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The Iron Trevet; or, Jocelyn the Champion: A Tale of the Jacquerie

by Eugène Sue · English · Gutenberg #34390 · 503,505 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Iron Trevet; or, Jocelyn the Champion: A Tale of the Jacquerie

Author: Eugène Sue

Translator: Daniel De Leon


        
Release date: November 21, 2010 [eBook #34390]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34390

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
        produced from images available at The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IRON TREVET; OR, JOCELYN THE CHAMPION: A TALE OF THE JACQUERIE ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images available at The Internet Archive)









THE IRON TREVET

OR

JOCELYN THE CHAMPION

A Tale of the Jacquerie

By EUGENE SUE

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH BY
DANIEL DE LEON

NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY, 1906

Copyright, 1906, by the
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.


Etienne Marcel, John Maillart, William Caillet, Adam the Devil and
Charles the Wicked, King of Navarre, are the five leading personages in
this story. Their figures and actions, the virtues and foibles of the
ones, the vices of the others, the errors of all, are drawn with strict
historic accuracy, all the five being historic characters. Seeing the
historic importance of the epoch in which they figured, and the types
that these five men represent, the story of "The Iron Trevet; or,
Jocelyn, the Champion" is more than an historic narrative, it is more
than a treatise on the philosophy of history, it is a treatise on human
nature, it is a compendium of lessons inestimable to whomsoever his or
her good or evil genius throws into the clash of human currents, and to
those who, though not themselves participants, still may wish to
understand that which they are spectators of and which, some way or
other, they are themselves affected by and, some way or other, are bound
to either support or resist.

In a way, "The Iron Trevet; or, Jocelyn the Champion" is the uniquest of
the series of brilliant stories that the genius of Eugene Sue has
enriched the world with under the collective title of "The Mysteries of
the People"--we can recall no other instance in which so much profound
and practical instruction is so skillfully clad in the pleasing drapery
of fiction, and one within so small a compass.

To America whose youthful years deprive her of historic perspective,
this little story, or rather work, can not but be of service. To that
vast English-speaking world at large, now throbbing with the pulse of
awakening aspirations, this translation discloses another treasure
trove, long and deliberately held closed to it in the wrappage of the
foreign tongue in which the original appeared.

DANIEL DE LEON.

New York, April 13, 1904.




INDEX


Translator's Preface                                                 iii

Part I.   The Seigniory of Nointel.

    Chapter 1.   The Tavern of Alison the Huffy                       10

    Chapter 2.   The Amende Honorable                                 26

    Chapter 3.   The Tournament                                       34

    Chapter 4.   The Judicial Combat                                  39

    Chapter 5.   Sheet Lightenings                                    50

    Chapter 6.   Prophecies and Premonitions                          58

    Chapter 7.   Wrecked Hearts                                       65

Part II.   The Regency of Normandy.

    Chapter 1.   The States General                                   74

    Chapter 2.   Etienne Marcel                                       77

    Chapter 3.   The Man of the Furred Cap                            83

    Chapter 4.   The Serpent Under the Grass                          97

    Chapter 5.   Charles the Wicked                                  105

    Chapter 6.   The Meeting at the Cordeliers                       118

    Chapter 7.   Popular Justice                                     126

    Chapter 8.   "The Hour Has Sounded!"                             143

Part III.   The Jacquerie.

    Chapter 1.    Captain Griffith and His Chaplain                  154

    Chapter 2.    The Fox's Burrow                                   161

    Chapter 3.   The Castle of Chivry                                175

    Chapter 4.   Jacquerie! Jacquerie!                               180

    Chapter 5.    The Orville Bridge                                 191

    Chapter 6.   "On to Clermont!"                                   207

    Chapter 7.    Clermont                                           211

Part IV.   John Maillart.

    Chapter 1.   The Wages of Envy                                   228

    Chapter 2.   Last Day at Home                                    239

    Chapter 3.   Darkening Shadows                                   247

    Chapter 4.   Plotters Uncovered                                  258

    Chapter 5.   The Gate of St. Antoine                             267

Epilogue                                                             270




PART I.

THE SEIGNIORY OF NOINTEL.




CHAPTER I.

THE TAVERN OF ALISON THE HUFFY.


On a Sunday, towards the end of the month of October of 1356, a great
stir was noticeable since early morning in the little town of Nointel,
situated a few leagues from the city of Beauvais, in the department of
Beauvoisis. The tavern of Alison the Huffy--so nicknamed from her hot
temper, although she was a good woman--was rapidly filling with
artisans, villeins and serfs who came to wait for the hour of mass at
the tavern, where, due to the prevailing poverty, little was drunk and
much talked. Alison never complained. As talkative as huffy, dame Alison
preferred to see her tavern full with chatterers than empty of tipplers.
Still fresh and buxom, though on the shady side of thirty, she wore a
short skirt and low bodice--probably because her bust was well rounded
and her limbs well shaped. Black of hair, bright of eyes, white of
teeth, and quick of hands, more than once since her widowhood, had
Alison broken a bumper over the head of some customer, whom liquor had
rendered too expressive in his admiration for her charms. Accordingly,
like a prudent housekeeper, she had taken the precaution of replacing
her earthenware bumpers with pewter ones. That morning the dame seemed
to be in a particular huffy mood, judging by her rumpling brows, her
brusque motions, and her sharp and cross words.

Presently, the door of the tavern was darkened and in stepped a man of
vigorous age, with an angular and sun-burnt face, whose only striking
features were two little, piercing, crafty and savage eyes half hidden
under his eyebrows thick and grizzly like his hair, that escaped in
disorder from under his old woolen cap. He had traveled a long distance;
his wooden shoes, shabby cloth leggings and patched smock-frock were
covered with dust. He was noticeably tired; it was with difficulty that
he moved his limbs with the support of a knotted stick. Hardly inside
the tavern, the serf, whose name was William Caillet, let himself down
heavily upon a bench, immediately placing his elbows on his knees and
his head upon his hands. Alison the Huffy, already out of humor, as
stated, called to him sharply:

"What do you want here? I do not know you. If you want to drink, pay; if
not, off with you!"

"In order to drink, money is needed; I have none," answered William
Caillet; "allow me to rest on this bench, good woman."

"My tavern is no lazar-house," replied Alison; "be gone, you vagabond!"

"Come now, hostess, we have never seen you in such a bad humor," put in
one of the customers; "let the poor man rest; we invite him to a
bumper."

"Thank you," answered the serf with a somber gesture and shaking his
head; "I'm not thirsty."

"If you do not drink you have no business here," the buxom tavern-keeper
was saying when a voice, hailing from without, called: "Where is the
hostess ... where is she ... a thousand bundles of demons! Is there no
one here to take my horse? Our throats are dry and our tongues hanging
out. Ho, there, hostess, attend to us!"

The arrival of a rider, always a good omen for a hostlery, drew Alison
away from her anger. She called her maid servant while herself ran to
the door to answer the impatient traveler, who, his horse's bridle in
hand, continued finding fault, although good-naturedly. The new arrival
was about twenty-four years of age; the visor of his somewhat rusty
casque, wholly raised, exposed to view a pleasant face, the left cheek
of which was furrowed with a deep scar. Thanks to his Herculean build,
his heavy cuirass of tarnished iron, but still usable, seemed not to
press him any more than a coat of cloth. His coat of mail, newly patched
in several places, fell half over his thigh-armor, made, like his
greaves, of iron, the latter of which were hidden within the large
traveling boots. From his shoulder-strap hung a long sword, from his
belt a sharp dagger of the class called "mercy". His mace, which
consisted of a thick cudgel an arm long, terminating in three little
iron chains riveted to a ball seven or eight pounds heavy, hung from the
pommel of the rider's saddle, together with his steel-studded and ribbed
buckler. Three reserve wooden lance shafts, tied together, and the
points of which rested in a sort of leather bonnet, adjusted to the
strap of one of his stirrups, were held up straight along the saddle,
behind which a sheep-skin satchel was attached. The horse was large and
vigorous. Its head, neck, chest and part of its crupper were protected
by an iron caparison--a heavy armor that the robust animal carried as
easily as its master wore his.

Responding to the redoubled calls of the traveler, Alison the Huffy ran
out with her maid and said in bitter-sweet voice: "Here I am, Sir. Hein!
If ever you are canonized, it will not be, I very much fear, under the
invocation of St. Patience!"

"By the bowels of the Pope, my fair hostess, your pretty black eyes and
pink cheeks could never be seen too soon. As sure as your garter could
serve you for a belt, the prettiest girl of Paris, where I come from,
could not be compared to you. By Venus and Cupid, you are the pearl of
hostesses."

"You come from Paris, Sir Knight!" said Alison with joyful surprise,
being at once flattered by the compliments of the traveler, and proud of
having a guest from Paris, the great city. "You really come from Paris?"

"Yes, truly. But tell me, am I rightly informed? Is there to be a
passage of arms to-day, here in the valley of Nointel?"

"Yes, Sir; you arrive in time. The tourney is to begin soon; right after
mass."

"Well, then, my pretty hostess, while I take my horse to the stable to
have him well fed, you will prepare a good repast for myself, and, to
the end that it may taste all the better, you will share it with me
while we chat together. There is much information that I need from you;"
and raising his coat of mail to enable him to reach his leather purse,
the rider took from it a piece of silver. Giving it to Alison, he said
gaily: "Here is payment in advance for my score. I am none of your
strollers, so frequent in these days, who pay their host with sword
thrusts and by plundering his house;" but noticing that Alison examined
the piece before putting it in her pocket, he added laughing: "Accept
that coin as I did, with eyes shut. The devil take it, only King John
and his minter know what the piece is worth, and whether it contains
more lead than it does silver!"

"Oh, Sir Knight, is it not terrible to think that our master, the King,
is an inveterate false-coiner? What times these are! We are borne down
with taxes, and we never know the value of what we have!"

"True. But I wager, my pretty hostess, that your lover is in no such
annoying ignorance.... Come, you will have overcome your modest blushes
by the time your maid has shown me the way to the stable, after which
you will make my breakfast ready. But you must share it with me; that's
understood."

"As you please, Sir Knight," answered Alison, more and more charmed with
the jolly temper of the stranger. Accordingly, she hastened to busy
herself with the preparations for the meal, and in a short time spread
upon one of the tables of the tavern a toothsome dish of bacon in green
fennel, flanked with fried eggs, cheese and a mug of foaming beer.

The serf, William Caillet, now forgotten by the hostess, his forehead
resting on both his hands, seemed lost to what went on around him, and
kept his seat on a bench not far from the table at which presently
Alison and the traveler took theirs. Back from the stable, the latter
relieved himself of his casque, dagger and sword, laying them down near
to himself, and proceeded to do honor to the repast.

"Sir Knight," said Alison, "you come from Paris? What fine stories you
will have to tell!"

"Mercy, pretty hostess, do not call me 'Sir Knight.' I belong to the
working class, not the nobility. My name is Jocelyn. My father is a
book-seller, and I am a _champion_[1] as my battle-harness attests to
you;--and here I am at your service."

"Can it be!" exclaimed Alison, joining her hands in glad astonishment,
"you are a fighting champion?"

"Yes, and I have not yet lost a single case, as you may judge from my
right hand not yet being cut off--a penalty reserved for all champions
who are vanquished in a judicial duel. Although often wounded, I have at
least always rendered a Roland for my adversary's Oliver. I learned in
Paris that there was to be a tourney here and thinking that, as usual,
it would be followed or preceded by some judicial combat, where I might
represent the appellant or the appellee, I came to the place on a
venture. Now, then, as a tavern-keeper, you are surely informed
thereon."

"Oh, Sir champion! It is heaven that sends you. There will surely be
need of you."

"Heaven, I am of the opinion, mixes but little in my concerns. Let us
leave Gog and Magog to settle their affairs among themselves."

"You should know that, unfortunately, I have a process. I admit that I
am in great trouble."

"You, my pretty hostess?"

"It is now three months ago that I lent twelve florins to Simon the
Hirsute. When I asked him for the money, the mean thief denied the debt.
We went before the seneschal. I maintained what I said; Simon maintained
his side. There were no witnesses either for or against us, and as the
amount involved was above five sous, the seneschal ordered a judicial
battle. But who would take my part?"

"And you have found nobody to be your champion against Simon the
Hirsute?"

"Alas, no! By reason of his strength and his wickedness the fellow is
feared all over this country. No one would venture to fight with him."

"Well, my pretty hostess, you can count with me. I shall fight him as
well for the sake of your pretty eyes as for the sake of your cause."

"Oh, my cause is good, Sir champion. It is as true that I lent Simon the
Hirsute those twelve florins as.... I'll tell you how it was--"

"You need say no more. A pretty mouth like yours would not fib.
Moreover, I'm in the habit of placing confidence in what my clients tell
me. What is wanted is, not solid reasons, but rude blows with the sword,
the lance or the mace. Thus, so long as this right fist is not cut off,
it will offer arguments more conclusive than the subtlest ones of the
most famous jurists."

"I must not conceal from you the fact that that thief of a Simon has
been an archer. He is a dangerous man. Everybody is afraid of him."

"Pretty hostess, there is another custom I have when I am to plead a
case. I never inquire how my adversary fights. In that way I never form
in advance a plan of attack, frequently frustrated in practice. I have a
quick and correct eye. Once on the arena, I size up my man, fall to, and
decide on the spot whether to thrust or to cut. I have ever
congratulated myself on this manner of pleading. You may rely upon me.
The tourney does not open till noon; my arms are in good condition and
my horse is eating his provender. Let's drink a glass: Long live joy, my
pretty hostess! and good luck to the good cause!"

"Oh, helpful champion! If you gain my process I shall give you three
florins. It would not be paying too much for the pleasure of seeing the
scamp of a Simon the Hirsute brought to grief!"

"Agreed! If I gain your process you will give me three florins and a
smacking kiss for good measure, if you like!... Agreed?"

"Oh, Sir, such things are not said."

"Well, then, I shall give you the smacking kiss, seeing the other plan
embarrasses you. But by all the devils, your forehead remains troubled.
Why so? You needed a champion, and heaven--as you said--sends you one
who is impatient to sail into the thief, and yet your pretty forehead
keeps its wrinkles!"

"I should be satisfied, and yet my heart is heavy. I want to tell you
all about it."

"Have you, perchance, some other process, or some unfaithful lover? You
may speak freely to me."

Alison remained for a moment sad and silent, whereupon she resumed with
painful voice.

"Sir champion, you come from Paris; you must be very learned. Perhaps
you may render a service to a poor lad who is much to be pitied, and who
also must himself do battle to-day in a judicial duel, but under very
sad circumstances."

"Explain yourself. What is the matter?"

"In this country of Nointel, when a female serf or bourgeois marries,
the seigneur, if it please him, is entitled to ... the first night of
his female vassal. They call it the 'right of first fruits.' ... At
least do not laugh!"

"Laugh! Not by the devil!" answered Jocelyn, whose face suddenly
overspread with somberness. "Oh, you recall to my mind a melancholy
affair. A short while ago I had to plead a case on the arena near
Amiens. Crossing a village, I saw a gathering of serfs. Upon inquiry I
learned that one of the peasants of the group, a butcher attached to the
fief of the bishopric, had married that very morning a handsome girl of
the parish. The bishop, in the exercise of his right, sent for the bride
to take her to his bed. The serf answered the episcopal bailiff, charged
with the mission: 'My wife is in my hut, I shall bring her out to you';
and coming back a few instants later said to him: 'My wife is a little
bashful, she does not like to come out, go in and bring her out
yourself.' The bailiff went into the hut, and what does he find? The
unhappy girl lying in a pool of blood; she was dead."

"Good God! What a shocking story!"

"In order to ransom her from dishonor, her husband had killed her with a
blow of his axe."

At these words, William Caillet, who until then had remained indifferent
to the conversation between Alison and Jocelyn, shook convulsively,
raised his savage face and listened, while, tears streaming from her
eyes, Alison cried: "Oh, poor woman! To be thus killed! What a terrible
resolution must not have seized her husband to resort to such a
frightful extreme!"

"Resolute men are rare."

"Alas, Sir champion. Those who, degraded by serfdom, remain indifferent
to such ignominy are perhaps less to be pitied than those who resent
it."

"But most of them do resent it," cried Jocelyn. "In vain do the
seigneurs seek to reduce these ill-starred beings to the state of
brutes. Are not even among wild beasts the males seen to defend their
females unto death? Does not man, however coarse, however brutified,
however craven he may be, fire up with jealousy the moment he loves? Is
not love the only possession left to the serfs, the only solace in their
misery? Blood and death! I grow savage at the mere thought of the rage
and despair of a serf at the sight of the humble companion of his
cheerless days sullied forever by a seigneur! By the navel of Satan, by
the horns of Moses, the thought of it exasperates me!"

"Oh, Sir," said Alison with tears in her eyes, "your words tell the
story of that poor Mazurec, the young man I was about to tell you of."

William Caillet again shook convulsively at the sound of the name of
Mazurec, and leaped up, but controlling himself by dint of a violent
effort, he resumed his seat, and lent increased attention to what was
said by Alison and Jocelyn, who himself seemed greatly struck by the
name of Mazurec, that his hostess had just pronounced.

"The serf's name is Mazurec?" he inquired, visibly affected.

"Yes, Sir. Why does the name surprise you?"

"It is one of my own father's given names. Do you know the age of the
young fellow?"

"He can be no more than twenty years; his mother, who has long been
dead, was not of this neighborhood."

"Whence came she?"

"I could not tell you that. She arrived here shortly before the birth of
Mazurec. She begged her bread. Our neighbor the miller of the Gallion
mill, took pity upon her. His own wife had died in childbed about two
months before. The name of Mazurec's mother was Gervaise."

"Gervaise?" repeated Jocelyn, seeming to interrogate his memory, "was
her name Gervaise?"

"Yes, Sir champion. She was so pleasing and sweet to the eyes of the
miller that he said to himself: 'She must soon be brought to bed; if she
is willing, she shall be nurse to both my child and her own.' And so it
was. Gervaise brought up the two boys. She was so industrious and of so
good a character that the miller kept her as a servant. Then a
misfortune happened. The Count of Beaumont declared war to the Sire of
Nointel. That is now five years ago. The miller was compelled to follow
his seigneur to war. During that time the men of Beaumont raided the
place, burning and sacking. They set fire to the mill where Gervaise was
left with the two children. She perished in the flames, together with
the miller's child. Mazurec alone escaped miraculously. Out of pity my
husband and I took him in."

"You are a worthy woman, my hostess. I shall have to cut the throat of
Simon the Hirsute."

"Do not praise me too much, Sir champion. The hardest heart would have
taken an interest in Mazurec. He was the sweetest and best child in the
world. His goodness and mildness won for him the name of Mazurec the
Lambkin."

"And did he make good the promise of his name?"

"He was a real lamb. All night long he cried for his mother and his
foster brother. By day he helped us, according to his strength, in
whatever work we had in hand. When the war closed our neighbor the
miller did not come back. He had been killed. The Sire of Nointel had
the burnt-down mill rebuilt. God only knows what taxes he imposed upon
us, his vassals, to indemnify himself for the expenses of his campaign
against the seigneur of Beaumont. Mazurec took service under the new
miller. Every Sunday, on his way to church, Mazurec stopped here to
thank us for our kindness towards him. There is no more grateful heart
than his. And now I'll tell you how his misfortune came about.
Occasionally he was sent by the miller with bags of flour to the village
of Cramoisy, about three leagues from here, where the Sire of Nointel
has established a fortified post. In that village--poor Mazurec has made
me his confidante--he often saw, seated at the door of her hut, a
beautiful young girl, spinning at her wheel; other times he met her
pasturing her cow along the green borders of the road. This young girl
was known as Aveline-who-never-lied. She had a heart of gold."

