon, led by Ancel Quatre-Mains and his sprightly wife, invaded the
+episcopal palace from another side. Fergan was running to meet them the
+moment he saw them enter the green, when he caught sight of Archdeacon
+Anselm, who, having so far kept aloof from the theater of the conflict,
+was now hastening to the spot, informed of the bishop's fate by one of
+his domestics. The archdeacon succeeded in inducing the communiers to
+refrain from submitting the remains of their enemy to the idle and last
+disgrace contemplated by them. Helped by two servants, the worthy priest
+of Christ was carrying the corpse of the bishop, when he noticed Fergan,
+and said to him in a voice deeply moved, with the tears running down his
+cheeks: "I wish to bury the body of this unfortunate man, and to pray
+for him. My sad forecasts have been verified. Only yesterday, warning
+him in the midst of his braggart and fatal illusion of security, I
+expressed the hope that I may not soon have to pray over his grave. Oh,
+Fergan, civil war is a terrible scourge!"
+
+"A curse upon those who provoke these execrable strifes, that carry
+mourning into the camp of both the vanquishers and the vanquished!"
+answered the quarryman, and leaving the archdeacon to fulfil his pious
+office, he proceeded to join Quatre-Mains, who commanded the other troop
+of the invaders.
+
+The worthy Councilman, ever hampered and incommoded by his military
+equipment, had rid himself of it in the moment of battle. Replacing his
+iron casque with a woolen cap and keeping on his leather jerkin only,
+with his coat sleeves rolled back, as he was wont when kneading his
+dough, he had armed himself with the poker of his oven, a long and heavy
+iron implement, bent at one end. His stout-hearted little wife Simonne,
+her cheeks in a glow and her eyes aflame, carried in her skirt a bundle
+of lint and bandages ready for use, together with a wicker-covered
+flask, containing a decoction, pronounced marvelous by her for checking
+the flow of blood. Joy and the excitement of triumph radiated from the
+charming features of the baker's wife. At the sight of Fergan, however,
+whose face was clotted with the blood of the wound he had received on
+his head, she cried out sadly: "Neighbor Fergan, you are wounded! Let me
+tend you, the fight is over; be not alarmed about your son; we have just
+seen him at his post on the ramparts; he is safe and sound, although
+there was a sharp encounter at that spot; sit down on this bench, I
+shall nurse you the same as I would have done Ancel, had he been
+wounded. Upon the faith of a Picardian woman, if he escaped being hurt,
+it was not his fault; he merited anew his surname of Quatre-Mains, the
+way he belabored the heads and backs of the episcopals."
+
+Fergan accepted Simonne's offer and sat down upon a bench, while the
+young woman looked for the lint in her pockets. The baker himself
+stopped a few steps behind to gather the details of the capture of the
+bishop. He then approached his wife, and seeing her engaged upon Fergan,
+hastened his steps, asking with deep interest: "What, neighbor, wounded?
+Nothing serious?"
+
+"I was struck with an axe on my casque," and raising his head which he
+had inclined to facilitate the nursing of Simonne, Fergan noticed the
+rather unmilitary accoutrement of his friend: "Why did you take off your
+armor in the middle of the fight?"
+
+"Upon my faith, the casque kept dropping on my nose, the corselet took
+the breath from me, the sword encumbered my legs. Accordingly, when the
+fight started, I made myself comfortable, just as I do when I am
+kneading dough. I rolled up my sleeves, and instead of that devil of a
+sword, which I cannot handle, I armed myself with my iron poker, the
+use of which is familiar to me."
+
+"But what could you do with a poker? It is a rather singular implement
+of war."
+
+"What could he do with it?" put in Simonne, saturating a bandage with
+the contents of the wicker-covered flask, and applying the same to the
+quarryman's wound. "Oh, Ancel is quick with his hands. If a nobleman on
+horseback came near, armed to the teeth, my husband grappled his throat
+with the hook of his long poker and then pulled with all his might; I
+helped when necessary. In almost every instance we unhorsed the knight,
+and throwing him to the ground he was at our mercy."
+
+"After which," added the baker calmly, "and after beating my man with
+the hook of my poker, I dispatched him with the handle. I settled more
+than one of them. One does what he can!"