"And these two folks loved each other?"

"Indeed! They loved each other passionately. And they were well
matched."

William Caillet listened to Alison's narrative with redoubled attention.
Unable, to keep back a tear that rolled down his emaciated cheeks, he
wiped it off with the back of his hand. The tavern-keeper proceeded:

"Mazurec was a serf of the same seigniory with Aveline and her father.
The latter consented to the marriage. The bailiff of the Sire of Nointel
in the absence of his master, also gave his consent. Everything was
moving smoothly along, and often did Mazurec say to me: 'Dame Alison,
what a pity that my mother cannot witness our happiness!'"

"But how came these happy hopes to be destroyed, my pretty hostess?"

"You know, Sir, that, if the seigneur is willing, the vassals can ransom
themselves of the infamous right that we spoke of a few minutes ago. So
did my deceased husband, without which I would have remained single all
my life. Aveline's father had a cow for only earthly possession. He sold
that, preferring to forfeit the animal that furnished him with food,
rather than to see his adored daughter dishonored by the Sire of
Nointel. The day of the bethrothal Mazurec went to the castle to deliver
to the bailiff the price of the bride's redemption. Unfortunately, the
bailiff happened to be away. The bridegroom returned to Aveline, and her
father decided that they should be married the next morning, and that
immediately after the mass Mazurec should return to the castle to ransom
his wife. The marriage took place, and, according to custom, the bride
remained locked up at the vicarage until the husband could show his
letter of redemption."

"Yes," observed Jocelyn. "And it therefore often happens that, to escape
the disgrace, brides yield themselves to their intended husbands before
marriage. No more than just, under the circumstances."

"But too true; and often also the men thereupon leave the poor girl and
do not marry her. But neither Mazurec nor Aveline entertained such evil
thoughts. In possession of the needed sum for the ransom, he only asked
to acquit himself honestly. After the mass, Mazurec returned to the
castle, carrying the money in a purse suspended from his belt. On the
road he met a knight who inquired for the way to Nointel; and, would you
believe it, Sir? while Mazurec was giving him the directions, the scamp
of a knight stooped down in the saddle as if to adjust the strap of his
stirrup, snatched the purse from poor Mazurec, and, spurring his horse,
galloped off."

"There are hundreds of such thefts committed. The knights look upon them
as mere feats of knighthood. But they are infamous acts!"

"Mazurec, left behind distracted, vainly ran after the thief. He lost
sight of him. An hour later he arrived breathless at the castle, threw
himself at the feet of the bailiff, told him of his mishap, and with
tears in his eyes demanded justice against the thief. The Sire of
Nointel, who had arrived at his manor that very morning from Paris,
accompanied by several friends, happened to cross the corridor at the
very time that Mazurec was imploring the bailiff's help. The Sire of
Nointel, informed of the occurrence, asked, laughing, whether the bride
was pretty. 'There is none prettier in your domain, Sire', answered the
bailiff. Suddenly, his eyes falling upon one of the knights of the
Sire's suite, Mazurec cried: 'It is he who robbed me of my purse, only
an hour ago!' 'Miserable serf', thundered the seigneur, 'dare you charge
one of my guests with robbery? You lie!'"

"Without a doubt the thievish knight denied the robbery."

"Yes, Sir, and Mazurec, on his side, still insisted. Thereupon, after a
whispered conversation with the bailiff and the knight who was accused
of the robbery, the Sire of Nointel gave this decision: 'One of my
equerries, escorted by several men-at-arms, shall forthwith proceed to
the vicarage and conduct the bride here. According to my right, I shall
spend the night with her. To-morrow morning she may be returned to that
vassal. As to the charge of robbery, that he has the effrontery to
prefer against a noble knight, the knight demands the trial of arms, and
if, although defeated, this vile varlet survives the battle, he shall
be tied up in a bag and cast into the river as the defamer of a knight.
Let justice take its course.'"

"Oh!" cried Jocelyn, "the unhappy lad is lost. The knight is the
appellant, as such he has the right to fight on horseback and in full
armor, against the serf in a smock-frock and with a stick for only
weapon."

"Alas, Sir! As you see I had good reasons for being heavy at heart. Poor
Mazurec thought less on the battle than on his bride. He threw himself
sobbing at the feet of his seigneur, and beseeched him not to dishonor
Aveline. And do you know what answer the Sire of Nointel made to him?
'Jacques Bonhomme'[2]--that's the title of derision that the nobles give
their serfs--'Jacques Bonhomme, my friend, I have two reasons for
spending this night with your wife: first, because, as they say, she is
quite comely; and second, because that will be the punishment for your
insolence to charge one of my guests with larceny.' At these words
Mazurec the Lambkin became Mazurec the Wolf. He threw himself furiously
upon his seigneur, meaning to strangle him. But the knights who stood by
felled the poor serf to the floor, pinioned him and thrust him into a
dungeon. Can anything exceed such cruelty? Add to that that the Sire of
Nointel is himself betrothed to be married; his bride, the noble damosel
Gloriande of Chivry, is to be the queen of the tourney about to take
place."

"Shame!" cried Jocelyn, his cheeks aflame with indignation, and
furiously striking the table with his Herculean fist. "An end must be
put to these horrors! They cry for vengeance! They cry for blood!"

"Oh! There will be blood!" whispered a hollow voice in the ear of
Jocelyn. "Floods of blood! The torch and the axe will do their office";
and feeling a strange hand pressing on his shoulder, the champion
turned quickly around. Before him stood William Caillet.

"What do you want?" asked the young man, struck by the sinister and
desperate looks of the peasant. "What do you want of me? Who are you?"

"I am the father of Mazurec's wife."

"You, poor man?" cried the hostess with pity. "Oh! I regret to have been
rude to you. Pardon me, poor father. Alas, what have you come here for?"

"For my daughter," answered William; and he added with a frightful
smile: "She will be now returned to me; the night is over; the infamous
dues are paid."

"My God! My God!" rejoined Alison, unable to repress her tears. "And
when we think that poor Mazurec is a prisoner at the castle, and that
this morning, before mass, he is to make the 'amende honorable' on his
knees before the Sire of Nointel--"

"He! Is he to be subjected to that further indignity?" cried Jocelyn,
interrupting his hostess. "And what is he to apologize for?"

"Alas, Sir champion!" answered Alison, "I have not yet told you the end
of the adventure. While Mazurec was being taken to prison, the bailiff
went for Aveline at the vicarage and brought her to the castle. She
resisted her seigneur with all her strength. He then laughed in her face
and said: 'Ho! you resist me! Very well. I shall now have the pleasure
of exercising my right by judicial decree. It will be a good lesson to
Jacques Bonhomme.' He thereupon had the bride taken to a cell, and
lodged a complaint against her in the court of the seneschal at
Beauvais. Seeing that the law recognizes the right of a seigneur over
his female vassals, the court gave its decree accordingly. It is in the
name of justice that the wretched Aveline was violated last night by our
seigneur; it is in the name of justice that Mazurec is sentenced to beg
the pardon of his seigneur for having intended to oppose him in the
exercise of his seigniorial right; it is in the name of justice that,
after this public expiation, Mazurec is to fight the thief of a knight."

"Aye," put in William Caillet, clenching his fists; "Mazurec is to fight
on foot and armed with a stick against his robber, covered with iron ...
Mazurec will be vanquished and killed, or, if he survive, will be
drowned. I shall try to fish out his body and bury him in some hole ...
Then I shall take away my daughter ... She is to be returned to me this
morning, and who knows but in nine months I may be the grandfather of a
noble brat!" After a short pause the peasant resumed with a sinister and
chilling smile: "Oh! If that child should live ... if it should
live...." But he did not finish his sentence. For a moment he remained
silent; then, laying his horny right hand upon the shoulder of Jocelyn,
he approached the young man's ear and added in a low voice: "Shortly ago
you said an end must be put to these horrors, they call for blood!"

"Yes, and I say so again. These horrors cry for vengeance! They cry for
the death and destruction of our oppressors!"

"He who says that aloud is a man who will act," replied the serf
fastening his small, savage and piercing eyes upon the champion. "If the
time for action arrives, remember William Caillet ... of the village of
Cramoisy, near Clermont."

"I shall not forget your name," Jocelyn returned in a low voice to
Caillet, and clasped his hand. "The hour of justice and vengeance may
sound sooner than you think, especially if there are many serfs like
you!"

"There are," rejoined the peasant in the same low voice. "Jacques
Bonhomme is on his feet. We are preparing a general uprising."

"It was to assure myself regarding that that I rode into this region,"
whispered Jocelyn in the ear of Caillet, without being heard by Alison.
"Silence and courage! The day of reprisal is at hand."

More and more agreeably surprised at meeting in Jocelyn an unexpected
ally, the peasant did not remove his penetrating eyes from the young
man. Habituated by servitude to mistrust, he feared to be deceived by
the promises of an unknown person. Suddenly the chimes of the church of
Nointel fell upon their ears. Alison shivered. "Oh!" said she, "I shall
not have the courage to witness the ceremony!"

"What do you mean?" asked Jocelyn, while the men who had gathered in the
tavern trooped out precipitately, saying: "Let us hasten to the parvise
of the church.... One should see everything there is to be seen...."

"They are going to witness the 'amende honorable' of poor Mazurec,"
answered Alison.

"I shall have more courage than you, my good hostess," said Jocelyn
taking up his sword and casque, and looking for William Caillet, who,
however, had disappeared. "I shall witness that sad ceremony because,
for more reasons than one, the fate of Mazurec interests me. The tourney
will not begin until after mass; I shall have time to return for my
horse so as to have myself forthwith entered by the judge-at-arms as
your defender against Simon the Hirsute."

"My God, Sir! Is there, then, no way to prevent the judicial duel of
poor Mazurec?... It means death to him!"

"If he declines the battle he will be drowned; such is the law of our
feudal lords. But I hope I may be able to give Mazurec some good advice.
I shall try and speak to him. Wait for me here, my pretty hostess, and
do not lose hope."

Saying this, Jocelyn wended his steps towards the parvise of the
church.




CHAPTER II.

THE "AMENDE HONORABLE".


The church of Nointel rose at one end of a spacious square, into which
two tortuous streets ran out. The houses, most of which were constructed
of wood, sculptured with no little art, were topped with slated roofs,
pointed and deeply inclined. Some of these domiciles were ornamented
with balconies, where on this morning numerous spectators stood crowded.
Thanks to his athletic physique, Jocelyn succeeded without much trouble
to reach the edge of the parvise, where, among a number of knights,
stood the Sire of Nointel, a tall young man of haughty and scoffing
mien, whose reddish blonde hair was curled like a woman's. He wore,
according to the fashion of the time, a richly embroidered short velvet
tunic, and silk hose of two different colors. The left side of his
clothing was red, the other yellow. His shoes, made of tender cordwain,
tapered upward like a gilded ram's horn. From his half red, half yellow
velvet bonnet, ornamented with a chain of precious stones, waved a tuft
of ostrich feathers--altogether a head-gear of exorbitant value. The
friends of the Sire of Nointel were, like himself, dressed in
parti-colored garb. Behind this brilliant company, stood the pages and
equerries of the seigneur carrying his colors. One of them held his
banner, emblazoned with three eagle's talons on a red background. At the
sight of that device, the designation of the house of Neroweg, the
hereditary enemy of his own family, Jocelyn shuddered, astonishment
seized him, he became profoundly pensive. The rasping voice of a royal
notary drew Jocelyn from his reverie. Stepping forward to the front of
the parvise, the notary three times called for silence, and then, amidst
the profound stillness of the crowd, he proceeded to read:

     "Whereas the charter and statute on the right of first fruits vests
     in the seigneur of the lands and seigniory of Nointel, Loury,
     Berteville, Cramoisy, Saint-Leu and other places the privilege of
     demanding the first wedded day of all the maids _who are not
     noble_, and who shall marry in said seigniory, after which the said
     seigneur shall no longer touch the said married woman, and shall
     leave her to her husband;

     "And whereas, on the eleventh day of this month,
     Aveline-who-never-lied, a female serf of the parish of Cramoisy,
     was married to Mazurec the Lambkin, a miller serf at the Gallion
     mill;

     "And whereas, our young, high, noble and puissant seigneur, Conrad
     Neroweg, knight and seigneur of the said seigniory herein above
     mentioned, having wished to exercise his right of first fruits on
     the said Aveline-who-never-lied, and the said Mazurec the Lambkin,
     her husband, having sought to oppose himself thereto by using
     unseemly words towards the said seigneur, and the said married
     woman having been required to submit to the said right and having
     obstinately refused, the said seigneur, by reason of the
     disobedience of the said married couple and their unseemly words,
     caused them both to be separately imprisoned and filed a criminal
     bill with his worship the seneschal of Beauvoisis notifying him of
     the above occurrences;

     "And whereas, an inquest was made in writing and by the summoning
     of witnesses upon the ancient right and custom in order to
     ascertain and establish that the said seigneur of Nointel has the
     said right to the first fruits; and the information being gathered
     and inquest made, a sentence was rendered by the court of the
     seneschal of Beauvoisis, as follows, word by word:"

Clenching his fists with rage, Jocelyn observed to himself: "Can law,
can justice consecrate such infamy! To what human power can these
wretched vassals appeal in their despair? Oh, the martyrs of so many
centuries can not fail to demand heavy reprisals!"

The royal notary proceeded to read:

     "The case of the young, high, noble and puissant Conrad Neroweg,
     seigneur of Nointel and other seigniories, reclaimer of the right
     of first fruits upon all maids, not noble, who marry in the said
     seigniory, the party of the one part, and Aveline-who-never-lied,
     recently married to Mazurec the Lambkin, refuser of the said right,
     the party of the other part; and the said seigneur of Nointel, also
     claimant in reparation and chastisement for the unseemly words
     pronounced by the said Mazurec the Lambkin. The court of the
     seneschal of Beauvoisis, in view of the criminal charges of the
     said seigneur and the information and inquests taken, rendering
     justice to the parties concerned, says and declares that _the said
     seigneur is well grounded in law and in reason in claiming the
     first fruits from all maids, not noble, married in his seigniory;_
     and by reason of that which is declared herein above, the said
     court has sentenced and now condemns the said
     Aveline-who-never-lied and the said Mazurec the Lambkin _to render
     obedience to the said seigneur in what concerns his right of the
     first fruits_; and concerning the unseemly words that the said
     Mazurec the Lambkin pronounced against his seigneur, the _said
     court has sentenced and now sentences him to apologise to said
     seigneur and, with one knee on the ground, his head bare, and his
     hands crossed over his breast, to pray his mercy in the presence of
     all who were assembled at his wedding_. And, furthermore, the said
     court orders that the present sentence shall be announced by a
     royal notary or beadle in front of the church of the said
     seigniory."

The decree, which confirmed and consecrated through the organs of law
and justice the most execrable of all the feudal laws, produced
different emotions in the surrounding crowd. Some, stupefied with
terror, misery and ignorance, cowardly resigned to a disgrace that their
fathers had been subjected to and was reserved for their own children,
seemed amazed at the resistance that Mazurec had offered; others, who,
due to a sentiment, if not of love, yet of dignity, prized themselves
happy that, thanks to their money, the ugliness of their wives, or the
accidental absence of the seigneur, they had been able to escape the
ignominy, imagined themselves in the place of the condemned man and were
somewhat moved with pity for him; finally, the larger number, married or
not, serfs, villeins or townsmen, felt violent indignation, hardly
repressed by fear. Hollow murmurs ran through the crowd at the last
words of the notary. But all these sentiments soon made place for those
of anguish and compassion when, led by the seigneur's men-at-arms, the
condemned man appeared at the portico of the church. Mazurec was about
twenty years of age, and the benignity of his face and the mildness of
his nature had earned him the name of Lambkin. On that day, however, he
seemed transfigured by misfortune and despair. His physiognomy was
savage and pinched, his clothes in tatters, his face livid, his eyes
fixed and red with tears and sleeplessness, his hair tumbling--all
imparted to him a frightful appearance. Two men-at-arms unbound the
prisoner, and pressing heavily upon his shoulders forced him to drop
upon his knees before the Sire of Nointel, who together with his
friends, laughed outright at the abject submission of Jacques Bonhomme.
Presently the royal notary said in a loud voice:

"The reparation and amende honorable of the condemned man to his
seigneur must have for witness those who assisted at the marriage of
Mazurec. Let them come forward."

At these words, Jocelyn the Champion saw William Caillet and another
robust serf, called Adam the Devil, step from the front ranks of the
crowd. To judge by the perspiration that bathed his bony and tired face,
the latter had just run a long distance. Struck, at first, by the
determined mien of Adam the Devil, Jocelyn saw him, as well as his
friend William Caillet, suddenly metamorphose himself, so to speak.
Affecting dullness and humble timidity, dropping their eyes, doubling
their backs, and dragging their legs, both doffed their caps with a
pitiful air as they approached the royal notary. Caillet saluted him by
twice bowing to the earth with his arms across his breast and saying in
a trembling voice:

"Pardon ... excuse ... Sir, if we, I and my companion, come alone. The
other witnesses of the wedding, Michael-kill-bread and Big Peter, they
have just been laid up with the fever which they caught draining the
swamp of our good seigneur. Their teeth are clattering and they are
shaking on the straw. That's why they have not been able to come to
town. I am William, the father of the bride; this is my companion, Adam,
who witnessed the wedding."

"These witnesses will suffice, I think, for the amende honorable, will
they not, seigneur?" said the notary to the Sire of Nointel. The latter
answered with an affirmative nod of the head, while continuing to laugh
aloud with his friends at the stupid and timorous appearance of the two
boors. All the while, on his knees a few paces from his seigneur,
Mazurec could not repress his tears at the sight of Aveline's father;
they rolled down slowly from his inflamed eyes while the notary
addressed him, saying: "Cross your hands over your chest, and raise your
eyes to heaven."

The condemned man clenched his fists with rage and did not follow the
notary's orders.

"Ho! pshaw!" cried William Caillet, addressing Mazurec in a reproachful
tone. "Don't you hear what this kind gentleman says? He told you to
cross your two hands, in this way ... look ... this way ... look at me
..."

These last words, "look at me," were pronounced by the peasant with such
force that Mazurec raised his head, and understood the meaning of the
rapid glance that Caillet darted at him. Quickly obeying the orders of
the notary, the condemned man crossed his arms on his breast.

"Now," proceeded the scribe, "raise your head towards our seigneur and
repeat my words: 'Seigneur, I humbly repent having had the audacity of
using unseemly words towards you.'"

The serf hesitated a moment, and then, overcoming his aversion with a
violent effort, he repeated in a hollow voice: "Seigneur, I humbly
repent having had the audacity of ... using ... unseemly words ...
towards you."

"Further," pursued the notary, "I repent no less humbly, my seigneur, of
having wickedly wished to oppose your exercise of your right of the
first fruits upon one of your female vassals, whom I took for my wife."

Mazurec's resignation had reached the end of its tether. The notary's
last words, recalled to the unhappy man's mind the infamous violence
that the sweet maid whom he tenderly loved had been made a victim of; he
uttered a heart-rending cry, hid his face in his hands and, convulsed
with sobs, fell forward with his face on the ground. At that spectacle,
Jocelyn, whose indignation threatened to overpower his prudence, was
about to leap forward, when he again heard the cry of William Caillet.
Stooping down to Mazurec as if to help him rise, he said two words in
his ears so as to be heard by none others, and continued aloud: "Ho!
Pshaw!... What ails you?... Why do you weep, my boy?... You are told
that our good seigneur will pardon your fault when you shall have
repeated the words that you are ordered to.... Go ahead.... Fling them
out quickly, those words!"