+
+"Oh, neighbor!" Simonne proceeded with enthusiasm; "it was especially at
+the siege of the house of the knight of Haut-Pourcin that Ancel made a
+famous use of his poker. Several episcopals and their servants,
+entrenched upon a crenelated terrace, fired down upon us with
+cross-bows. They had killed or wounded so many communiers, that none
+dared come near the accursed house, and our people had retired to the
+end of the street. Presently, we saw the wicked knight of Haut-Pourcin,
+cross-bow in hand, leaning half over the battlement of the terrace, to
+see if there was any of ours that he could hit. At that instant--," but
+interrupting herself, Simonne said to her husband: "Tell your own story,
+Ancel; while I speak I cannot pay proper attention to the bandage of our
+neighbor."
+
+While Simonne finished attending to Fergan, the baker continued the
+narrative that his wife had commenced: "Noticing that the knight of
+Haut-Pourcin leaned over the terrace several times, I profited by a
+moment when he had withdrawn; I slided along the wall to the foot of the
+house; as the projection of the balcony prevented him from seeing me, I
+watched for my man; the instant he again put out his head I snatched
+him up with the hook of my poker exactly at the jointure of his casque
+and his cuirass with might and main; Simonne came and helped; and we had
+the satisfaction of making that noble personage turn a somersault from
+the height of the terrace down to the street; our communiers ran by; the
+episcopals rushed out of the knight's house to deliver him; they were
+driven back and we stormed the building!"
+
+"And lo!" cried Simonne heroically, "I, who did not leave the heels of
+Ancel, find myself face to face with that old hag of the dame of
+Haut-Pourcin, who was yelling like a fury: 'Kill! Kill! No quarter for
+those vile clowns! Exterminate them!' I was seized with rage, and
+recalling the insults that the harpy had poured upon me shortly before I
+threw her down, grabbed her by the throat, and, as true as Ancel is
+called Quatre-Mains, I slapped her face as thoroughly as if I was
+endowed with six hands, all the while saying to her: 'Take this! and
+that! you proud dame of Haut-Pourcin. Take this, and that, and still
+another, you wicked old hag! Oh, my gallants pay for my skirts, do they!
+Very well, I pay cash, and in round sums for the insults I receive!'
+Upon the faith of a Picardian woman, had her hair not been gray, like my
+mother's, I would have strangled the she-devil!"
+
+Fergan could not help smiling at the exaltation of Simonne. He then said
+to Ancel: "When I heard the large bell of the cathedral ringing in a
+peculiar way, I concluded it was the signal agreed upon between the
+bishop and his partisans to attack our people simultaneously from within
+and from without the city."
+
+"You were not mistaken, neighbor. At that signal, the episcopals, who
+had laid their plans and gathered their forces over night, sallied forth
+from their houses crying: 'Kill, kill the communiers!' Other noblemen
+also were besieged in their houses. The fight was going on with the same
+vigor on the streets and squares, while a troop of episcopals betook
+itself to the ramparts on the side of the bishop's gate."
+
+"Expecting to fall from the rear upon our people who they thought were
+being attacked in front," said Fergan. "For that reason I ordered my son
+to be on his guard. You assure me he is not wounded? God be praised!"
+
+"If he is wounded, neighbor Fergan," replied Simonne, "it can only be
+slightly. He called out to us from the top of the ramparts: 'Victory!
+Victory! Our people are masters of the bishop's palace!'"
+
+"And now," said Quatre-Mains, "meseems the Mayor and Councilmen should
+meet at the Town Hall to consider what is to be done."
+
+"I think so, too, Ancel. We shall leave here a sufficient force to keep
+the palace. Watch shall continue to be held on the ramparts of the city,
+whose gates shall be closed and barricaded. Let's not deceive ourselves.
+However legitimate our insurrection, we must be prepared to see Louis
+the Lusty return to lay siege to the city at the head of the
+re-inforcements that he has gone to fetch. The Princes are on the side
+of the clergy."
+
+"I think so, too," replied the Councilman with resignation and
+fortitude: "John Molrain said to the royal messenger: 'The King of the
+French is all-powerful in Gaul; the Commune of Laon is strong only in
+its right and the courage of its inhabitants.' We shall fight as well as
+we may against Louis the Lusty and his army; and we shall, if need be,
+be killed to the last man."