With his face bathed in tears and a smile of the damned, Mazurec
repeated these words after the notary had told them over again: "I
repent no less humbly, my seigneur, having wickedly wished to oppose
your exercise of your right of the first fruits upon one of your female
vassals, whom I took for my wife."

"In repentance of which, my seigneur," pursued the notary, "I humbly
place myself at your mercy."

"In repentance of which, my seigneur," stammered Mazurec in a fainting
voice, "I humbly place myself at your mercy."

"Be it so," responded the Sire of Nointel with a haughty and flippant
air. "I grant you mercy. But you shall not be set free until after
having rendered satisfaction in a judicial duel, to which you are
summoned by my guest Gerard of Chaumontel, a nobleman, whom you have
outrageously defamed by accusing him of larceny." Turning thereupon to
one of his equerries: "Let the peasant be guarded until the hour of the
tourney, and let the daughter be delivered to her father;" and stepping
away with his friends towards the door of the church, the young seigneur
said to them, laughing: "The lesson will do Jacques Bonhomme good. Do
you know, gentlemen, that that stupid pack has of late been pricking up
its ears and commenced to bridle up against our rights? Although she was
a comely lassie, I cared little for that peasant's wife; but it was
necessary to prove to the vile rustic plebs that we own it body and
soul; therefore, gentlemen, let us never forget the proverb: 'Smite a
villein and he'll bless you; bless a villein and he'll smite you.'[3]
Now, let us hear the sacred mass; you will tell me whether Gloriande de
Chivry, my betrothed, whom you will see in my seigniorial pew, is not a
superb beauty."

"Happy Conrad!" said Gerard of Chaumontel, the robber knight, "for
bride, a handsome and radiant beauty, who, besides, is the richest
heiress of this region, seeing that after the death of the Count of
Chivry, his seigniory, in default of male heirs, will fall from the
lance to the distaff! Oh, Conrad! What beautiful days of gold and silk
will you not spin, thanks to the opulent distaff of Gloriande of
Chivry!"

At the moment when thus chatting the noblemen entered the church,
Mazurec, who was still kept a prisoner, vanished under the vault, and a
man of the suite of the Sire of Nointel led out Aveline. She was not
quite eighteen. Despite the pallor of her face and her deeply disturbed
features, the girl preserved her surpassing beauty. She moved with
faltering steps, still clad in her humble bride's apparel, of coarse
white cloth. Her loose hair fell upon and half covered her shoulders.
Her lacerated arms still bore the traces of tight hands, seeing that, in
order to triumph over the desperate resistance of his victim, the Sire
of Nointel had her bound fast. Crushed with shame at the thought of
being thus exposed to the gaze of the crowd, the moment she stepped upon
the parvise Aveline closed her eyes with an involuntary movement, and
did not at first see Mazurec who was being taken back to prison.
However, at the heart-rending cry that he uttered, a shudder went over
her frame, she trembled at every limb, and her eyes met the gaze of her
husband, a gaze of desolation, in which passionate love and yet painful
repulsion mixed with ferocious jealousy, raised within his breast by the
thought of the outrage that his wife had been subject to, were all
depicted at once. The last of these feelings was betrayed by an
involuntary movement, made by the wretched young man, who, avoiding the
beseeching looks of Aveline, made a gesture of horror, covered his face
with his hands, and rushed under the vault like one demented, followed
by the men-at-arms who had him in charge.

"He despises me," murmured the girl with fainting voice and following
her husband with haggard eyes. "He now no longer loves me." Saying this,
Aveline became livid, her knees yielded under her, she lost
consciousness and would have rolled upon the ground without Caillet,
who, hastening to meet her, received her in his arms, saying: "Your
father remains to you." Then, helped by Adam the Devil, he raised her
up, and both, carrying the swooning young bride in their arms,
disappeared in the crowd.

Jocelyn the Champion, a witness to this distressing scene, rushed into
the vault that opened upon the parvise, overtook the keepers of Mazurec
and said to one of them:

"The serf they are taking away yonder has been summoned to a judicial
combat, is it so comrade?"

"Yes," answered the man-at-arms, "he is to combat with the knight Gerard
of Chaumontel. Such is the sentence."

"I must speak to that serf."

"He is to communicate with nobody."

"I am his judicial second in this combat, will you venture to keep me
from seeing and speaking with my client? By Satan! I know the law. If
you refuse--"

"There is no need of bawling so loud. If you are Jacques Bonhomme's
judicial second, come ... you have a sorry principal!"




CHAPTER III.

THE TOURNAMENT.


The tourney, a ruinous spectacle offered to the nobility of the
neighborhood by the Sire of Nointel in celebration of his betrothal, was
held on a large meadow that stretched before the gates of the town. The
lists were according to the royal ordinance of the year 1306,
twenty-four paces long by forty wide, and surrounded by a double row of
fences four feet apart. In this latter space the horn and clarion
blowers were posted; likewise the valets of the combatting knights were
allowed in this latter enclosure, ready to carry their masters from the
melee, or to run to their assistance when unhorsed, seeing that these
valiant jousters were covered with such heavy and thick armor that they
could move only with difficulty. Within these barriers were also seen
the heralds and sergeants-at-arms, charged with preserving order at the
tourney, and passing upon foul blows.

The plebs of the town and neighboring fields, having hastened to witness
the spectacle at the close of the mass, crowded on the outside. A more
ragged, wan, miserable and worn-out mass could hardly be imagined than
that presented by the crowd whose crushing labors supplied the
prodigalities of their seigneurs. The only satisfaction enjoyed by these
cowed and brutified people was that of being allowed to assist from a
distance, as on this day, at the sumptuous displays that they paid for
with their sweat and their marrow. The vassals, leaving their mud-huts,
where, exhausted with hunger and broken by toil--at night they huddled
pell-mell on the marshy ground like animals in their pens--contemplated
with an astonishment that was sometimes mixed with savage hatred, the
brilliant assemblage covered with silks and velvets, embroideries and
precious stones, seated on a spacious amphitheater, that, decked with
tapestries and rich hangings, rose along one of the sides of the lists,
and was reserved for the noble dames, the seigneurs and the prelates of
the vicinage. On either side of the amphitheater, which was sheltered by
tent-cloths from the rays of the sun and from the rain, were two tents
intended for the knights who participated in the jousts. There they don
their heavy armors before the combat, and thither are they transported
when hurt or unhorsed. Numerous banners emblazoned with the arms of the
Sire of Nointel floated from the top of poles that surround the lists.
The queen of the tournament is Gloriande, a noble young lady, the
daughter of Raoul, count and seigneur of Chivry, and betrothed since the
previous month to Conrad of Nointel. Magnificently bedizened in a
scarlet robe embroidered with gold, her black hair braided with pearls,
tall and of remarkable beauty but of a haughty and bold type, with
disdainful lips and imperious mien, Gloriande was throned superbly under
a species of canopy contrived in the center of the platform, whence she
could command a view of the arena. Her father, proud of his daughter's
beauty, stood behind her. The noblemen and ladies of all ages, were
seated on benches flanking either side of the canopy where the young
queen of the tournament paraded her wealth and her charms. Suddenly the
clarions sound the opening of the passage of arms; and a herald, clad in
red and yellow, the colors of Nointel, advances to the center of the
arena and cries the formula:

"Hear ye, hear ye, seigneurs and knights, and people of all
estates:--our sovereign seigneur and master, by the grace of God, John,
King of the French, forbids under penalty of life and of forfeiture of
goods, all speaking, crying out, coughing, expectorating or uttering and
giving of any signs during the combat."

The profoundest silence ensues. One of the bars is lowered, and the Sire
of Nointel, cased in a brilliant steel armor tipped with gold ornaments,
rides into the arena. Mounted on a richly caparisoned charger that he
causes to prance and caracole with ease, he reins in before the canopy
of Gloriande, and the damosel, taking from her own neck the necklace of
gold strands, ties it to the iron of the lance that her betrothed lowers
before her. By that act he is accepted by the lady as her knight of
honor, a quality by which he is to exercise sovereign surveillance over
the combatants, and if the point of the weapon from which hangs the
necklace touch any of the jousters, he must immediately withdraw from
the combat. In giving her necklace to her knight, Gloriande's shoulders
and bosom remain naked, and she receives without blushing the
testimonies of admiration showered upon her by the knights in her
vicinity, whose libertine praises savor strongly of the obscene
crudities peculiar to the language of those days. After having made the
tour of the field, during which he displays anew his skill in
horsemanship, the Sire of Nointel returns to the foot of the platform
where the queen of the tournament is seated, and raises his lance. The
clarions forthwith resound, the bars are let down at the opposite sides
of the arena, and each gives passage to a troop of knights armed
cap-a-pie, visors down, recognizable only by their emblems or the color
of their shields and the banners of their lances. The two sets, mounted
on horses covered with iron, remain for an instant motionless like
equestrian statues, at the extremities of the arena. The lances of these
gallants, six feet long and stripped of their iron, are, in the parlance
of tourneys, "courteous"; their thrust, no wise dangerous, can have for
its only effect to roll the ill-mounted combatant off his horse. The
Sire of Nointel consults the radiant Gloriande with the eye. With a
majestic air she waves her embroidered handkerchief, and immediately her
knight of honor utters three times the consecrated formula: "Let them
go! Let them go! Let them go!"

The two sets break loose; the horses are put to a gallop; and, lances in
rest, they rush to the center of the lists, where they dash against one
another, horses and riders, with an incredible clatter of hardware. In
the shock the larger number of lances fly into splinters. The disarmed
tilters thus declare themselves vanquished, and their armor and mounting
belong by right to the vanquisher. Accordingly, these tourneys are as
much a game of hazard as is a game of dice. Not a few renowned tilters,
hankering after florins more than after a puerile glory, derive large
revenues from their skill in these ridiculous jousts; almost always do
the adversaries whom they have overcome ransom their arms and horses
with considerable sums. At a signal of the Sire of Nointel, a few
minutes' truce followed upon the disarming of two of the knights who
rolled down upon the thick bed of sand that the ground is prudently
covered with. There is nothing so pitifully grotesque as the appearance
of these disarmed gallants. Their valets raise them up in almost one
lump within their thick iron shell that impedes their movements, and
with legs stiff and apart, they reach the barrier steaming in
perspiration, seeing that, in order to soften the pressure, these noble
combatants wear under their armor a skin shirt and hose thickly padded
with horse's hair. The vanquished abandon the lists in disgrace, while
the vanquishers, after prancing over the arena, approach the platform
where the queen of the tournament is enthroned. There they lower their
lances to her in token of gallant homage. The charmed Gloriande answers
them with a condescending smile and they leave the lists in triumph. The
remaining knights now continue the struggle on foot and with
swords--swords no less "courteous" than their lances, without either
point or edge, so that these valiant champions skirmish with steel bars
three feet and a half long, and they carry themselves heroically in a
combat that is all the less perilous, seeing that they are protected
against all possible danger by their padded undergarments laid over by
an impenetrable armor.

At a fresh signal from the Sire of Nointel, a furious conflict is
engaged in by the remaining combatants. One of them slips and falls over
backward and remains motionless, as little able to rise as a tortoise
laid on its back. Another of the Caesars has his sword broken in two in
his own hands. Only two combatants now remain, and continue the struggle
with rage. The one carries a green buckler emblazoned with an argent
lion, the other a red buckler emblazoned with a gold dolphin. The knight
of the argent lion deals with his sword such a hard blow upon his
adversary's casque, that, dazed by the shock, the latter falls heavily
upon his haunches on the sand. The great conqueror superbly enjoyed his
triumph by proudly contemplating his vanquished adversary, ridiculously
seated at his feet; and, responding to the enthusiastic acclamations of
the assembled nobility, he approached the throne of the queen of the
tourney, bent one knee, and raised his visor. After placing a rich
collar around the conqueror's neck in token of his prowess, Gloriande
stooped down, and, following the custom of the time, deposited a loud
and long kiss upon his lips. This duty, attached to her distinguished
office, Gloriande fulfilled without blushing, and with an off-handedness
that denoted ample experience. Thanks to her beauty, the young lady of
Chivry had been often before chosen queen of tournaments. The clarions
announced the victory of the knight of the argent lion, who, strutting
proudly with the trophy around his neck, placed his right hand on his
hip, walked around the arena, and marched out at the barriers.

These first passages of arms were followed by an interval during which
the valets of the Sire of Nointel, carrying cups, plates, and flagons of
gold and silver, that glistened in the dazzled eyes of the peasants,
served the noble company on the platform with spiced wines, refreshments
and choice pastries, ample honor being done by all to the munificence of
the Sire of Nointel.




CHAPTER IV.

THE JUDICIAL COMBAT.


The seigneurs, their wives and daughters on the platforms had just
enjoyed the refection, while commenting upon the incidents of the
tourney, when a shudder ran through the crowd of peasants and bourgeois
massed outside of the barriers. Until then and while witnessing the
jousts and the passages of arms they had been animated with curiosity
only. In the combat, which it was murmured among them was to follow
these harmless struggles, the populace felt themselves concerned. It was
to be a combat to the death between a vassal and a knight, the latter on
horseback and in full armor, the vassal on foot, dressed in his blouse
and armed with a stick. Even the more timid and brutalized ones among
the vassals revolted at the thought of so crassly unequal a conflict, in
which one of their class was inevitably destined to death. It was,
accordingly, amidst a silence laden with anxiety and suppressed anger
that one of the heralds uttered three times from the center of the arena
the consecrated formula: "Let the appellant enter!"

The knight Gerard of Chaumontel, now summoned to the trial of a judicial
combat against the accusation of theft made by Mazurec, issued from one
of the contiguous tents and entered the arena on horseback, in full
armor. His buckler hangs from his neck; his visor is up; in his hand he
carries a little image of St. James, for whom the pious knight seemed to
entertain a peculiar devotion. His two seconds, on horseback like
himself, ride beside him. With him they make the round of the arena
while the fair Gloriande says to her father disdainfully: "What a shame
for the nobility to see a knight reduced, in order to prove his
innocence, to do combat with a varlet!"

"Oh, my daughter! What evil days these are that we live in!" answered
the aged seigneur with a growl. "Those accursed king's jurists are
crossing their pencils over all our rights under the impertinent pretext
of legalizing them. Was not a decree of the court of the seneschal of
Beauvoisis requisite in order to authorize our friend Conrad to exercise
his seigniorial right over a miserable female serf in revolt?"
Remembering, however, that his daughter was the betrothed of the Sire of
Nointel, the Count of Chivry stopped short. Gloriande surmised the cause
of her father's reticence and said to him with a haughtiness that verged
on anger: "Do you think that I am jealous of such as her? Can I look
upon these female serfs as rivals?"

"No, no; I am not placing such an insult upon you, my daughter ... but
after all, the rebellion of that female vassal is as novel as it is
monstrous. Oh, the spirit of revolt among the populace, although partly
broken to-day, has spread into our domains and has infested our peasants
also; and that is taken by the crown for a pretext to add to our
troubles by encroaching upon our rights, claiming that they must be
first sanctioned by the jurists. A curse upon all reform kings!"

"But, father, our rights remain."

"Blood and thunder, my daughter! Do our privileges stand in need of
confirmation by the men of the gown? Does not our class hold its rights
by the right of our ancestors' swords? No, no, the crown aims at
monopolizing all rights, and to be the sole exploiter of the plebs."

"Have not the kings," observed another knight, "taken from us one of our
best sources of revenue, the minting of money in our seigniories, under
the pretext that we coined false money? The devil take kings who hold up
law! May hell consume the gentry of the pen!"

"Blood and thunder! It is enough to make one's blood boil in his veins,"
cried the Count of Chivry. "Is there in the whole world any worse money
than the king's. False coiners have been quartered who are less thievish
than our King John and his predecessors."

"Let that good prince look elsewhere than here for support," put in
another knight. "The truce with England will soon expire. If war breaks
out anew, King John will see neither a man nor a gold piece out of my
domain. He may, for all I care, leave his carcass on the field of
battle."

"Oh, gentlemen," said Gloriande gulping down a yawn, "how uninteresting
is your conversation! Let us rather talk about the Court of Love that is
soon to hold its sessions in Clermont, and for which I shall order the
most skillful hairdressers from Paris. I am also expecting a Lombard who
is to bring me magnificent silks, woven with gold and silver, and which
I shall wear during the solemnity."

"And what do you expect to pay all those fine things with?" cried the
Count of Chivry. "How are we to meet the expenses of brilliant tourneys
and the sumptuous displays of the Court of Love if, on the one side, the
King ruins us, and, on the other, Jacques Bonhomme refuses to work?"

"Oh! Oh! Dear father!" replied the fair Gloriande, laughing aloud.
"Jacques Bonhomme will meekly bend the neck. At the first crack of the
whip of one of our hunters you will see those varlets lie down flat upon
their faces. And mind you," added the young lady, redoubling her
laughter, "just turn your eyes to that bugaboo of a Jacques Bonhomme,
does he not look redoubtable?" and she pointed with her finger at
Mazurec the Lambkin, who, at the second call of the herald, had stepped
into the arena accompanied by his two seconds, Jocelyn the Champion and
Adam the Devil. Mazurec, dressed in his "blaude," the ancient Gallic
blouse, made of coarse cloth and of the same fabric as his hose, wore on
his head a woolen cap while his wooden shoes partly hid his bare feet.
Jocelyn, his second, held in his hand a stout stick of sorb, four feet
long, and freshly cut by himself in a neighboring thicket, with an eye
to the fact that, when fresh, the sorb wood is heavy and does not
easily break. The appellee, as well as the appellant, in the judicial
battle were required to make the round of the arena before engaging in
combat. The serf filled the formality in slow and measured steps,
accompanied by his two seconds.

"My brave fellow," Jocelyn said to Mazurec, "do not forget my advice,
and you stand a chance of worsting your noble robber, for all that he
may be on horseback and armed cap-a-pie."

"I'd as lief die," answered the serf, marching dejectedly between his
two seconds with his head down and his eyes fixed: "When I saw Aveline
this morning it was as if a knife had entered my heart," he added
sobbing. "Oh, I am a lost man!"

"By the navel of the Pope! No feebleness," replied Jocelyn with emphasis
and alarmed at the despondent voice of his principal. "Where is your
courage? This morning from a lambkin you became a wolf."

"To now live with my poor wife would be a daily torture to me," murmured
the serf. "I would rather the knight killed me outright."

Thus conversing, half the field had been covered by Mazurec in company
with his seconds. The latter, more and more alarmed at the unhappy young
man's despondency, were at that moment passing at the foot of the
amphitheater where the nobility of the neighborhood were seated with the
fair Gloriande in their midst. Casting an expressive look at the
champion, Adam the Devil nudged Mazurec with his elbow and said to him
in a low voice: "Take a look at the betrothed of our seigneur.... I
swear she's handsome!... That will make a pretty wedding! Hm!... Won't
the two lovers be happy?" At these words, which fell like molten lead
upon the bleeding wound in his heart, the vassal shook convulsively.
"Take a good look at the handsome young lady," proceeded Adam the Devil.
"See how happy she is in her rich clothes. Do you hear her laugh?... Go
to! No doubt she's laughing at you and at your wife, who was violated
last night by our seigneur.... But do take a look at the beauty! I wager
she is jeering at you."

Drawn from his dejection, and rage mounting to his heart, Mazurec
brusquely raised his head. For an instant his eyes fiery and red with
weeping, fastened on the betrothed of his seigneur, the haughty damosel,
resplendent in attire and personal beauty, radiant with happiness, and
surrounded by brilliant knights, who, courting her smiles, crowded near
her.

"At this hour," the caustic voice of Adam the Devil whispered to the ear
of Mazurec, "your own bride is drinking her shame and her tears. What!
In order to avenge Aveline and yourself would you not make an attempt to
kill the nobleman who robbed you!... That thief is the cause of all your
misfortune."

"My stick!" cried the vassal leaping forward, transported with rage, at
the same instant that one of the sergeants-at-arms hurried by to notify
him that it was not allowed to stop on the arena and look at the ladies,
but that he was to betake himself to one of the tents in order, before
the combat, to take the customary oaths with the vicar of Nointel. Now
inflamed with hatred and rage, Mazurec quickly followed the
sergeant-at-arms, while, walking more slowly, Jocelyn said to Adam the
Devil:

"You must have suffered a great deal in your lifetime ... I overheard
you a minute ago. You know how to fire hatred--"

"Three years ago," broke in the serf with a wild look, "I killed my wife
with an axe, and yet I loved her to distraction--"

"Was that at Bourcy--near Senlis?"

"Who told you of it? How come you to know it?"

"I happened to ride through the village on the day of the murder. You
preferred to see your wife dead rather than disgraced by your episcopal
seigneur."

"Exactly. That's the way I felt on the subject."

"But how did you become a serf of this seigniory?"

"After I killed my wife, I kept in hiding for a month in the forest of
Senlis, where I lived on roots; thereupon I came to this country.
Caillet gave me shelter. I offered my services as a butcher to the
superintendent of the seigniory of Nointel. After the lapse of a year I
was numbered among the vassals of the domain. I remained here out of
friendship for Caillet."

During this conversation between his two seconds Mazurec had arrived
near the tent where he, as well as the Knight of Chaumontel, was to take
the customary oath. Clad in his sacerdotal robes and holding a crucifix
in his hands, the vicar addressed the serf and the knight.

"Appellant and appellee, do not ye shut your eyes to the danger to which
you expose your souls in combating for a bad cause. If either of you
wishes to withdraw and place himself at the mercy of his seigneur and
the King, it is still time. It will soon be too late. One of you is
about to cross the gates of the other world. You will there find seated
a God who is merciless to the perjurer. Appellant and appellee, think of
that. All men are equally weak before the tribunal of divine justice.
The eternal kingdom is not entered in armor. Is either of you willing to
recede?"

"I shall maintain unto death that this knight has robbed me; he has
caused my misfortunes; if God is just, I shall kill this man," answered
Mazurec in a voice of concentrated rage.

"And I," cried the knight of Chaumontel, "swear to God that that vassal
lies in his throat, and outrageously slanders me. I shall prove his
imposture with the intercession of our Lord and all his saints,
especially with the good help of St. James, my blessed patron."

"Aye," put in Jocelyn, "and above all with the good help of your armor,
your lance and your sword. Infamous man! To battle on horseback, helmet
on head, cuirass on body, sword at your side, lance in your hand,
against a poor man on foot and armed only with a stick. Aye, you behave
like a coward. Cowards are thieves; consequently, you stole the purse
of my principal!"

"How dare you address me in such words!" cried the knight of Chaumontel.
"Such a common fellow as you! Miserable vagabond! Intolerable criminal!"

"Heavens be praised! He utters insults!" exclaimed Jocelyn with delight.
"Oh, Sir thief, if you are not the most cowardly of two-legged hares,
you will follow me on the spot behind yonder pavillion, or else I shall
slap your ignoble scamp's face with the scabbard of my sword."

Livid with rage, Gerard of Chaumontel was, to the extreme joy of
Jocelyn, about to accept the latter's challenge, when one of his seconds
said to him:

"That bandit is trying to save his principal by provoking you to a
fight. Fall not into the trap. Do not mind him, mind the vassal."

Taking this prudent advice, Gerard of Chaumontel contemptuously answered
Jocelyn: "When arms in hand I shall have convicted this other varlet of
imposture, I shall then consider whether you deserve that I accept your
insolent challenge."

"You evidently desire to taste the scabbard of my sword," cried Jocelyn.
"By heaven, I shall not deprive you of the dish; and if your hang-dog
face does not redden with shame, it will redden under my slaps. Coward
and felon--"

"Not another word, or I shall order one of my men to expel you from the
arena," said the herald-at-arms to Jocelyn; "a second has no right to
insult the adversary of his own principal."

Jocelyn realized that he would be compelled to yield to force, held his
tongue, and cast a distracted look at Mazurec. The vicar of Nointel
raised the crucifix and resumed in his nasal voice: "Appellant and
appellee, do you and each of you still insist that your cause is just?
Do you swear on the image of the Saviour of mankind?" and the vicar
presented the crucifix to the knight, who took off his iron gauntlet
and placing his hand upon the image of Christ, declared:

"My cause is just, I swear to God!"

"My cause is just," said in turn Mazurec; "and I take God for my
witness; but let us combat quickly; oh, quickly!"

"Do you swear," proceeded the vicar, "that neither of you carries about
his person either stone, or herb, or any other magic charm, amulet or
incantation of the enemy of man?"

"I swear," said the knight.

"I swear," said Mazurec panting with rage. "Oh, how much time is lost!"

"And now, appellant and appellee," cried the herald-at-arms, "the lists
are open to you. Do your duty."

The knight of Chaumontel seized his long lance and jumped upon his
horse, which one of his seconds held for him, while Jocelyn, pale and
deeply moved, said to Mazurec, while giving him his stick: "Courage!...
Follow my advice ... I expect you will kill that coward ... But one last
word.... It regards your mother ... Did she never tell you the name of
your father?"

"Never ... as I told you this morning in prison. My mother always
avoided speaking to me of my father."

"And her name was Gervaise?" asked Jocelyn pensively. "What was the
color of her hair and eyes?"

"Her hair was blonde, her eyes black. Poor mother."

"And had she no other mark?"

"She had a small scar above her right eye-brow--"

The clarions sounded at this point. It was the signal for the judicial
duel. Unable to restrain his tears, Jocelyn pressed Mazurec in his arms
and said to him: "I may not at a moment like this reveal to you the
cause of the double interest that you inspire me ... My suspicions and
hopes, perhaps, deceive me ... But courage ... Hit your enemy on the
head."

"Courage!" put in Adam the Devil in an undertone. "In order to keep
your blood boiling, think of your wife ... remember the betrothed of
your seigneur laughed at you.... Kill the thief, and patience.... It
will some day be our turn to laugh at the noble damosel.... Think above
all of your wife ... of her last nights shame and of your own....
Remember that you have both been made forever unhappy, and fall to
bravely upon that nobleman! Be brave.... You have a cane, nails and
teeth!"

Mazurec the Lambkin uttered a cry of rage and rushed into the lists at
the moment when, in answer to a motion from the Sire of Nointel, the
marshal of the tourney gave the signal for the combat to the appellant
and appellee by calling three times the consecrated words: "Let them
go!"

The noble spectators on the platform laughed in advance at the sorry
discomfiture of Jacques Bonhomme; but among the plebeian crowd all
hearts stopped beating with anxiety at this decisive moment. The knight
of Chaumontel, a vigorous man, armed in full panoply, mounted on a tall
charger covered with iron, and his long lance in rest, occupied the
center of the arena, while Mazurec dashed to the spot barefoot, clad in
his blouse and holding his stick in his hands. At sight of the serf, the
knight, who, out of contempt for such an adversary, had disdained to
lower his visor, put the spurs to his horse, and lowering his pointed
iron-headed lance, charged upon the serf certain of transfixing him then
and there, and then trampling over him with his horse. But Mazurec,
mindful of Jocelyn's recommendations, avoided the lance thrust by
suddenly letting himself down flat upon his face; and then, partly
rising up at the moment when the horse was about to grind him under its
hoofs, he dealt the animal two such heavy blows with his stick on its
forelegs that the courser, stung with pain, reared, slipped its footing
and almost fell over, while its rider was shaken out of position on the
saddle.

"Felony!" cried the Sire of Nointel with indignation. "It is forbidden
to strike a horse!"

"Well done, my brave woolen cap!" cried the populace on the outside,
palpitating with suspense and clapping their hands, despite the
strictness and severity of the royal ordinances which commanded profound
silence to the spectators at a tourney.

"Fall to, Mazurec!" simultaneously cried Jocelyn and Adam the Devil.
"Courage! Kill the nobleman! Kill him! Death to the thief!"

Mazurec rose, and seeing the knight out of poise and holding to the bow
of his saddle, dropped his stick, picked up a fistful of sand, leaped
upon the horse behind Gerard of Chaumontel, while the latter was seeking
to regain his equilibrium, lost no time in clutching the knight around
the neck with one hand, turned him half over backward, and with the
other rubbed his eyes with the sand he had just picked up. Almost
half-blinded, the noble robber dropped his lance and reins and sought to
carry his hands to his eyes. Mazurec seeing the movement, put his arms
around the knight, and, after a short struggle, succeeded in making him
wholly lose his balance and tumble down to the ground, where both fell
rolling on the arena, while the crowd of serfs, now considering the serf
the victor over the knight, clapped their hands, stamped on the ground
with joy and cried: "Victory for the woolen cap!"

Gerard of Chaumontel, however, although blinded by the sand and dazed by
the fall, gathered fresh strength from the rage that took possession of
him at finding himself unhorsed by a peasant, and with little difficulty
regained the upper hand over his unskilled adversary. In the unequal
struggle against the man clad in iron, the tight clasp of the virtually
naked serf was in vain; his nails broke off against, or glided
harmlessly over the polished armor of his adversary, while the latter,
finally succeeding in planting his two knees upon the serf's chest,
bruised his head and face with a shower of hammer blows dealt with his
iron gauntlet. His face beaten to pulp and bleeding, Mazurec pronounced
once more the name of Aveline and remained motionless. Gerard of
Chaumontel, who was gradually regaining his sight, not satisfied with
having almost beaten the serf's face out of shape, then drew his dagger
to finish his victim. But quickly recalling himself, and animated by a
feeling of refined cruelty, he replaced the dagger in his belt, rose
upright, and placing one of his iron shod feet upon the chest of the
prostrate and moaning Mazurec, cried in a stentorian voice: "Let this
vile impostor be bound up, put in a bag and thrown into the river as he
deserves. It is the law of the duel; let it be carried out!"




CHAPTER V.

SHEET LIGHTNINGS.


An oppressive silence followed the close of the judicial combat, as
Gerard of Chaumontel, leaving the outstretched body of the serf on the
sand, rejoined his seconds while rubbing his irritated eyelids, and
jointly they quitted the arena. The sergeant-at-arms had proceeded to
pick up the prostrate body of the vassal in order to carry it to the
bridge that spanned the near-by river; and the vicar of Nointel had
followed on the tracks of the mournful train, in order to administer the
last sacraments to the condemned man so soon as he should recover
consciousness, and before he was bundled into a bag, agreeable to the
ordinance, and cast into the river. For a moment struck dumb with terror
by the issue of the judicial combat, the plebs crowd was slowly
recovering its voice, and, despite its habit of respect towards the
seigneurs, had begun to murmur with rising indignation. Several voices
were heard to say that the knight having been unhorsed by the vassal,
the latter was to be considered the victor and should not be killed. The
turmoil was on the increase, when an unexpected event suddenly drew to
itself the attention of the crowd and cut short its criminations. A
large troop of men-at-arms, covered with dust and one of whom bore a
white flag emblazoned with the fleur-de-lis,[4] hove in sight at a
distance over the field and rapidly approached the fenced-in arena.
Mazurec was forgotten. Sharing the astonishment of the assembled
nobility at the sight of the armed troop that had now reached the
barriers, the Sire of Nointel applied both spurs to his horse, rode
rapidly forward, and addressing himself to one of the new arrivals, a
herald with the fleur-de-lis jacket, saluted him courteously and
inquired:

"Sir herald, what brings you hither?"

"An order of the King, my master. I am charged with a message to all the
seigneurs and noblemen of Beauvoisis. Having learned that a large number
of them were gathered at this place, I came hither. Listen to the envoy
of King John."

"Enter the lists and read your message aloud," answered Conrad of
Nointel to the herald, who, producing a parchment from a richly
embroidered bag, rode to the center of the arena and prepared to read.

"This extraordinary message augurs nothing good," said the seigneur of
Chivry to his daughter Gloriande. "King John is going to demand some
levy of men of us for his war against the English, unless it be some new
edict on coinage, some fresh royal pillage."

"Oh, father! If, like so many other seigneurs, you had only chosen to go
to the court at Paris ... you would then have shared in the largesses of
King John, who, we hear, is so magnificently prodigal towards the
courtiers. You would then have gained on the one side what you lost on
the other. And then also ... they say the court is such a charming place
... continuous royal feasts and dances, enhanced by choicest gallantry.
After our marriage Conrad must take me to Paris. I wish to shine at the
royal court."

"You are a giddy-headed girl," observed the aged seigneur shrugging his
shoulders, and half closing his fist, which he applied to his ear for a
trumpet, so as to be better able to hear the royal herald, he remarked
to himself: "What devil of a song is he going to sing to us?"

"John, by the grace of God, King of the French," said the herald reading
from his parchment, "to his dear, beloved and faithful seigneurs of
Beauvoisis; Greeting!"

"Proceed, proceed; we can do very well without your politeness and
greetings," grumbled the aged seigneur of Chivry. "They are gilding the
pill for us to swallow."

"Pray, father, let me hear the messenger," said Gloriande impatiently.
"The royal language has a court perfume that ravishes me."

The herald proceeded: "The mortal enemy of the French, the Prince of
Wales, son of the King of England, has perfidiously broken the truce
that was not to expire for some time longer. He is advancing at the head
of a strong army."

"There we are," cried the Count of Chivry, angrily stamping with his
feet. "It is a levy of men that we are going to be asked for. Blood and
massacre! To the devil with the King!"

The herald continued reading: "After having set fire to everything on
their route, the English are marching towards the heart of the country.
In order to arrest this disastrous invasion, and in view of this great
public danger, we impose upon our peoples and our beloved nobility a
double tax for this year. Furthermore, we enjoin, order and command all
our dear, beloved and faithful seigneurs of Beauvoisis to take up arms
themselves, levy their men, and join us within eight days at Bourg,
whence we shall take the field against the English, whom we shall
vanquish with the aid of God and our valiant nobility. Let everyone be
at his post of battle. Such is my will. JOHN."

This appeal from the King of the French to his valiant nobility of
Beauvoisis was received by the noble assemblage with a mute stupor, that
speedily made place for murmurs of anger and rebellion.

"We refuse to give men and money. To the devil with King John!" cried
the Count of Chivry. "Already has he imposed subsidies upon us for the
maintenance of his troops. Let him take them to war! We propose to
remain at our manors!"

"Well said!" exclaimed another seigneur. "The King evidently kept up no
army. All our moneys have been squandered in pleasures and festivities.
The court at Paris is an insatiable maw!"

"What!" interjected a third; "we are to wear ourselves out making
Jacques Bonhomme sweat all the wealth he can, and the cream thereof is
to go into the King's coffers? Not by all the devils! Already have we
given too much."

"Let the King defend himself. His domains are more exposed than our own.
Let him protect them!"

"It is all we can do, we and our own armed forces, to protect our
castles against the bands of marauders, of Navarrais and of the hired
soldiery that ravages our lands! And are we to abandon our homes in
order to march against the English? By the saints! Fine goslings would
we be!"

"And in our absence, Jacques Bonhomme, who seems to indulge in dreams of
revolt, will put in fine strokes!"

"By heavens, messieurs!" cried a young knight, "We, nevertheless, may
not, to the shame of knighthood, remain barracked on our own manors
while battles are being fought on the frontier."

"Well! And who keeps you back, my dear fire-eater?" cried the Count of
Chivry. "Are you curious to make acquaintance with war? Very well;
depart quickly, and soon.... Each one disposes at his will of his own
person and men."

"As to me," loudly put in the radiant Gloriande with fiery indignation,
"I shall not bestow my hand on Conrad of Nointel if he does not depart
for the war, and return crowned with the laurels of victory, leading to
my feet ten Englishmen in chains. Shame and disgrace! Gallant knights to
stay at home when their King calls them to arms! I shall not acknowledge
for my lord and husband any but a valiant knight!"

Despite Gloriande's heroic words and a few other rare protests against
the selfish and ignominious cowardice of the larger number of seigneurs,
a general murmur of approval received the words of the aged seigneur of
Chivry, who, encouraged by the almost unanimous support of the
assembly, stepped upon his bench and answered the herald in a stentorian
voice:

"Sir, in the name of the nobility of Beauvoisis, I now answer you that
we have our hands so full on our own domains, that it would be
disastrous for us to take the field in distant regions. For the rest,
the request of the King will be considered when the deputies of the
nobility and the clergy shall be assembled in the States General of the
Kingdom. Until then we shall remain at home."

A sudden outburst of hisses from the crowd of peasants and bourgeois
answered the words of the seigneur of Chivry; and Adam the Devil,
leaving Jocelyn the Champion for a moment alone with Mazurec, who,
having regained consciousness, was resignedly expecting the hour of his
death, thrust himself among several groups of serfs saying:

"Do you hear them? Fine seigneurs they are!... What are they good
for?... Only to combat in tourneys with pointless lances and edgeless
swords, or to indulge in bravados in combats, where they are fully
armed, against Jacques Bonhomme, armed only with a stick!"

"That's so!" answered several angry voices. "To the devil with the
nobility!"

"Poor Mazurec the Lambkin! It is enough to make one's heart ache to see
his face bleeding under the iron gauntlet of the Knight."

"And now they are to put him in a bag and throw him into the water!... I
declare.... That's what they call justice...."

"Ah! When, thanks to the cowardice of our seigneurs, the English will
have penetrated to this region," resumed Adam the Devil, "what with our
masters on one side and the English on the other, we shall be like iron
beaten on the anvil by the hammer. Oppressed by these, pillaged and
sacked by the others, our lot will be twice as hard. Woe is us!"

"That's what happens now when bands of marauders descend upon our
villages. We flee for safety to the woods, and when we return, we find
our homes in flames or in ashes!"

"O, God! What a lot is ours!"

"And yet our vicar says that secures our salvation ... in heaven!
Another fraud upon us!"

"Woe is us if on top of all our ills we are to be ravaged and tortured
by the English. That means our end."

"Yes, and we are all to go down through the cowardice of our seigneurs,"
put in Adam the Devil, "themselves, their families and retainers safely
entrenched and provisioned in their fortified castles, they will allow
us to be pillaged and massacred by the English! Oh! What a fate is in
store for us!"

"And when everything we have will have been devastated," replied another
serf in despair, "our seigneur will then tell us, as he told us when the
last gang of marauders passed over the region like a hurricane: 'Pay
your taxes, Jacques Bonhomme,' 'But, Sire, the marauders have carried
away everything; they have left us only our eyes to weep with, and we
weep!' 'Oh, you rebel, Jacques Bonhomme! Give him quick a beating and
put him to the torture!' Oh, it is too much ... too much!... That must
end. Death to the nobles and their helpers, the clergy!"

The murmurs among the rustic plebs, at first low and rumbling, presently
broke out into loud hisses and imprecations, and these were so menacing
and direct against the nobles, that the seigneurs, for a moment taken
aback by the incredible audacity of Jacques Bonhomme, bridled up
furiously, drew their swords, and, in the midst of alarmed cries of the
elder and younger ladies, precipitately descended the steps of the
platform to chastise the varlets at the head of the sergeants of the
tourney, their own men-at-arms and also of those of the royal herald,
who promptly sided with the noblemen against the plebs.

"Friends," cried Adam the Devil, rushing from one group of the serfs to
another to inflame their courage, "if the seigneurs are a hundred, we
are a thousand. Have you not a minute ago seen Mazurec unhorse a knight
all alone, with his stick and only a handful of sand? Let's prove those
nobles that we are not afraid of them. Pick up stones and sticks! Let's
deliver Mazurec the Lambkin! Death to the nobles!"