+
+"Thank you for your kind nursing, good neighbor," Fergan said to
+Simonne; "I now feel in good trim. My poor Joan will be jealous."
+
+"It is rather I who should be jealous," retorted Simonne. "Crossing our
+street, we saw the basement room of your house full of wounded men, at
+whom your wife and Martine were busy. The good souls!"
+
+"Dear souls! How uneasy they must feel!" said Fergan. "I must hasten to
+ease their minds, and I shall return to superintend our defence."
+
+The conversation between Fergan and Ancel was here interrupted by cries
+and shouts mingled with cheers that went up from one of the yards of the
+palace, which was given up to pillage and devastation. The insurgents
+sought vengeance not only for the perjury of Gaudry, but also for the
+odious exactions and cruelties that they had suffered before the
+establishment of the Commune. Some, staving in the vats in the
+storeroom, were getting drunk on the bishop's precious wines, a rich
+tithe, once collected by him on the vineyards of the villeins; others,
+making a heap of the tapestry and furniture which they dragged from his
+rooms into the yard, set fire to the pile; finally, and it was the
+shouts of these last that reached the quarryman and the baker, yet
+others, seizing the sacerdotal robes and insignia of the prelate,
+organized themselves into a grotesque procession, of which little Robin
+the Crumb-cracker was the hero. The blacksmith's apprentice, carrying on
+his head the episcopal mitre that almost completely hid his face, and
+robed in a cape of gold cloth that trailed at his heels, held in his
+hands a vermillion cross studded with precious stones. He scattered to
+the right and left grotesque benedictions, while the communiers, now
+half drunk, as well as the bishop's serfs, who, after the fight had
+joined the vanquishers, sang at the top of their voices a parody of
+church hymns, interspersed ever and anon with cheers of "Long live Robin
+the Crumb-cracker!"
+
+Leaving these rolicking youngsters to amuse themselves at their pleasure
+on the bishop's premises, Fergan and his neighbors betook themselves to
+the city. Night was approaching. Bidding good-bye to the baker and his
+wife and requesting them to hasten ahead of him to his house and set
+Joan and Martine's minds at ease, Fergan mounted the rampart to meet his
+son. The latter, considering it prudent to keep watch, even after the
+victory of the day, was busy with the measures for the night. At sight
+of his father with his head bandaged, Colombaik uttered a cry of alarm,
+but soon was set at ease by Fergan. After providing for additional
+measures of security, both returned home.
+
+Night had set in. Everywhere the fight had long ended. The communiers
+were collecting their dead and wounded by the light of torches. Women,
+bathed in tears, ran to the places where the fight had been hottest, and
+looked for a father, a husband, a son, or a brother, in the midst of the
+corpses that the streets were strewn with. At other places, exasperated
+at the chiefs of the episcopal party, the communiers were demolishing
+their fortified houses. Finally, at a distance, a brilliant gleam
+crimsoned the sky, and cast its reflection hither and thither on the
+gables of the taller houses. It was the glare of a conflagration. The
+fire was devouring the dwelling of the bishop's treasurer, one of the
+most execrated of the episcopals. Neither did the cathedral of Laon
+escape the avenging torch of the insurgents.
+
+"Never, my child, blot this terrible spectacle from your memory. Such
+are the fruits of civil war," said Fergan to his son, stopping in the
+middle of the Exchange square, one of the most elevated spots of the
+city, and whence the burning cathedral could be seen at a distance.
+"Look at the flames of the conflagration that is devouring the
+cathedral; hark to the sound of the seigniorial towers crashing down
+under the hammer blows of the communiers; listen to the moaning of
+yonder children, now become orphans, of their mothers, now become
+widows; contemplate these wounded men, these bleeding corpses carried
+away by their relatives and by friends in tears; behold at this hour,
+everywhere in the city, mourning, consternation, vengeance, disaster,
+fire and death! Then recall the happy and peaceful aspect that this same
+city offered only yesterday, when the people, in the fullness of their
+joy, inaugurated the symbol of their enfranchisement, bought, agreed and
+sworn to by our oppressors! It was a beautiful day. How our hearts
+leaped at every peal from our belfry! How all eyes shone with pride at
+the sight of our communal banner! All of us, bourgeois and artisans,
+rejoicing in the present and confident of the future, wished to continue
+to live under a charter sworn to by the nobles, the bishop and the King.