"Yes! Take up stones and sticks! Let's deliver Mazurec!" responded the
more daring ones. "The devil take the seigneurs who wish to leave us at
the mercy of the English!"

Under the pressure of this furious mob a portion of the barrier around
the lists was soon torn up and a large number of vassals, arming
themselves with the debris of the fence, redoubled their threats and
imprecations against the seigneurs. Attracted by the tumult and catching
a glimpse of Adam the Devil, who with glistening eyes was brandishing
one of the posts of the barrier, Jocelyn left Mazurec and ran towards
the serf to whom he cried out: "Those wretches will be mowed down ...
you will lose everything.... The right time has not yet come!"

"It is always in time to kill noblemen," answered Adam the Devil,
grinding his teeth, saying which he redoubled his vociferations: "Stones
and sticks! Let's deliver Mazurec!"

"But you lose him by that!" cried Jocelyn in despair. "You will lose
him! I hoped to save him!" and turning to the surrounding serfs he said:
"Do not attack the seigneurs; you are in the open field, they on
horseback; you will be trampled under foot. Come, now! Disperse!"

The voice of Jocelyn was lost in the tumult, and his efforts remained
fruitless in the midst of the exasperation of the mob. A reflux of the
crowd separated him from Adam the Devil, and soon the foresight of the
champion was but too well verified. For a moment taken by surprise and
even frightened at the aggressive attitude of Jacques Bonhomme, a
spectacle they had never before witnessed, the seigneurs presently
recovered their composure. Headed by the Sire of Nointel and supported
by about fifty men-at-arms, sergeants and knights who speedily mounted
their horses, the armed nobility now advanced in good order, and
charged upon the revolted serfs with swords and lances. The women and
children who happened to be in the crowd, were thrown down and trampled
over by the horses, and filled the air with their heart-rending cries.
The peasants, without order and without leadership, and already
frightened at their own audacity whose consequences they now dreaded,
fled in all directions over the meadow. Some few of the more valorous
and determined stood their ground and were either cut down by the
knights or severely wounded and taken prisoners. In the heat of the
fray, Adam the Devil, who had been thrown down by a sabre cut, was
seeking to rise when he felt a Herculean hand seize him by the collar,
raise him and despite his resistance, drag him far away from the field
of carnage. The serf recognized Jocelyn who said to him while dragging
him along: "You will be a precious man on the day of uprising ... but to
allow yourself to be killed to-day is an act of folly.... Come, let us
preserve ourselves for a later day."

"Mazurec is lost!" cried the serf in the agony of despair and struggling
against Jocelyn; but the latter, without making answer, compelled Adam
the Devil, who was greatly enfeebled by the loss of blood, to take
shelter behind a heap of lumber that had been brought thither for the
construction of the barrier around the lists, but had been found
unnecessary. Both lay themselves down flat upon the grass.




CHAPTER VI.

PROPHECIES AND PREMONITIONS.


The sun has gone down; night is drawing nigh. The noble dames,
frightened by the recent popular commotion, have left the platform of
the tourney and returned to their manors either on their palfreys or on
the cruppers of their cavaliers' horses. At a short distance from the
lists where lay the corpses of a considerable number of serfs, killed in
their futile attempt at revolt, flows the Orville River. On one side its
banks are precipitous, but on the other they slope gently, covered with
reeds. The river is crossed by a wooden bridge. To the right of the
bridge are a few old willows. Their branches have almost all been
freshly lopped off with axes. The few remaining ones, strongly supported
and spreading out, have been turned into gibbets. From them now hang the
bodies of four of the vassals who had been captured in the revolt. The
pendent bodies resemble shadows cast upon the clear sky of the dusk.
Night approaches rapidly. Standing on the middle of the bridge
surrounded by his friends, among whom is Gerard of Chaumontel, the Sire
of Nointel makes a sign, and the last of the revolted and captured serfs
is, despite his cries and entreaties, hanged like his companions from a
branch of a willow on the bank of the river. A man then brings to the
bridge a large bag of coarse grey material, of the kind used by the
millers. A strong cord inserted at its mouth like a purse-string enables
its being tied closely. Mazurec the Lambkin is led forward tightly
pinioned. Up to then he had been seated at one end of the bridge near
the vicar. The latter after having placed the crucifix to the mouths of
the serfs that had been hanged, returned to the victim about to be
drowned. Mazurec is no longer recognizable. His bruised face covered
with clotted blood is hideous to behold. One of his eyes has been
knocked out and his nose crushed under the fierce blows dealt him by the
knight of Chaumontel with his iron gauntlet. The executioner opens the
mouth of the bag while the bailiff of the seigniory approaches Mazurec
and says: "Vassal, your felony is notorious; you have dared to charge
Gerard, a nobleman of Chaumontel, with robbery; he appealed to a
judicial duel where you were vanquished and convicted of calumny and
defamation; in obedience to the royal ordinance, you are to be submerged
until death does ensue. Such is the supreme and irrevocable sentence."

Mazurec steps forward, and as he is about to be seized and thrust into
the bag, he raises his head, and addressing the Sire of Nointel and
Gerard, says to them as if inspired with prophetic exaltation:

"It is said among our people that those about to perish become seers.
Now, this is what I foretell: Gerard of Chaumontel, you robbed me and
now you have me drowned ... you will die drowned. Sire of Nointel, you
have done violence to my wife ... your wife will be done violence to.
Mayhap my wife may bring to the world the child of a noble; ... your
wife may bring to the world the child of a serf. May God take charge of
my vengeance. The day of reprisals will come!"

Mazurec the Lambkin had barely uttered these words when the executioner
proceeded to tie him up in the bag. Conrad grew pale and shivered at the
sinister prophecy of his vassal, and was unable to utter a word. Gerard,
however, addressing the serf who was being "bagged" burst out laughing
and pointed to the five hanged serfs who rocked in the evening breeze,
and whose outlines were dimly perceptible like spectres in the twilight,
said:

"Look at the corpses of those villeins who dared to rebel against their
seigneurs! Look at the water that runs under the bridge and that is
about to swallow you up ... should Jacques Bonhomme still dare to kick,
there are our long lances to pierce him through, wide branched trees to
hang, and rivers to drown him."

Mazurec was the while tied in the bag, and at the moment when the
executioner was about to hurl him into the river, the vassal's voice was
heard for the last time from within the canvas. "Gerard of Chaumontel,
you will be drowned; Sire of Nointel, your wife will be violated...."

A peal of contemptuous laughter from the knight answered the serf's
prediction, and amidst the silence of night the splash was heard of
Mazurec's body dropping into the deep waters of the river.

"Come away, come away," said the Sire of Nointel to Gerard in a
faltering voice; "let's return to the castle; this place frightens me.
The prophecy of that miserable villein makes me shudder despite
myself.... He mentioned reprisals."

"What feebleness! Conrad, are you becoming weak-minded?"

"Everything that happened to-day is of ill-omen. I tremble at the
future."

"What do you mean?" replied Gerard, following his friend who was walking
away at a rapid pace. "What is that you said about ill-omen? Come,
explain the cause of your terror."

"This evening, before returning to Chivry, Gloriande said to me:
'Conrad, to-morrow my father celebrates our betrothal in the chapel of
his castle; I desire that you depart that same evening to join the
forces of the King; and even then I shall not be your wife unless you
lead back from battle and place at my feet, as a pledge of your bravery,
ten Englishmen in chains and captured by yourself.'"

"The devil take such folly!" cried Gerard. "The romances of knighthood
have turned her head!"

"'I wish,' added Gloriande, 'that my husband be illustrious by his
prowesses. Therefore, Conrad, to-morrow I shall take the oath at the
altar to finish my days in a monastery, if you are killed in battle, or
if you fail in the promises that I have demanded of you!'"

"By the saints! That girl is gone daft on her Englishmen in chains.
There are only blows to be fetched in war, and your betrothed runs the
chances of seeing you return without an eye, a leg or an arm ... if you
do return.... The devil take her whims!"

"I am bound to yield to Gloriande's wishes. There is no more stubborn
head than hers. Besides, she loves me as I do her. Her wealth is
considerable. I have dissipated a good part of my fortune at the court
of King John. I cannot renounce the marriage. Whatever it may cost me, I
must join the army with my men. Sad it is, but there is no choice!"

"Be it so! But then fight ... prudently and moderately."

"I am anxious to live so that I may marry Gloriande ... provided during
my absence the prediction of that miserable vassal--"

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" broke in the knight of Chaumontel, laughing out aloud.
"You surely are not troubled with the fear that during your absence
Jacques Bonhomme will violate your wife?"

"These villeins, an unheard of thing, have dared to insult, to menace
and to throw themselves upon us like the wild beasts that they are."

"And you saw that rag-tag flee before our horses like a set of hares.
The executions of this evening will complete the lesson, and Jacques
Bonhomme will remain the Jacques Bonhomme of ever. Come! Make your mind
easy! While I prefer a hundred times the hunt, the tourneys, wine, game
and love to the stupid and dangerous feats of war, I shall accompany you
to the army, so as to bring you back soon to the beautiful Gloriande. As
to the English prisoners that you are to lead in chains to her feet as a
pledge of your valor, we shall scrape together a few leagues from our
lady's manor the first varlets that we can lay our hands on. We shall
bind them and threaten them with hanging if they utter a single word;
and they will do well enough for the ten English prisoners. Is not the
idea a jolly one? But, Conrad, what are you brooding over?"

"Perhaps I was wrong in exercising my right over that vassal's wife,"
replied the Sire of Nointel with a somber and pensive mien. "It was a
mere libertine caprice, because I love Gloriande. But the resistance of
the scamp, who, besides, charged you with theft, irritated me." And
resuming after a moment of silence, the Sire of Nointel addressed his
friend: "Tell me the truth; here among ourselves; did you really rob the
villein? It would have been an amusing trick.... I only would like to
know if you really did it?"

"Conrad, the suspicion is insulting--"

"Oh, it is not in the interest of the dead serf that I put the question,
but it is in my own."

"How? Explain yourself more clearly."

"If that vassal has been unjustly drowned ... his prophecy would have
more weight."

"By heavens! Are you quite losing your wits, Conrad? Do you see me
saddened because Jacques Bonhomme has predicted to me that I was to be
drowned?... The devil! It is I who mean to drown your sadness in a cup
of good Burgundy wine.... Come, Conrad, to horse ... to horse!... Supper
waits, and after the feast pretty female serfs! Long live joy and love!
Let's reach the manor in a canter--"

"Perhaps I did wrong in forcing the serf's wife," the Sire of Nointel
repeated to himself. "I know not why, but a tradition, handed down from
the elder branch of my family, located at Auvergne, comes back to me at
this moment. The tradition has it that the hatred of the serfs has often
been fatal to the Nerowegs!"

"Hallo, Conrad, to horse! Your valet has been holding your stirrup for
the last hour," broke in the cheerful voice of Gerard. "What are you
thinking about?"

"I should not have violated the vassal's wife," the Sire of Nointel
still mumbled while swinging himself on his horse's back, and taking the
route to his manor accompanied by Gerard of Chaumontel.




CHAPTER VII.

WRECKED HEARTS.


The ground floor of the house of Alison the Huffy is closed. A lamp
burns inside, but the door and windows are bolted within.
Aveline-who-never-lied lies half stretched out upon a bench. Her hands
lie across her breast, her head reclines on the knees of Alison. She
would be thought asleep were it not for the tremors that periodically
convulse her frame. Her discolored visage bears the traces of the tears,
which, rarer now, still occasionally escape from her swollen eyelids.
The tavern-keeper contemplates the unfortunate girl with an expression
of profound pity. William Caillet, seated near by, with his elbows on
his knees, his forehead in his hands, takes not his eyes from his
daughter. He remembered Alison, and relying on her kind-heartedness, had
taken Aveline to the tavern with the aid of Adam the Devil, who
immediately had gone out again to the tourney to meet Jocelyn the
Champion, by whom he was later snatched from the fray.

Suddenly sitting up affrighted, Aveline cried semi-delirious: "They are
drowning him.... I see it.... He is drowned!... Did you not hear the
splash of his body dropping into the water?... My bridegroom is
dead...."

"Dear daughter," said Alison, breaking into tears, "calm yourself....
Have confidence in God.... They may have had mercy upon him--"

"She is right.... This is the hour," said William Caillet in a low
hollow voice. "Mazurec was to be drowned at nightfall. Patience! Every
night has its morn. The unfortunate man will be avenged."

Hearing a rap at the door, Alison, who was holding Aveline in her arms,
turned to William: "Who can it be at this hour?"

The old peasant rose, approached the door and asked: "Who's that?"

"I, Jocelyn the Champion," a voice answered.

"Oh!" murmured Aveline's father, "he comes from the river"; saying which
he opened.

Jocelyn entered with quick steps. At the sight, however, of Mazurec's
wife, held in a swooning condition in the arms of Alison, he stopped
short, turned to Caillet, and whispered to him: "He is saved!"

"He?" cried the serf stupefied. "Saved?"

"Silence!" said Jocelyn, pointing to Aveline. "Such news may prove fatal
if too suddenly conveyed."

"Where is he? Where did he take refuge?"

"Adam is bringing him hither.... He can hardly stand.... I came ahead of
them.... He is weeping incessantly.... We came across the field.... The
curfew has sounded. We met nobody. Poor Mazurec is saved--"

"I shall go out to meet him," said Caillet, panting with emotion. "Poor
Mazurec! Dear son! Dear child!"

Jocelyn approached Aveline, who, with her arms around Alison's neck was
sobbing bitterly. "Aveline," said Jocelyn to her, "listen to me, please.
Have courage and confidence--"

"He is dead," murmured Aveline moaning and not heeding Jocelyn. "They
have drowned him."

"No ... he is not dead," Jocelyn went on saying. "There is hope of
saving him."

"Good God!" cried Alison, now weeping with joy and embracing Aveline in
a transport of happiness. "Do you hear, dear little one? He is not
dead."

Aveline joined her hands and essayed to speak, but the words died away
on her lips that trembled convulsively.

"This is what happened," explained Jocelyn. "Mazurec was put into a bag
and he was thrown into the water. Fortunately, however," Jocelyn
hastened to add, seeing Aveline utter a smothered cry, "Adam the Devil
and myself, profiting by the darkness, had hidden ourselves among the
reeds that border the bank of the river about a hundred paces from the
bridge. The current was toward us. With the aid of a long pole we sought
to drag towards us the bag in which Mazurec was tied up, and to pull him
out in time."

"Oh!" stammered the young girl. "Help came too late."

"No, no! Calm yourself. We succeeded in drawing the bag to the bank.
Adam cut it open with one rip of his knife, and we took Mazurec out of
the canvas still breathing."

"He lives!" exclaimed the girl in a delirium of joy. Her first movement
was to precipitate herself towards the door, and there she fell in the
arms of her father, who, having just returned, stood on the threshold.

"Yes, he lives!" said Caillet to his daughter, closing her to his
breast. "He lives ... and he is here!"

That same instant Mazurec appeared at the threshold, pale, faint,
dripping water, his face unrecognizable, and supported by Adam the
Devil. Instead of running to the encounter of her husband, Aveline
staggered back frightened and cried: "It is not he!"

She did not recognize Mazurec. His crushed eye, encircled with black and
blue concussions, his crushed nose, his lips split and swollen, so
completely changed his once sweet and attractive features, that the
hesitation of the vassal's wife lasted several seconds; but soon
recovered from her painful surprise, she threw herself at the neck of
Mazurec, and kissed his wounds with frantic excitement.

Mazurec returned the embrace of his wife and murmured sadly: "Oh, poor
wife ... although I still live, yet you are a widow."

These words, reminding as they did the young couple that they were
forever separated by the infamous outrage that Aveline had been the
victim of and that might mean maternity to her, caused them both to
break forth into a flood of tears that flowed while they remained
closely locked in a gloomy and mute embrace.

"Oh!" exclaimed William Caillet, even whose harsh features were now
moistened with tears at the sight of the ill-starred couple, "to avenge
them.... How much blood.... Oh! how much blood.... What conflagrations
... what massacres ... the reprisals must be terrible."

"That seigniorial race must be strangled out of existence," put in Adam
the Devil, biting his nails with suppressed rage. "They must be
extirpated ... they must be killed off ... all of them ... even the
whelps in the cradle ... not a vestige of the seigniory must be left in
existence." And turning to Jocelyn, the peasant added with savage
reproach: "And you, you tell us to be patient--"

"Yes," answered Jocelyn, interrupting him; "yes, patience, if you wish
on one day to avenge the millions of slaves, serfs and villeins of our
race, who for centuries have been dying, crushed down, tortured and
massacred by the seigneurs. Yes, patience, if you desire that your
vengeance be fruitful and accomplish the deliverance of your brothers!
To that end I conjure you, and you, Caillet, also--no partial revolts!
Let all the serfs of Gaul rise simultaneously, on one day, at the same
signal. The seigniorial race will not see the morrow of that day."

"To wait," replied Adam the Devil, scowling with impatience; "always to
wait!"

"And when will the signal of revolt come?" asked Caillet. "Whence is it
to come? Answer me that!"

"It will come from Paris, the city of revolts and of popular uprisings,"
answered Jocelyn; "and that will be within shortly."

"From Paris," exclaimed the two peasants in a voice expressive of
astonishment and doubt. "What! Those Parisians ... will they be ready to
revolt?"

"Like you, the Parisians are tired of the outrages and exactions of the
seigneurs; like you, the Parisians are tired of the thieveries of King
John and his court, both of whom ruin and starve the country; like you,
they are tired of the cowardice of the nobility, the only armed force in
the country, and that, nevertheless, allows Gaul to be ravaged by the
English; finally, the Parisians are tired of praying and remonstrating
with the King to obtain from him the reform of execrable abuses. The
Parisians are, therefore, decided to appeal to arms against the royalty.
The rupture of the truce with the English, just announced by the royal
messenger, will undoubtedly hasten the hour of revolt. However, until
that solemn hour shall sound, patience, or all is lost."

"And these Parisians," replied Caillet with redoubled attention, "who
directs them? Have they a leader?"

"Yes," answered Jocelyn with enthusiasm, "a most courageous, wise and
good man. He is an honor to our country!"

"And his name?"

"Etienne Marcel, a bourgeois, a draper, and provost of the councilmen of
Paris. The whole people are with him because he aims at the welfare and
the enfranchisement of the people. A large number of the bourgeois of
the communal towns, that have fallen back into the royal power and who
are ready to rise, are in touch with Marcel. But he realizes that the
bourgeois and artisans would be guilty of a wicked act if they did not
offer their advice and help to the serfs of the country and aid them
also to break the yoke of the seigneurs. By acting in concert--serfs,
artisans and bourgeois--we could easily prevail over the seigneurs and
the royal house. Count ourselves; count our oppressors. How many are
they? A few thousand at the most, while we are millions!"

"That's true," said Caillet, exchanging looks of approval with Adam.
"The towns and the country combined, that's the world! The seigneurs and
their clergy are insignificant."

"I came to this place," proceeded Jocelyn, "by the advice of Etienne
Marcel, calculating that, as a rule, tourneys attract a large number of
vassals. I was to ascertain whether the sentiment of rebellion existed
in this province as it did in others. I have no longer any doubt on the
subject. I have met you, William and Adam, and no longer ago than this
afternoon I have seen, much as I regretted the partial and hasty
movement, that Jacques Bonhomme, tired of his burden of shame, misery
and sufferings, is ripe for action. I shall now return to Paris with a
heart full of hope. Therefore, patience! Friends, patience! Soon will be
the hour of reprisals sound, the hour of inexorable justice. Then, death
to our oppressors!"