+But it happened that nobles, bishop and King, having dissipated the
+money with which we paid for our franchises, said to themselves: 'What
+does a signature or an oath matter; we are powerful and numerous; we are
+used to wielding the lance and the sword; those artisans and bourgeois,
+vile clowns all, will flee before us. To horse, noble episcopals, to
+horse! High the sword! High the lance! Kill, massacre the communiers!'"
+
+"But the communiers made the King of the French take to his heels, and
+have exterminated the knights!" cried Colombaik with enthusiasm. "The
+son of one of the victims of that infamous bishop cleaved his skull in
+two with a blow of his axe! The cathedral is on fire, and the
+seigniorial towers are crumbling down! Such is the price of perjury!
+Such is the terrible and just chastisement of the people who unchained
+the furies of war against this city, so tranquil but yester night! Oh,
+let the blood that has been shed fall upon the criminals! Their turn has
+come to tremble! Old Gaul is waking up after six centuries of torpor!
+The day of the rule of might and clerical chicanery is over! The hour of
+deliverance has sounded!----"
+
+"Not yet, my son!"
+
+"What! The King is fleeing; the bishop killed; the episcopals
+exterminated or in hiding; the city ours!"
+
+"Have you given a thought to the morrow?"
+
+"The morrow? We shall preserve our conquest, or shall fight other
+battles, equally victorious!"
+
+"No illusions, dear boy! Louis the Lusty fled before an insurrection
+that he did not think himself equal to cope with. But ere long he will
+be back to the walls of Laon with considerable forces, and he will then
+dictate his will."
+
+"We shall resist unto death!"
+
+"I know, that despite all our heroism, we shall succumb in the fray."
+
+"What! These franchises, paid for with our good money and now sealed
+with our blood,--shall they be torn from us? Are our children to fall
+back under the abhorred yoke of the lay and ecclesiastical seigneurs?
+Oh, father, are we to despair of the future?"
+
+"To despair? Never! Thanks to the communal insurrections, that were
+provoked by the feudal atrocities, our worst days are over. The
+legitimate and terrible reprisals of Noyon, Cambrai, Amiens and
+Beauvais, just as these fresh ones of Laon, will inspire the seigneurs
+with a wholesome fear. These holy insurrections have proved to our
+masters that the 'clowns, artisans and bourgeois' will no longer allow
+themselves to be taxed at mercy, robbed, tortured and killed with
+impunity. Our darkest days are over. But our descendants will still have
+bloody battles to fight before the arrival of the radiant day predicted
+by Victoria the Great!"
+
+"And yet all has gone our way on this day."
+
+"Rely upon my experience and foresight. Louis the Lusty will presently
+return at the head of redoubtable forces. The death of this infamous
+Gaudry, just though it was, will unchain against our city the fury of
+the clericals. The bolts of excommunication will second the royal arms.
+We are bound to go down--not before the excommunication; people laugh at
+that--but under the blows of the soldiers of Louis the Lusty. Our
+bravest men will be killed in battle, banished or executed after the
+King's victory. Another bishop will be imposed upon the city of Laon.
+Our belfry will be torn down, our seal will be broken, our banner torn
+and our treasury pilfered. The episcopals, supported by the King, will
+take vengeance for their defeat. Torrents of blood will flow in the
+city. That's what's before us."
+
+"Then all is lost!"
+
+"Child," proceeded Fergan with a melancholy smile, "men are killed; the
+principle of freedom never, after it has once penetrated the popular
+heart. Will Louis the Lusty, the new bishop, the nobles, however cruel
+their vengeance may be, massacre all the inhabitants of Laon? No. They
+are bound to leave alive the larger part of the communiers, if for no
+other purpose than to have whom to levy taxes on. The mothers, sisters,
+wives, the children of those who will have died for liberty, will
+continue to live. Oh, no doubt, for a while, the terror will be intense;
+the recollection of the disasters, of the massacres, of the banishments,
+and of the executions that will have followed upon the struggle, will at
+first paralyze all thought of insurrection. But none of that will last."