"Yes," answered Caillet; "we shall settle the accounts of our ancestors
... and I shall settle the accounts of my daughter.... Do you see my
child? Do you?" and the old peasant pointed to Aveline who sat near
Mazurec. Overcome with sorrow, mute, their eyes fixed on the floor and
holding each other's hands the smitten couple presented a picture of
unutterable woe.

"But coming to think of it," said Jocelyn. "Mazurec cannot remain in
this territory."

"I have thought of that," rejoined Caillet. "To-night I shall return to
Cramoisy with my daughter and her husband. I know a grotto in the
thickest part of the forest. The hiding-place was long of service to
Adam. I shall take Mazurec thither. Every night my daughter will take to
him a share of our pittance. The poor child feels so desolate that to
separate her entirely from her husband would be to kill her. He shall
remain in hiding until the day of vengeance shall have arrived. You may
rely on me, upon Adam and upon many others."

"But who will give the signal at which the towns and country folks are
to rise?" asked Adam the Devil.

"Paris," responded Jocelyn. "Before long I shall have moneys brought to
you, or I may bring them myself, with which to purchase arms. Be careful
not to awaken the suspicions of the seigneurs. Buy your arms one by one
in town ... at fairs, and hide them at home. If you know any safe
blacksmiths, get them to turn out pikes ... town money will furnish you
with iron ... and with iron you will be able to purchase revenge and
freedom. Who has iron has bread!"

A prolonged neighing just outside the door interrupted the conversation.
"It is Phoebus, my horse," cried Jocelyn, agreeably reminded that he had
left the animal tied close to the tourney. "He must have grown tired of
waiting for me, must have snapped the strap and returned to the tavern
after me, where, however, he has been only once before. Brave Phoebus,"
Jocelyn added, proceeding to the door. "This is not the first proof of
intelligence that he has given me." Hardly had Jocelyn opened the upper
part of the door than the head of Phoebus appeared; the animal neighed
anew and licked the hands of his master, who said to him: "Good friend,
you shall have a good supply of oats, and then we shall take the road."

"What, Sir, you intend to depart this very night?" asked Alison the
Huffy, drying her tears that had not ceased to flow since the return of
Mazurec. "Do you mean to depart, despite the dark and the rain? Remain
with us at least until to-morrow morning."

"The royal messenger has brought tidings that hasten my return to Paris,
my pretty hostess. Keep a corner for me in your heart, and ... we shall
meet again. I expect to be soon back in Nointel."

"Before leaving us, Sir champion," insisted Alison, rummaging in her
pocket, "take these three franks. I owe them to you for having won my
case."

"Your case?... I have not yet pleaded it!"

"You have gained my case without pleading it."

"How is that?"

"This forenoon, when you returned for your horse to ride to the tourney,
Simon the Hirsute came out of his house as you passed by. 'Neighbor,'
said I to him, 'I have not until now been able to find a champion. I now
have one.' 'And where is that valiant champion?' answered Simon
sneering. 'There,' said I, 'do you see him? It is that tall young man
riding yonder on the bay horse.' Simon then ran after you, and after a
careful inspection that took you in from head to foot, he came back
crestfallen and said to me: 'Here, neighbor, I give you three florins,
and let's be quits.' 'No, neighbor, you shall return to me my twelve
florins, or you will have to settle with my champion, if not to-day,
to-morrow.' A quarter of an hour later, Simon the Hirsute, who had now
turned sweet as honey, brought me my twelve florins. Here are the three
promised to you, Sir champion."

"I have not pleaded, and have nothing coming to me from you, my pretty
hostess, except a kiss which you will let me have when you hold my
stirrup."

"Oh, what a large heart you have, Sir champion!" cordially answered
Alison. "One embraces his friends, and I am certain you now entertain
some affection for me."

After Phoebus had eaten his fill and Jocelyn had thrown a thick
traveling cloak over his armor, he returned to the room. Approaching
Mazurec he said to him with deep emotion: "Courage and patience ...
embrace me ... I know not why, but I feel an interest in you beside that
which your misfortunes awaken ... I shall ere long have clarified my
doubts"; and, then addressing Aveline: "Good-bye, poor child; your hopes
are shattered; but at least the companion of your sorrows has been saved
to you. Often will your tears mingle with his and they will seem less
bitter"; turning finally to Caillet and Adam the Devil, whose horny
hands he pressed in his own: "Good-bye, brothers ... remember your
promises; I shall not forget mine; let us know how to wait for the great
day of reprisal."

"To see that day and avenge my daughter, to exterminate the nobles and
their tonsured helpers, is all I desire," answered Caillet; "after that
I shall be ready to die."

After planting a cordial kiss on the red lips of Alison, who was
holding his stirrup, and two on her rosy cheeks, Jocelyn the Champion
bounded on his horse, and despite the rain and the thick darkness,
hastily resumed the road to Paris.

"Happy trip and speedy return!" cried out Alison after him.




PART II.

THE REGENCY OF NORMANDY




CHAPTER I.

THE STATES GENERAL.


The Frankish conquerors of Gaul founded about a thousand years before
the date of this narrative the first dynasty that reigned in the land.
Clovis, the first of the kings, established and his successor followed
the custom of almost yearly convoking their leudes, or chiefs of bands,
to gatherings that they named Fields of May. At these assemblies, from
which the Celtic or conquered people were wholly excluded and to which
only the warrior ruler class was admitted, the Frankish chiefs or feudal
lords deliberated with their supreme sovereign, the king, in their own
or Germanic tongue upon new martial enterprises; or upon new imposts to
be laid upon the subjected race. It was at these Fields of May that
later, during the usurpatory dominion of the stewards of the palace, the
do-nothing kings, those last scions of Clovis, unnerved and degenerate
beings, appeared once a year with artificial beards as the grotesque and
hollow effigies of royalty. These assemblies were continued under the
reign of Charles the Great and the Carlovingian kings--the dynasty that
in 752 succeeded that of Clovis. The bishops, accomplices of the
conquerors, joined in these assemblies, where, accordingly, only the
nobility, that is, the conquerors, and the clergy had seats. Under Hugh
Capet and his descendants, the dynasty of the Capets, which succeeded
that of the Carlovingians in 987, continued the practice of the Fields
of May, but under a different name. At irregular intervals they held in
their domains Courts or Parliaments--assemblies composed of seigneurs
and prelates, but from which the newly shaping class of bourgeois or
townsmen was excluded, along with the artisans and serfs, essentially as
was the case under the previous dynasties. These assemblies represented
exclusively the interests of the ruling class and its accomplices.

Towards the close of 1290, the legists or lawyers, a new class of
plebeian origin, began to enter the parliaments. The royal power, that
had reared its head upon the ruins of the independence of the feudal
lords, grew ever more oppressive and absolute, and the functions of the
parliaments were by degrees restricted to servilely registering and
promulgating the royal ordinances, instead of remaining what they
originally were, free gatherings where kings, seigneurs and prelates
deliberated as peers upon the affairs of the State--that is to say,
their own private interests, to the exclusion of those of the people. In
course of time, despite these registrations, neither law nor ordinance
was carried out, and the government became wholly autocratic. Then came
a turn. The spirit of liberty breathed over Gaul, and a species of
general insurrection broke out against the crown. The townsmen,
entrenched in their towns, the seigneurs in their castles, the bishops
in their dioceses, reused to pay the imposts decreed at the royal
pleasure. Thus Philip the Fair, in the early part of the eleventh
century, was unable to enforce the ordinance that levied a fifth of all
incomes. Although the decree was registered by parliament, the officers
of the King were met with swords, sticks and showers of stones in Paris,
Orleans and other places, and remained unable to fetch the money to the
royal treasury. At that juncture Enguerrand de Marigny, an able
minister, who was later hanged, said to Philip the Fair: "Fair Sire, you
are not the strongest; therefore, instead of ordering, request, pray,
entreat, if necessary. To that end convoke a national assembly, States
General, composed of prelates, seigneurs and bourgeois or townsmen,
jointly deputed. In our days, fair Sire, we must reckon with the
townsmen, that bourgeois class that has succeeded in emancipating
itself. To that national assembly submit gently, mildly and frankly the
needs that press you. If you do, there is a good chance of your wishes
being met."

The advice was wise. Philip the Fair followed it. Thus it came about
that for the first time since nine centuries, and thanks to the communal
insurrections, the bourgeois--those plebeians who represented the
subjugated class--took their seats in the national assembly beside the
seigneurs, who represented the oppressors, and the bishops, their
accomplices. Before these States General, that thus came into existence,
the king now appeared in humble posture, affecting poverty and good
will, and obtained the levies of men and subsidies that he needed. After
Philip the Fair, his descendants, greedy, prodigal and needy, convoked a
national assembly whenever they required a new levy of taxes or of men.
The bourgeois deputies ever appeared at these assemblies in a defiant
mood. They never were convoked except to exact gold and the blood of
their race from them. To exact is the correct term. Vain it was for the
bourgeois deputies to refuse, as they did, the levies of men and moneys
that seemed to them unjust. Their refusal was annulled, and the method
of annulment was this: The States General consisted of three
estates--the nobility, the clergy and the bourgeoisie--each being
represented by an equal number of deputies. Accordingly, the bourgeoisie
was out-voted by the combined estates of the nobility and the clergy,
both of which were ever found anxious to meet the royal wishes on the
head of taxation.

The reason was plain. The prelates and seigneurs, being exempt of
taxation in virtue of the privileges of the nobility of the one and the
alleged sanctity of the other, and sharing, thanks to the prodigalities
of the kings, in the taxes levied on the bourgeoisie, granted with
gladsome hearts all the levies for money that the crown ever requested.

Thus stood things at the beginning of the reign of John II. Though the
position of the people continued to be grievous, yet marked progress had
been made.




CHAPTER II.

ETIENNE MARCEL.


The hopeless minority in which the bourgeoisie found itself in the
States General rendered its participation in government a fiction. It
remained for a great man and the proper juncture in order to turn the
fiction into a reality. The juncture set in during the year 1355, when
King John II found his treasury empty through his ruinous prodigalities,
and Gaul in flames through the pretensions of the King of England to the
ownership of the country and his efforts to reconquer it, while in the
south Charles the Wicked, King of Navarre, whom John II. had given his
daughter in marriage, was arms in hand, capturing several provinces to
which he laid claim as part of his wife's dower. The man of the occasion
arose in Etienne Marcel.

With the country torn up by war and his treasury bankrupt, John II
convoked the States General. He needed stout levies of men and stouter
levies of money. The Archbishop of Rouen, then the royal chancellor,
haughtily presented the King's demands. But the imperious chancellor had
counted without Etienne Marcel, one of the greatest men who ever added
luster to the name of Gaul. The great commoner, deputed to the States
General by the city of Paris and indignant at seeing the nobility and
clergy disregard the just protests of the deputies of the bourgeoisie,
thundered against the odious practice, and, sustained by the menacing
attitude of the Parisians, he uttered the memorable declaration that
_the alliance of the nobility and the clergy was no longer to be of
controlling force upon the deputies of the bourgeoisie_, and that if,
contrary to the vote of the bourgeoisie, the seigneurs and prelates
granted levies of men and moneys to the King without any guarantee as to
the proper employment of such forces and funds for the public welfare,
the towns would have to refuse obedience to such decrees and furnish
neither men nor moneys to the crown.

These energetic and wise words, never heard before, imposed upon the
States General. In the name of the deputies of the bourgeoisie, Marcel
submits to the crown the conditions under which the third estate would
consent to grant the men and subsidies asked for; and the crown accepts,
knowing the people of Paris stood ready to sustain their spokesman.
Unfortunately, and the experience was to be more than once made by
Marcel, he soon realized the hollowness of royal promises. The moneys
granted by the national assembly are insanely dissipated by the King and
his courtiers. The levies of men, instead of being employed against the
English, whose invasion spread over wider areas of the national
territory, are turned to the private wars of the King against some of
the seigneurs, and intended either to protect or enlarge his own
domains. The audacity of the English redoubles; they break the truce and
threaten the very heart of the land; and King John then hastily summons
his faithful and well-beloved nobility to join him in the defence of the
nation.

The reception given to the royal herald by the valiant jousters, warm
from the passage of arms at the tourney of Nointel, has been narrated.
Nevertheless, with good or ill will, the majority of the gallants, all
of whom were made to fear for their own estates by the foreign invasion,
dragged their vassals after them, and joined John II near Poitiers. At
the first charge of the English archers the brilliant gathering of
knights turn their horses' heads, ply their spurs, cowardly take to
flight, and leave the poor people that they had compelled to follow them
at the mercy of the invader who falls upon them and ruthlessly puts them
to the sword. King John himself remains a prisoner on the field, while
his son Charles, Duke of Normandy, a stripling barely twenty years of
age, escapes with his brothers the disgraceful defeat of his father only
by riding full tilt to Paris, where, in his capacity of Regent, he
convokes the States General for the purpose of obtaining fresh sums to
ransom the seigneurs who remained in the hands of the enemy.

Without Etienne Marcel, the draper, Gaul would have been lost; but the
ascendancy of his genius and patriotism dominated the assembly. In
answer to the chancellor, who conveyed the demands of the Regent, Marcel
declared that before attending to the ransom of the King and knights,
the nation's safety demanded attention. The nation's safety demanded
urgent and radical reforms. He recited them. And, losing sight of
nothing, but developing superhuman activity, he caused Paris to be
protected with new fortifications in order to render the town safe from
the English who had advanced as far as St. Cloud. He armed the people;
organized the street police; made provisions for food by large
importations of grains; calmed and reassured the alarmed spirits; by his
example imparted a similar temper to the other towns; and, faithful in
the midst of all other cares to the plan of reform that he had pursued
and ripened during the long years of his obscure and industrious life,
he caused the appointment of a committee of twenty-four bourgeois
deputies charged with the drafting of the reforms that were to be
demanded from the Regent. The deputies of the nobility and the clergy
withdrew disdainfully from the national assembly, shocked at the
audacity of the bourgeois legislators. These, however, masters of the
situation and laboring under the high inspiration of Etienne Marcel,
drew up a plan of reforms that in itself meant an immense revolution. It
was the republican government of the ancient communes of Gaul, now
extended beyond the confines of the town and made to cover the entire
nation; it was the substitution of the power of deputies elected by the
whole country for the absolute power of the crown. The King becomes
merely the chief agent of the States General, and he has no power
without their sovereign consent to dispose of a single man, or a single
florin. These reforms, the fruit of many vigils on the part of Etienne
Marcel, were accepted and solemnly sworn to by Charles, Duke of
Normandy, in the capacity of Regent for his father, then a prisoner in
the English camp, and they were promulgated in the principal towns of
Gaul with the sound of trumpets, under the title of "Royal Ordinance of
the 17th day of January, 1357." The ordinance was as follows:

     The States General shall henceforth meet whenever they may think
     fit and without requiring the consent of the King, to deliberate
     upon the government of the kingdom, and the vote of the nobility
     and clergy shall have no binding power over the deputies of the
     communes.

     The members of the States General shall be under the protection of
     the king, the Duke of Normandy and their successors. And,
     furthermore, members of the States General shall be free to travel
     throughout the kingdom with an armed escort that shall be charged
     with causing them to be respected.

     The moneys proceeding from the subsidies granted by the States
     General shall be levied and distributed, not by royal officers, but
     by deputies elected by the States General; and they shall swear to
     resist all orders of the King and his ministers, in case the King
     or his ministers wish to turn the moneys to other expenses than
     those provided for by the States General.

     The King shall grant no pardon for murder, rape, abduction or
     infringement of truce.

     The offices of justice shall not be sold or farmed out.

     The costs of processes, inquests and administration in the chambers
     of parliament and of accounts shall be lowered, and the officials
     of those departments who may refuse, shall be expelled as
     extortionists of the public fund.

     All seizures of food, clothing or money in the name and for the
     service of the King or of his family shall be forbidden; and power
     is given to the inhabitants to gather at the call of their town
     bell and to pursue the seizers.

     To the end of avoiding all monopoly and extortion, no officer of
     the King shall be allowed to carry on any trade in merchandise or
     money.

     The expenses of the household of the King, the Dauphin and of the
     princes shall be moderated and reduced to reasonable bounds by the
     States General; and the stewards of the royal households shall be
     obliged to pay for what they buy.

     Finally, the King, the Dauphin, the princes, the nobility, the
     prelates of whatever rank, shall bear the burden of taxation the
     same as all other citizens, as justice requires.

Compared with the Fields of May of olden days, where the conquering
Franks and their bishops disposed of the people of Gaul like cattle,
the national assemblies, held under the ordinance that Etienne Marcel
had wrung from the crown--assemblies dominated by the industrious class
which by its labor, commerce, trades and arts enriched the country while
the royalty, nobility and clergy devoured it--the progress was gigantic.

No less distinguished were the services of Etienne Marcel at this
juncture against the foreign invader, who was advancing with rapid
marches upon the capital of the land. Paris, originally circumscribed to
the island that is washed by the two arms of the Seine, extended itself
from century to century beyond its original cradle to the right and to
the left, until under the reign of John II it had grown to a town of
large proportions. The old part of the city, that which is bounded by
the two arms of the river, continued at this time to be called the Cite
and served as the headquarters of the clergy, whose houses seemed to
cuddle under the shadow of the high towers of the tall church of Notre
Dame. The Bishop of Paris had almost the entire Cite for his
jurisdiction. On the right bank of the Seine and at the place where rose
the thick tower of the gate of the Louvre, began the fortified premises
of what was generally called the town. It was peopled with merchants,
artisans and bourgeois, and it contained the square at one end of which
stood the pillory, where malefactors were exposed or executed before
taking their corpses to the gibbets of Montfaucon. The girdle of
fortresses that surround Paris to the north extends from the thick tower
of the Louvre to the gate of S. Honore. From there, the wall winding
towards the Coquiller gate, reaches the gate of Mont Martre, makes a
curve near St. Denis street, continues in the direction of the gate of
St. Antoine, and arrives at the Barbette gate, which is flanked by the
large tower of Billy, built on the borders of the Seine opposite Notre
Dame and the isle of Cows. The girdle of the ramparts, interrupted at
this spot by the river, is resumed on the left bank. It skirts the
quarter of the University, which is inhabited by the students and which
has for its issues the gates of St. Vincent, St. Marcel, St. Genevieve,
St. James and St. Germain. Thence it flanks the palace of Nesle and runs
out into the tower of Philip-Hamelin, built on the left bank opposite
the tower of the Louvre, which rises on the right bank. This vast
enclosure which insured the defense of Paris was completed by arduous
labors of fortification due to the genius and the prodigious activity of
Etienne Marcel. He caused the ramparts to be equipped with numerous
engines of war of the new kind that then began to come in vogue named
_cannons_--tubes made of bars of iron held fast by rings of the same
metal. By means of a powder recently invented by a German monk, these
cannons expelled stone and iron balls with what was then considered
marvelous velocity, force and noise, and to a then equally marvelous
distance. Without those immense works, all of which were executed within
three months, the capital of Gaul would have inevitably fallen into the
hands of the English.




CHAPTER III.

THE MAN OF THE FURRED CAP.