+
+"Accordingly, the new bishop and the nobles will redouble their
+audacity? Their oppression will become more frightful than before?"
+
+"No, the new bishop, however insensate he may be, will never forget the
+terrible fate of Gaudry; the nobles will not forget the death of so many
+of their people, who fell under the blows of the people's justice. That
+valuable example will be useful to us. The first thirst for vengeance on
+the part of the episcopals, once slaked, they will ease the yoke out of
+fear for new revolts. Nor is that all. Those of us who will have
+survived the struggle, will gradually forget those evil days and recall
+the happy ones when the Commune, free, peaceful, flourishing, exempt
+from all crushing imposts, and wisely governed by a magistracy of its
+own choice, was the pride and bulwark of its inhabitants. Those who will
+have witnessed those happy days will speak of them to their children
+with enthusiasm. They will tell their little ones how one day the King
+and the bishop having leagued themselves against the Commune, the latter
+valiantly rose in arms, forced Louis the Lusty to flee, and exterminated
+the bishop and his episcopals. The glory of the triumph will cause the
+disaster of the subsequent defeat to be forgotten. The feeling will take
+hold of revenging the overthrow of the Commune by restoring it. By
+little and little the enthusiasm will gain ground, and, when the moment
+shall have come, the insurrection will break out anew. Just reprisals
+will once more be exercised against our enemies, and our franchises will
+be proclaimed again. Mayhaps that again that second step towards freedom
+is followed by a savage re-action. But the step will have been taken.
+Some franchises will continue in force. And thus, step by step,
+painfully, by dint of struggles, of courage, of perseverance, our
+descendants, alternately vanquishers and vanquished, halting at times
+after battle to tend their wounded and recover breath, but never
+retreating an inch, will in the course of time arrive at the goal of
+that laborious and bloody journey. Then will the radiant sun of the day
+of Gaul's enfranchisement rise in all its glory!"
+
+"Oh, father," said Colombaik, overpowered with sorrow, "woe is us, if
+Victoria's prediction is not to be verified, according to her prophetic
+visions, but across heaps of ruins and torrents of blood!"
+
+"Do you imagine freedom is gained without struggle? We are the
+vanquishers. Our cause is holy like justice, sacred like right. And yet,
+look around!" answered the quarryman, pointing his son to the dismal
+spectacle presented by Exchange square, encumbered with the dead and
+dying, and lighted by the glamor of the torches and the lingering gleams
+of the fire of the Cathedral. "Look around, what streams of blood, what
+heaps of ruins!"
+
+"Oh, why this terrible fatality!" resumed Colombaik in tones almost of
+despair. "Why must the conquest of such legitimate rights cost so dear!"
+
+"The insurrection of the communal bourgeois is but the symptom of an
+enfranchisement, universal, but still far away. That day of deliverance
+will arrive, but it will arrive only when all the oppressed in city and
+field will rise in a body against their masters. Yes, that great day
+will come ... it may take centuries ... but I shall at least have caught
+the glamour of its dawn ... and I shall die happy!"
+
+
+
+
+EPILOGUE.
+
+
+Two months after the victory of the Commune of Laon over its seigniorial
+suzerain, the Bishop of Laon, and its episcopals, Fergan the Quarryman
+died on the ramparts of the city, defending them against the troops of
+Louis the Lusty. The quarryman's apprehensions had been verified, fully
+and promptly.
+
+The day after the victory the Mayor, Councilmen and several other
+leading citizens, convened to consider the dangers of the situation. An
+attack by Louis the Lusty was expected any moment, nor did any give
+themselves up to illusions concerning the issue. Left to fight the King
+single-handed, the citizens of Laon realized that they would be crushed.