Many weeks had elapsed since the night when Jocelyn the Champion rode
back to Paris from the little village of Nointel. A man wearing a woolen
cap, clad in an old blouse of grey material, carrying a knapsack on his
back and a heavy stick in his hand entered Paris by the gate of St.
Denis. It was William Caillet, the father of Aveline-who-never-lied. The
old peasant looked even somberer than when last seen at Nointel. His
hollow and fiery eyes, his sunken cheeks, his bitter smile--all
betokened a profound and concentrated sorrow. This, however, yielded
presently to astonishment at the tumultuous aspect of the streets of
Paris, where he now found himself for the first time in his life. The
multitude of busy people wearing different costumes, the horses,
carriages, litters that crossed in all directions, gave the rustic a
feeling akin to vertigo, while his ears rung with the deafening cries
incessantly uttered by the merchants and their apprentices, who,
standing at the doors of their shops solicited customers. "Hot stoves!
Hot baths!" cried the keepers of bathing houses; "Fresh and warm cakes!"
cried the pastry venders; "Fresh wine, just arrived from Argenteuil and
Suresne!" cried a tavern-keeper armed with a large pewter tumbler, and
with looks and gestures inviting the topers to drink; "Whose coat needs
mending?" asked the tailor; "The oven is warm, who wants to have his
bread baked?" vociferated a baker; further off a royal edict was being
proclaimed, announced by drum and trumpet; in among the crowd several
monks, collectors for a brotherhood, held out their purses and cried:
"Give for the ransom of the souls in purgatory!" while beggars,
exhibiting their real or assumed deformities exclaimed: "Give to the
poor, for the love of God!" Before venturing further into Paris, William
Caillet sat down on a stone step placed near a door meaning both to rest
himself and to accustom his eyes and ears to a noise that was so utterly
new to him.

Presently a distant rumbling, proceeding from Mauconseil street, almost
drowned the cross-fire of cries. At intervals the roll of drums and
mournful clarion notes mingled with the approaching and rumbling din,
and soon Caillet heard repeated from mouth to mouth in accents at once
sorrowful and angry: "That's the funeral of the poor Perrin Mace." All
the passers-by started, and a great number of merchants and apprentices
left their shops in charge of the women behind the counters, and ran
towards Mauconseil and Oysters-are-fried-here streets, where the funeral
procession was to pass after traversing St. Denis street.

Struck by the eagerness of the Parisians to witness the funeral, which
seemed to be a matter of public mourning, Caillet followed the crowd,
whose confluence from several other streets soon became considerable.
Accident threw him near a student of the University of Paris. The young
man, about twenty years of age, was named Rufin the Tankard-smasher, a
nickname that was borne out by the jovial and convivial mien of the
strapping youngster. He had on his head a crazy felt hat that age had
rendered yellow, and he wore a black coat no less patched up than his
hose. He looked as threadbare as ever did a Paris student. Held back by
his rustic timidity, Caillet did not venture to open a conversation with
Rufin the Tankard-smasher, notwithstanding several remarks dropped by
the crowd around him and by the student himself increased the rustic's
curiosity in the young man.

"Poor Perrin Mace!" said a Parisian, "To have his hand cut off and then
be hanged without trial! And all because it so pleased the Regent and
his courtiers!"

"That's the way the court respects the famous ordinance of our Marcel!"

"Oh, this nobility!... It is the pest and ruination of the country!...
It and its clergy!"

"The nobles!" cried Rufin the Tankard-smasher; "they are merely
caparisoned and plumed parade horses; good to prance and not to carry or
draw. The moment they are called to do work, they rear and kick!"

"And yet, master student," ventured a large sized man with a furred cap,
"the noble knighthood deserves our respect."

"The knighthood!" cried Rufin, laughing contemptuously, "the knighthood
is good only to figure in tourneys, attracted by the lure of profit. The
horse and arms of the vanquished belong to the vanquisher. By Jupiter!
Those doughty chaps seek to throw down their adversaries just as we
students seek to knock down the nine-pins at a bowling game on the
college grounds. But so soon as their skins are in danger in battle,
where there is no profit to be fetched other than blows, that same
nobility shamefully takes to flight, as happened at the battle of
Poitiers, where it gave the signal for run-who-run-can to an army of
forty thousand men pitted against only eight thousand English archers!
By the bowels of the Pope! Your nobles are not men, they are hares!"

"Come, now, master student," laughingly put in another townsman; "let us
not be too hard upon the nobility; did it not rid us of King John by
leaving him a prisoner in the hands of the English?"

"Yes!" exclaimed another, "but we shall have to pay the royal ransom,
and in the meantime must submit to the government of the Regent, a
stripling of twenty years, who orders people to be hanged when they
demand the moneys owing to them by the royal treasury, and object when
we strike them, as did Perrin Mace."

"With the aid of heaven, our friend Marcel will soon put a stop to that
sort of thing."

"Marcel is the providence of Paris."

"Friends," resumed the man of the furred cap, smiling disdainfully,
"you seem to have nothing but the name of Marcel in your mouths.
Although Master Marcel is a provost and president of the town council,
yet he is not everything on earth. The other councilmen are his
superiors in trade. Take, for instance, John Maillart, there you have a
worthy townsman--"

"Who is it dare compare others with the great Marcel!" cried Rufin the
Tankard-smasher. "By Jupiter, whoever utters such foolishness quacks
like a goose!"

"Hm! Hm!" grumbled the man of the furred cap; "I said so!"

"Then it is you who quack like a goose!" promptly replied the
Tankard-smasher. "What! You dare maintain that Marcel is not the
foremost townsman! He, the friend of the people!"

"Aye, aye!" came from the crowd. "Marcel is our saviour. Without him
Paris would by this time have been taken and sacked by the English!"

"Marcel," resumed the Tankard-smasher with increasing enthusiasm, "he
who restored economy in our finances, order and security in the city! By
the bowels of the Pope! I know something about that! Only a fortnight
ago, towards midnight, I with my chum Nicolas the Thin-skinned were
beating at the door of a public house on Trace-Pute street. The woman of
the house refused us admission, pretending that the girls we were
looking for were not in. Thereat I and my friend came near breaking in
the door. At that a platoon of cross-bowmen, organized by Marcel to
maintain order in the streets, happens to go by, and they arrest and
lodge both of us at the Chatelet, despite our privileges as students of
the Paris University!... Now dare say that Marcel does not keep order in
town!"

"That may all be," answered the man of the furred cap; "but any other
councilman would have done as much; and Master John Maillart--"

"John Maillart!" exclaimed Rufin. "By the bowels of the Pope! Had he or
any other, the King himself, dared to encroach upon the franchises of
the University, the students, rising en masse, would have poured, arms
in hands, out of their quarter of St. Germain and there would have been
a battle in Paris. But what is allowed to Marcel, the idol of Paris, is
not allowed to any other."

"The student is right!" went up from the crowd. "Marcel is our idol
because he is just, because he protects the interests of the bourgeois
against the court people, of the weak against the strong. Long live
Etienne Marcel!"

"Without the activity of Marcel, his courage and his foresight, Paris
would have been burned down and deluged in blood by the English."

"Did not Marcel also keep our town from starvation, when he went himself
at the head of the militia as far as Corbeil to protect a cargo of grain
that the Navarrais meant to pillage?"

"I don't deny that," calmly observed the man of the furred cap with
envious insistence. "All I maintain is that, put in the place of Marcel,
Maillart would have done as well."

"Surely, provided the councilman had the genius of Marcel. If he had, he
surely would have done as well as Marcel!" rejoined the Tankard-smasher.
"If my sweetheart wore a beard, she would be the lover and somebody else
the sweetheart!"

This sally of the student was received with a universal laughter of
approval. The immense majority of the Parisians entertained for Marcel
as much attachment as admiration.

Wrapt in his somber silence, William Caillet had listened attentively to
the altercation, and he saw confirmed that which Jocelyn the Champion
had stated to him a short time ago at Nointel concerning the influence
of Marcel upon the Parisian people. By that time, the roll of drums, the
notes of the clarions and the din of a large multitude had drawn nearer.
The procession turned into Mauconseil in order to cross St. Denis
street. A company of the town's cross-bowmen, commanded by a captain,
marched at the head and opened the way, preceded by the drummers and
clarion blowers, who alternately struck up funeral bars. Behind the
cross-bowmen came the town's heralds, dressed in the town colors, half
red and half blue. From time to time the heralds recited solemnly the
following mournful psalmody:

     "Pray for the soul of Perrin Mace, a bourgeois of Paris, unjustly
     executed!

     "John Baillet, the treasurer of the Regent, had borrowed in the
     name of the King a sum of money from Perrin Mace.

     "Mace demanded his money in virtue of the new edict that orders the
     royal officers to pay for what they buy and return what they borrow
     for the King, under penalty of being brought to law by their
     creditors.

     "John Baillet refused to pay, and furthermore insulted, threatened
     and struck Perrin Mace.

     "In the exercise of his right of legitimate defence, granted him by
     the new edict, Perrin Mace returned blow for blow, killed John
     Baillet and betook himself to the church of St. Mery, a place of
     asylum, from where he demanded an inquest and trial.

     "The Duke of Normandy, now Regent, immediately sent one of his
     courtiers, the marshal of Normandy, to the church of St. Mery,
     accompanied with an escort of soldiers and the executioner.

     "The marshal of Normandy dragged Perrin Mace from the church, and
     without trial Mace's right hand was cut off and he was immediately
     hanged.

     "Pray for the soul of Perrin Mace, a bourgeois of Paris, unjustly
     executed."

Regularly after these sentences, that were alternately recited by the
heralds in a solemn voice, the muffled roll of drums and plaintive
clarion notes resounded, but they hardly served to hush the imprecations
from the crowd, indignant at the Regent and his court. Behind the
heralds followed priests with their crucifixes and banners, and then,
draped in a long black cloth embroidered in silver, came the coffin of
the executed bourgeois, carried by twelve notables, clad in their long
robes and wearing the two-colored hats of red and blue, such as were
worn by almost all the partisans of the popular cause. The collars of
their gowns were held by silver brooches, likewise enameled in red and
blue, and bearing the inscription "To a happy issue," a device or
rallying cry given by Marcel. Behind the coffin marched the councilmen
of Paris with Etienne Marcel at their head. The obscure bourgeois, who
had stepped out of his draper's shop to become one of the most
illustrious citizens of Gaul, was then in the full maturity of his age.
Of middle height and robust, Etienne Marcel somewhat stooped from his
fatigues, seeing that his prodigious activity of a man of both thought
and action left him no repose. His open, manly and characterful face
bore at the chin a thick tuft of brown beard, leaving his cheeks and
lips clean shaven. The feverish agitation of the man and the incessant
cares of public affairs had furrowed his forehead and left their marks
on his features without, however, in any way affecting the august
serenity that an irreproachable conscience imparts to the physiognomy of
an honorable man. There was nothing benigner or more affectionate than
his smile when under the influence of the tender sentiments so familiar
to his heart. There was nothing more imposing than his bearing, or more
threatening than his looks when, as powerful an orator as he was a great
citizen, Etienne Marcel thundered with the indignation of an honest and
brave soul against the acts of cowardice and treason and the crimes of
the feudal nobility and the despotic crown. The provost wore the red and
blue head-gear together with the emblazoned brooch that distinguished
the other councilmen. Among these, John Maillart often during the
procession gave his arm to Marcel, who, fatigued by the long march
through the streets of Paris, cordially accepted the support of one of
his oldest friends. Since youth Marcel had lived in close intimacy with
Maillart, but the latter, ever keeping concealed the enviousness that
the glory of Marcel inspired him with, could not now wholly repress a
bitter smile at the enthusiastic acclaim that saluted Marcel along the
route.

A woman clad in long mourning robes and whose presence seemed out of
place at such a ceremony marched beside Maillart. It was his wife,
Petronille, still young and passing handsome, but of atrabilious and
harsh mien. Each time that the heralds finished the mournful psalmody
and before they began it anew, Petronille Maillart would break out into
sobs and moans, and raising and wringing her arms in despair cried out:
"Unhappy Perrin Mace! Vengeance upon his ashes! Vengeance!" The
plaintive outcries and the contortions of Madam Maillart seemed,
however, to excite more surprise than interest with the crowd.

"By Jupiter!" cried Rufin the Tankard-smasher, "what brings that
bellowing woman to this funeral? What makes her demean herself like
that, as if she were possessed? She is neither the widow nor any
relative of Perrin Mace."

"For that reason her presence is all the more admirable," observed the
man of the furred cap addressing the crowd. "Behold her, friends! Do you
see how her despair testifies the extent to which she, as well as her
husband, share in the terrible fate of poor Perrin Mace?... You are
witnesses, friends, that Dame Petronille is the only councilman's wife
who assists at the ceremony!"

"That's true!" said several voices. "Poor, dear woman! She must feel
sadly distracted."

"Yes, indeed. And surely that is not the case with the wife of Marcel,
our first magistrate. She and the others remain calmly at home, without
at all concerning themselves about this public sorrow," put in the man
of the furred cap. "Fail not to take notice!"

"By the bowels of the Pope!" cried the Tankard-smasher. "Marcel's wife
acts like a sensible body. She is right not to come out and exhibit
herself and utter shrieks fit to deafen Beelzebub just when the drums
are silent.... The affliction of that bellowing woman looks to me like a
sheet of music, marked on time. That woman is playing a comedy."

"You vainly try to pass the matter off as a joke, master student,"
rejoined the man of the furred cap. "It will, nevertheless, be noted
that the wife of Maillart assisted at the funeral of Perrin Mace, and
that the wife of Marcel did not. Hm! Hm! My friends, that gives room for
many suspicions; or, rather, it confirms certain rumors."

"What suspicions?" asked Rufin; "What rumors? Explain yourself."

But without answering the student the man of the furred cap was lost in
the crowd, while continuing to whisper to those that he came in contact
with. During this slight incident, the funeral procession had continued
to file by. Notable townsmen, carrying funeral torches, marched behind
the councilmen; they were followed by the trade guilds, each headed by
its banner; finally the rear was brought up by a long line of people of
all conditions uttering imprecations against the Regent and his court,
and acclaiming Marcel with ever increasing enthusiasm. Marcel, the crowd
declared, would know how to avenge the fresh and sanguinary court
iniquity.

From mouth to mouth the announcement was carried that, after the
ceremony, Marcel would address the people in the large hall of the
Convent of the Cordeliers. William Caillet silently assisted at this
scene which seemed to impress him deeply. After a few moments'
reflections he overcame his rustic timidity and drew Rufin the
Tankard-smasher aside by the arm just as the latter was about to walk
away. The student turned around, and yielding to the joviality of his
nature as well as purposing to haze the rustic after the time-honored
practice of the University of Paris, said to him banteringly: "I wager,
dear rustic, that you overheard me speaking of one of my sweethearts!
Hein! I see through you, my sylvan swain! You would like to admire the
town beauties. By the bowels of the Pope! You shall have your pick--"

Hurt by the student's banter, William Caillet answered him gruffly: "I
am a stranger in Paris; I come from a great distance--"

"Oh! You would like to enter the University, would you?" Rufin
interrupted him with redoubled hilarity. "You are somewhat too bearded
for a bachelor; but that does not matter; what faculty would you choose?
theology or medicine? arts, letters or canonical law?"

"Oh, these townsmen!" exclaimed the old peasant with pungent bitterness.
"They are no better than the people of the castles. Go, Jacques
Bonhomme, you have enemies everywhere and nowhere a friend."

Saying this, Caillet started to walk away. But touched by the sad accent
of the peasant, Rufin held him back: "Friend, if I have hurt your
feelings, excuse me. We townsmen are not the enemies of Jacques Bonhomme
for the reason that our enemies are common to us both."

Ever suspicious, Caillet remained silent and sought to discover from the
face of the student whether his words did not conceal a trap or implied
some fresh ridicule. Rufin surmised the apprehensions of the serf,
examined him once more attentively, and now struck by the lines of
sorrow on his face, said to him: "May I die like a dog if I am not
speaking sincerely to you. Friend, you seem to have suffered much; you
are a stranger; I am at your disposal! I do not offer you my purse
because it is empty; but I offer you half of the pallet on which I sleep
in a student's room with a chum from my province, and a part of our
meager pittance."

Now convinced by the frankness of the townsman, the peasant answered: "I
have no time to stay in Paris; I only wish to speak with Jocelyn the
Champion and Marcel; could you help me to that?"

"You know Jocelyn the Champion?" Rufin asked with deep interest, while a
cloud of sadness darkened his countenance.

"Did any misfortune befall him?"

"He left here to assist at a tourney in Beauvoisis some time ago, and
the poor fellow never returned.... His aged and infirm father died of
grief at the disappearance of his son. Brave Jocelyn! I entered the
University the year before he left it. He was the best and most
courageous lad in the world.... He must have been killed at the tourney,
or assassinated on his return to Paris. Highwaymen infest the roads."

"No; he was not killed at the tourney of Nointel. The night after the
passage of arms I saw him take his horse to return to Paris."

"Are you from Beauvoisis?"

"Yes," answered Caillet; and he added with a sigh: "Well, that young
man is dead! Great pity! There are few like him who love Jacques
Bonhomme." After a moment's silence the peasant resumed: "How can I
manage to meet Marcel?"

"By following me to the convent of the Cordeliers where he is to address
the people after the funeral of Perrin Mace. Come with me."

"Go ahead," said Caillet; "I shall follow you."

"Come, we shall go out by the Coquiller gate; that's the shortest
route."

The old peasant walked in silence by the side of Rufin who sought to
draw from him some words on the subject of his trip. But the serf
remained impenetrable. Going out by the gate of St. Denis and following
the streets of the suburbs, that were much less crowded than those of
the city, Caillet and his guide had just left Traversine to enter
Montmartre street when they heard the distant funeral chant of priests
interspersed from time to time with plaintive clarion notes. The peasant
noticed with surprise that as the chant drew nearer the residents along
the streets closed and bolted their doors.

"By the bowels of the Pope!" exclaimed the student. "Accident is serving
us well. You have seen honors paid to the remains of Perrin Mace by the
officials and the people; you will now see the honors paid to John
Baillet, the cause of the iniquity that Paris is feeling indignant
about. Yes, Baillet's remains are honored by the Regent and his court.
Come quick; the procession is probably going to the convent of the
Augustian monks." Hastening his steps and followed by the peasant, the
student reached the corner of Montmartre and Quoque-Heron streets,
opposite which stood the convent, whose doors opened to receive the
coffin. "Look," said the student turning to Caillet. "How significant is
not the contrast presented by these two funerals. At Perrin Mace's a
large concourse of people were present, serious and moved with just
indignation; at John Baillet's nobody assists but the Regent, the
princes, his brothers, the courtiers and the officers of the royal
household--not one representative of the people! The townsmen leave a
deep void around this royal demonstration which is indulged in as a sort
of challenge to the popular one. Tell me, friend, does not the very
aspect of the two processions appeal to the eye. At the funeral of
Perrin Mace we saw a great mass composed of bourgeois and artisans
plainly or even poorly dressed; at the funeral of John Baillet we see
only a handful of courtiers and officers brilliantly attired in gold and
silk and velvet, and decked in magnificent uniforms."

William Caillet listened to the student, seeking to bore through him
with his eyes, and shaking his head answered pensively: "Jocelyn did not
deceive me," and after a pause he proceeded: "But what are the Parisians
still waiting for? We are ready, and have long been!"

"What do you mean?" asked Rufin.