+They decided to seek an ally. One of the most powerful seigneurs of
+Picardy, Thomas, seigneur of the castle of Marle, known for his bravery,
+as well as for his ferocity, in which he equalled Neroweg VI., was a
+personal enemy of the King. Shortly before, in 1108, he had leagued
+himself with Guy, seigneur of Rochefort, and several other knights, to
+prevent the King's being consecrated at Rheims. Despite the iniquitous
+character of Thomas de Marle, and against the advice of Fergan, the
+Commune of Laon, pressed by danger, made propositions to that seigneur,
+who was known to have a large force at his command, for an alliance
+against the King. Thomas de Marle, unwilling to affront the royal power,
+refused to declare war against the King, but consented, in consideration
+of a money payment, to receive on his lands all the communiers who stood
+in fear of the royal vengeance.
+
+A considerable number of insurgents, foreseeing the consequences of a
+struggle with the King, accepted the offer of Thomas de Marle, and,
+carrying their valuables with them, left Laon with wife and children.
+Others, Fergan among them, preferred staying in the city and defending
+themselves against the King unto death. Although the number of the
+communiers was reduced by the migrations to the surrounding regions,
+nevertheless, generous and credulous, the remaining inhabitants of Laon
+had entered into the pacific overtures of the surviving episcopals, who
+were laboring under the demoralizing effect of their recent defeat.
+Soon, however, as the latter realized how greatly the ranks of the
+communiers were thinned by death, and, above all, by the migrations,
+they picked up courage. They ordered the serfs of the abbey to meet in
+the market-place on a given day, and, taking them in command, fell upon
+the communiers in their own houses. Whoever fell into their hands was
+put to the sword. Thus, civil war broke out afresh. The serfs pillaged
+and set on fire all the houses of the bourgeois that they succeeded in
+capturing. Fergan and Joan, Colombaik and Martine, together with the
+apprentices of the tanner, entrenched themselves in their house, which,
+happily fortified, enabled them to sustain victoriously more than one
+siege to which they were subjected.
+
+During these internal disturbances that decimated still further the
+ranks of the remaining communiers, Louis the Lusty was busily engaged
+gathering his forces. Learning that Thomas de Marle was giving asylum on
+his domains to the inhabitants of Laon, the King first marched against
+him, ravaged his lands, besieged him in his fortress of Couchy, took him
+prisoner, and mulcted him with a heavy ransom. As to the people of Laon,
+found within the territory of Thomas de Marle, the King had them all
+sabred or hanged, and their bodies long served as pasture to the birds
+of prey. A rich butcher of Laon, Robert the Eater, was tied to the tail
+of a fiery horse, and died the frightful death of the Queen Brunhild,
+five hundred years before. Through with these bloody executions, Louis
+the Lusty marched upon Laon. The Mayor and Councilmen, faithful to their
+oaths of defending the Commune with their lives, ran to the ramparts,
+together with Fergan, Colombaik and several others of the citizens, to
+oppose the entrance of the King. At the last battle a large number of
+the communiers fell on the field, dead or wounded. Fergan was killed,
+Colombaik was wounded in two places. The defeat of the communiers was
+inevitable.
+
+The King took the city and placed a new bishop in the seigniory. But
+here also the forecast of Fergan proved correct. Thanks to the
+remembrance of the insurrection and of the just reprisals of the
+insurgents, the exorbitant privileges of the bishop and noblemen were
+modified.
+
+Colombaik was not allowed to taste these limited sweets of the heroic
+defence of Laon. Himself and others, among whom were the Mayor and the
+Councilmen, too deeply compromised in the insurrection, were banished
+from the place, and all their property confiscated. But young and full
+of life as well as of hope for the future and of pride at the past,
+though ruined, the quarryman's son settled down with his mother and
+wife, and resumed his trade as a tanner at Toulouse in Languedoc, where,
+thanks to the local advantages of industry and intelligence, commerce
+then flourished and, at that season, thought enjoyed freedom.
+
+(The End.)
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] A Gallic heroine of the second century.
+
+[B] A Norse chieftain who led a piratical invasion of France in the
+eighth century, and was pacified with the fief of Normandy where he and
+his followers in arms settled.
+
+[C] William, Archbishop of Tyre, reports this frightful address in his
+history of the Crusaders.
+
+[D] Baudry, Archbishop of Dole, says: "It was not imputed a crime to eat
+up the Saracens; it was considered to be a waging of war against them
+with the teeth."
+
+[E] Four-handed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the
+Quarryman, by Eugene Sue
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PILGRIM'S SHELL ***
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #34531 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34531)