Immediately relapsing into his former close-mouthedness, the peasant
made no answer. The procession just turned into the street. The coffin
of John Baillet, heavily inlaid with gold and preceded by royal heralds
and sergeants-at-arms was borne by twelve menials of the Regent in
costly livery. The young prince and his brothers, accompanied by the
seigneurs of the court, alone followed the coffin. Charles, the Duke of
Normandy and now Regent of the French, as the eldest son of King John,
at the time an English prisoner, had, like his brothers and the French
nobility, fled ignominiously from the battlefield of Poitiers. The young
man who now governed Gaul was barely twenty years of age. He was of
frail physique and pale complexion. His sickly face concealed under a
kind and timid mien a large fund of obstinacy, of perfidy, of wile and
of wickedness--odious vices usually rare in youths, except of royal
lineage. Magnificently dressed in gold-embroidered green velvet, a black
head-gear ornamented with a chain and brooch of costly stones on his
head, the mean-spirited and languishing Regent marched slowly leaning on
a cane. At a short distance behind him advanced his brothers, and then
came the seigneurs of the court, among them the marshal of Normandy,
who, ordered by the young prince, had superintended the mutilation and
subsequent execution of Perrin Mace. The marshal, who was the Sire of
Conflans, one of the Regent's favorites, superb and arrogant, cast upon
the few and straggling spectators disdainful and threatening looks, and
exchanged a few words with the Sire of Charny, a courtier no less loved
by the prince than he was detested by the people. Suddenly Rufin the
Tankard-smasher felt his arm rudely seized by the vigorous hand of
Caillet, who with distended and flaming eyes, and his breast heaving
with pain, gasped out:

"Look!... There they are!... There are the two! The Sire of Nointel and
that other, the knight of Chaumontel!... Oh, do you see them both with
their scarlet hats, down there with the tall man in an ermine cloak?"
cried out Caillet despite himself.

"Yes, yes; I see the two seigneurs," answered the student, astonished at
the emotion manifested by the peasant. "But what makes you tremble so?"

"Down in the country they are thought dead or prisoners of the English,"
exclaimed Caillet. "Fortunately it is not so.... There they are ...
there they are ... I have seen them with my own eyes!" and contracting
his lips with a frightful smile the serf added raising his two fists to
heaven: "Oh, Mazurec!... Oh, my daughter!... Here I see the two men at
last!... They will return home for the marriage of the handsome
Gloriande.... We've got them!... We've got them!"

"The looks of this man make me shiver," thought the student to himself,
gazing at the peasant with stupor, and he proceeded aloud: "Who are
those two seigneurs that you are speaking of?"

Without heeding Rufin, Caillet proceeded to say: "Oh, now more than ever
am I anxious to see Marcel without delay. I must speak with the
provost!"

"In that case," the student said to him, "come and rest at my lodging.
In the evening we shall wait upon the provost at the convent of the
Cordeliers. He is to address the people there this evening. But, once
more, what is the reason of your excitement at the sight of those two
seigneurs in the Regent's suite?"

The peasant cast a suspicious side-glance at the student, remained
silent and his face assumed a somberer hue.

"By the bowels of the Pope!" thought Rufin the Tankard-smasher, "I have
run up against an odd customer; he alternates between dumbness and
riddles. He saddens even me who am not given to melancholy! He
positively frightens even me who am no poltroon!"

And accompanied by William Caillet, the student wended his steps towards
the quarter of the University.




CHAPTER IV.

THE SERPENT UNDER THE GRASS.


Etienne Marcel's house was located near the church of St. Eustace in the
quarter of the market. His shop, filled with rolls of cloth that were
exposed on the shelves, communicated with a dining room. A staircase ran
into this room, leading to the chambers on the floor above.

It being night and the shop closed, Marguerite, Marcel's wife, and
Denise her niece, had gone upstairs into one of the chambers where they
took up some sewing which they were busily at by the light of the lamp.
Marguerite was about forty-five years. She must have been handsome in
her younger days. Her face betokened kindness and was now pensive and
grave. Denise was close to eighteen. Her cheerful face, habitually
serene and candid, seemed this evening profoundly sad. The two women
remained long in silence, each engaged in her work. By degrees, however,
and without raising her head Denise's needle relaxes, and presently,
dropping her hands upon her lap, the tears roll out of her eyes.
Marguerite, no less pre-occupied than her niece, mechanically raises her
eyes towards the young girl, and noticing her tears, says tenderly:

"Poor child! I know the cause of your sorrow because I know the bent of
your mind. I would not have you share a hope that I myself hardly
retain. But, after all, although the continued absence of Jocelyn
justifies our fears, we should not despair.... He may yet return...."

"No, no," answered Denise, now giving free course to her tears. "If
Jocelyn still lived, he would not have left his aged father in the
uncertainty that hastened his death. If Jocelyn still lived he would
have communicated with my uncle Marcel, whom he loved and venerated
like a father. No, no", she exclaimed amid sobs, "He is dead. I shall
never see him again!"

"My child, it is quite possible that carried away by his imprudent
courage, Jocelyn went to the battle of Poitiers, where he may have
remained in the hands of the English. Prisoners return. I conjure you,
do not yield to despair. I suffer to see you weep."

In lieu of answer the young girl rose and walked up to Marguerite, took
her two hands, kissed them and said: "Dear, good aunt, you brush aside
your own sorrows to think of mine, and you seek to console me.... I am
ashamed not to know better and to repress my sorrow while you bear up so
courageously before Master Marcel and your son!"

"Truly, Denise, I do not understand you", remarked Marguerite slightly
embarrassed. "My life is so happy, I need no special courage to bear
it--"

"Oh, oh! Do I not see you daily receive Master Marcel and your son Andre
with a smile on your lips and a serene face, while your heart is in a
storm of anxieties--"

"You are mistaken, Denise!"

"Oh, believe me; it is no indiscreet curiosity that guided me when I
sought to penetrate your feelings. It was the desire to say nothing that
might wound your secret thoughts whenever I am alone with you, as now so
often happens good dear aunt."

"You dear child!" exclaimed Marguerite embracing Denise with effusion
and now making no effort to restrain her own tears. "How could I fail to
be profoundly effected by so much delicacy and tenderness? How could I
fail to respond with unreserved confidence?" Marguerite stopped but
after a last few moments of hesitancy and making a supreme effort she
proceeded: "'Tis true; you did not deceive yourself. Yes, my life is now
spent amid anxieties and alarms. I thank you for having drawn the secret
from me. I shall now, at least, be able to weep before you without
reserve, and give a loose to my heart. Having paid that tribute to
feebleness, I shall be able all the better to appear serene before my
husband and my son! Oh ... I admit it; my only fear is to have them
discover that I suffer! I know Marcel's love for me. It reciprocates
mine. If he knew I was wretched I might cause his own calmness and
fortitude to weaken that never yet have abandoned him and that he needs
now more than ever in these perilous days."

"Oh, the women who envy you would at this moment pity you, did they but
see and hear you, dear aunt!"

"Yes", replied Marguerite with bitterness; "the wife of Marcel, the idol
of the people ... of Marcel, the real king of Paris, is envied. They
envy the companion of that great citizen. Oh, they should rather pity
her.... Tender indulgences ... sweet joys of the hearth, the happiness
of the humblest ... since long I know you no more! The artisan, the
merchant, their day's labors being done, at least enjoy in the bosom of
their families some rest until the morrow. My poor husband, on the
contrary, spends his nights at work ... while I, his wife, remain a prey
to constant uneasiness night and day, ever fearing for his life or his
son's!"

"You have no reason to tremble for the life of Master Marcel, who can
not take a step without he is surrounded by a crowd of devoted friends."

"I fear the Regent's hatred, and that of the nobles and prelates."

At that moment Agnes the Bigot, Marguerite's confidential servant,
entered the room and said to her mistress: "Madam, the wife of Master
Maillart, the councilman, has come to visit you."

"So late! Did you tell her I was home?"

"Yes, madam."

Marguerite made a gesture of impatience and annoyance, dried her tears
and said to Denise in an undertone: "You just mentioned envious
women.... Petronille Maillart is of the number.... Hide your tears, I
pray you, to avoid her drawing wrongful conclusions from our sadness.
She is cruelly jealous of the popularity of Marcel; and Maillart, I
believe, shares the feelings of his wife."

"Can Maillart be jealous of my uncle, the friend of his childhood!"

"Maillart is a weak man whom his wife dominates."

"Maillart is always speaking about running to arms, and of massacring
the nobles and priests."

"Violence is not strength, Denise; the most excited natures usually are
the least firm.... But silence! Here is Petronille.... What can be the
purpose of a visit at this hour?"

Petronille Maillart entered. She was still in her mourning garb. From
the instant of her entrance she darted an inquisitive glance at the wife
of Marcel and at Denise, and undoubtedly observed the traces of recent
tears, seeing that a smile flitted over her lips. Affecting great
sympathy she said:

"Excuse me, Dame Marguerite, for coming to your house at so late an
hour; but I wished to speak to you upon serious matters."

"You are always welcome, Dame Petronille."

"I fear not, at this moment. Sorrow loves solitude, and I notice with
pain that your eyes and those of your dear niece are still red with
tears. Just heaven! Do you entertain any fears for our excellent friend
Marcel. Do the people, perhaps, incline to deny the value of the
services he has rendered Paris? Ingratitude of the masses!"

"Be at ease, Dame Petronille," answered Marguerite interrupting her.
"Thanks to God, I entertain no fears on the score of my husband. It is
true Denise and I feel sad. Shortly before you came in, we were speaking
of a friend whose fate is making us uneasy. You have often seen him
here. It is Jocelyn the Champion."

"Surely; I remember him well. A veritable Hercules ... was the poor
fellow killed?"

"No; we are not ready to believe that such a misfortune has happened.
But it is a long time we have not heard from him."

"Nothing more natural, Dame Marguerite. I can now account for your
tears.... But let me come to the purpose of my visit, which, seeing the
lateness of the hour, must seem strange to you. The curfew has sounded
long ago. You know how attached Maillart and I are to you and your
husband."

"I feel thankful for your friendship."

"Now, then, the duty of good friends is to speak frankly."

"Certainly, there is nothing more precious than sincere friends. Pray
speak, Dame Petronille!"

"Very well, dear Marguerite; your absence from the funeral of poor
Perrin Mace has been noticed. I attended the ceremony; you see it on my
clothes. In my quality of a councilman's wife I felt bound to render
this last homage to the memory of the poor victim of an iniquity."

"Madam ... I can only pity such a victim."

"And do you not revolt at the fate of the unfortunate man?"

"That great iniquity has revolted my husband. In his quality of the
first magistrate of the town, he was bound to head the procession."

"First magistrate of the town!" rejoined Dame Petronille with
ill-suppressed bitterness. "Yes, until his successor is elected. Any one
of the councilmen can be chosen provost. The election decides that."

"Surely," answered Marguerite, exchanging looks with Denise who had
resumed her sewing. "My husband's duty," continued Marcel's wife, "was
first to protest against the crime of the Regent's courtiers by solemnly
attending the funeral of Perrin Mace.... As to me, Dame Petronille,
knowing that it is not the custom for women to assist at these sad
ceremonies, I stayed at home."

"But do people care for custom in such grave circumstances?" cried
Maillart's wife. "One consults only his heart, as I did. Dressed in
black from head to foot, I joined the funeral procession, moaning and
weeping all the tears I had. I thought I would let you know it as a
friend, my dear Dame Marguerite. It is much to be regretted that you
did not follow my example."

"Each is the judge of his own conduct, Madam."

"No doubt, when none is concerned but ourselves. But in this matter,
your husband, our excellent friend Marcel, was also concerned. I
therefore fear that, under the circumstances, you have done him great
harm in the popular esteem."

"What is it you mean?"

"Oh, my God! Poor dear dame! Do you think I would have made haste to
come to you after curfew if my purpose were not to give you charitable
advice?"

"I do not question your good intentions. Marcel himself imparted to the
funeral of Perrin Mace the solemn character that has been attached to
it. He attended it at the head of the councilmen. In that he fulfilled
his duty."

"I know that my husband marched after yours, madam," spitefully rejoined
the envious woman, "seeing that in his quality of provost, Master Marcel
has precedence over all the councilmen.... He is acknowledged by all as
the leader."

"Oh, madam! There is no question of rank," cried Marguerite. "I only
meant to say that Marcel attended the funeral."

"Yes; but you did not, Dame Marguerite; and people said so. They
remarked: 'See, the wife of Master Maillart, the councilman, follows the
hearse of Perrin Mace! Oh! Oh! She does not care about custom, not she!
She meant, like her husband, to protest with her presence and her tears
against the iniquity of the court. How, then, does it happen that the
wife of the first magistrate remains at home? Can it be that Master
Marcel takes the action of the Regent and court less to heart than he
pretends? Can it be that, as the proverb puts it, he is trying to run
with the hares and hunt with the hounds? Is he secretly laying the pipes
for a reconciliation between himself and the court? Can Master Marcel
contemplate betraying the people?'"

"Oh! That's infamous!" cried out Denise, unable to control her
indignation. "To dare accuse Master Marcel of treason because his wife
did not attend the funeral procession and parade an affected sorrow!"

"Denise!" Marguerite quickly called out to the impetuous young girl,
fearing the conversation, puerile in appearance, would take a still more
acrid turn, and entail dangerous results for Marcel.

It was too late. Rising, Dame Petronille addressed Denise in a bitter
tone: "Listen, learn, my friend, that my pain, no less than my
husband's, was not affectation!"

"Dame Petronille," Marguerite interposed anxiously, "that was not
Denise's meaning.... Listen to me ... I pray you."

"Madam," dryly answered Maillart's wife, "I came here to warn you as a
true friend of the thoughtless, no doubt, but nevertheless, dangerous
rumors against Master Marcel's popularity. These rumors are at this very
hour circulating in Paris.... So far from thanking me, I am received
here with insult. The lesson is good. I shall profit by it."

"Dame Petronille--"

"Enough, Madam. Neither I nor my husband shall ever again set foot in
your house. I meant, like a friend, to point out to you the danger that
Master Marcel's good name is running. I have done my duty, let come what
may!"

"Dame Petronille," Marguerite answered with sad but severe dignity,
"since Marcel consecrated his life to public affairs, there is not a
word or action of his that he cannot answer for with head erect. He has
done good for good's sake, without even expecting anything from the
gratitude of men. He will remain indifferent to their ingratitude. If
ever his services are not appreciated, he will take with him into his
retirement the consciousness of ever having acted like an honorable man.
As to me, I shall bless the day when my husband should quit public
affairs so that we may resume our obscure lives and ordinary
occupations."

So obvious was the sincerity with which Marguerite expressed herself in
speaking of her delight to return to obscurity, that Dame Petronille,
furious at having been unable to wound the woman whom she envied, lost
all control of herself. "You err," she declared, "in these days, it does
not depend upon a man like Master Marcel to quietly bury himself in a
retreat. No! No! When one has been the idol of Paris, you must either
keep or lose the confidence of the people. If it is lost, you are looked
upon as a traitor. And do you know what is dealt out to traitors?
Death!"

"Can the enemies of Marcel have the audacity of pointing at him as a
traitor?" cried Marguerite with tears in her eyes. "Do they aim at his
life? Come, Dame Petronille, your silence upsets me."

Petronille was about to answer when the voice of Marcel was heard
outside the chamber cheerfully announcing: "Marguerite! Denise! I have
good news! Good news!" Dame Petronille remained silent, and stiffly
bowing, rapidly took her departure without uttering a word.




CHAPTER V.

CHARLES THE WICKED.


Marcel entered. The radiant joy that suffused his face upon entering the
house now made room for amazement at the silent and brusque departure of
Maillart's wife, who swept by him at the door. He looked at Marguerite
and Denise inquiringly, and noticing the disquietude and even alarm
depicted on their faces by the odious calumnies of Petronille, he
hastened to ask: "What is the matter, Marguerite? Why did our friend's
wife leave in that strange manner?"

"Oh, uncle!" broke out the young girl with tears in her eyes. "There are
very wicked people ... serpents and vipers."

"They are to be pitied, my child. But I hope you do not refer to wicked
people in connection with Maillart's wife?"

"My friend," said Marguerite with embarrassment, "idle talk deserves
contempt only. Nevertheless, in times like these idle talk may have
serious consequences."

"Well," observed Marcel dejectedly, "I have but an hour to spend with
you. I am tired out. I hoped to enjoy some rest. I came full of joy with
good news that was to make you happy as it made me. And here it is all
spoiled. But these minutes of quiet and relaxation are sweet to me at
your side, dear objects of my love."

"These moments are quite rare," said Marguerite sighing, "and they are
as precious to us as to you ... do not doubt, beloved Marcel!"

"I know it. Fortunately, you are not one of those spiritless women,
whose constant anxieties are a torment to their husbands, who love them
and suffer through their uneasiness. No, you are brave. You accept with
fortitude the conditions that circumstances raise around us, convinced
that my conduct is upright. I see you ever serene, and a smile on your
lips. I feel refreshed in your wise and sweet tranquility, and gather
new strength for the struggle, for the present my life is one continuous
struggle. It is a holy struggle, glorious, fruitful ... but it exhausts
... nevertheless, thanks to you, dear Marguerite, I ever find at our
hearth the happy quiet, the confident ease that are to the soul what a
peaceful sleep is to the body--"

"Dear Etienne, we shall speak later on the visit of Dame Petronille,"
Marguerite broke in, fearing to disturb the rest her husband had come in
search of in her company. "You have been announcing a good news.... We
are waiting for it."

"Yes, I prefer that," answered the provost with a sigh of relief, taking
a seat between his wife and Denise, while the latter quietly removed his
hat and cloak. "Coming upstairs I told Agnes to place an additional
cover at supper."

"Will our son return this evening from the Bastille of St. Antoine?"
quickly inquired Marguerite. "Was that the good news you brought us? We
shall be glad to see him."

"No, no! Andre will not return before to-morrow morning. He is to keep
watch over night at the Bastille with his company of cross-bowmen. My
son must put the example of order in the service. He will neglect none
of his duties."

"And who is to take supper with us, uncle?"

"Why, dear Denise?" answered Marcel smiling. "Who? One of our best
friends. Guess, if you can."

"Simon the Feather-dealer?... Peter Caillet?... Master Delille?...
Philip Giffart?... John Goddard?... Josserand?... John Sorel?..."

"No, Denise. Look not for our guest among my friends of the council. He
is not yet old enough to figure in such serious functions. But, so as to
help you guess, I shall add that our guest for this evening has just
arrived from the country."

"Can it be my old cousin who lives with his daughter at Vaucouleurs?
Can he have left the quiet valley of the Meuse to come and see us?"

"No, dear Denise. The friend whom we expect has been away from Paris
only a short time. Cudgel your memory."

"A short time?" Denise repeated mechanically, and struck by a sudden
thought but hardly daring to indulge it, the poor child grew pale,
joined her two trembling hands, and fixing upon her uncle a look at once
full of anxiety and hope, she stammered: "Uncle, what is it you say? Can
it be?..."

"I shall add that the fate of that friend has recently made us feel
uneasy."

"It is he!" cried Denise throwing herself at Marcel's neck. "Can it
be?... Jocelyn is back ... God be praised!"

"Jocelyn!" exclaimed Marguerite joining in the surprise and joy of
Denise. "Have you seen him? Is he in Paris?"

"Yes; I saw the worthy fellow this morning at the town hall. He is in
good health, although he has suffered a good deal during his travels."

The emotion and tears of Denise must be left undescribed. After the
first ebullition of joy was over, Marcel said to his wife: "I was
presiding at the town hall over the council when one of our sergeants
handed me a letter. I opened it and read that Jocelyn requested to speak
with me. I ordered him to be taken upstairs to my room, and immediately
after the session I hastened thither. Oh, my poor Denise! I confess it.
I hardly recognized our friend, he was so changed! He has lost flesh ...
his eyes are hollow ... his cheek-bones stick out."

"What happened to him?" asked Denise. "Did he go to fight the English,
as my aunt feared. Does he come from prison?"

"He comes from prison, but did not go to war," answered Marcel. "This is
what happened: As you know, he left for Nointel in Beauvoisis. After he
left Nointel at night, and taking rest for an hour the next morning at
Beaumont-sur-Oise, he resumed his journey. A short while after he heard
the rapid gallop of a horse approaching behind him; turning he saw a
man with a woman on his horse's crupper fleeing before three armed
knights who followed at a distance. The couple drew in a few steps from
Jocelyn, and the man, a lad of about twenty, said to our friend: 'We are
fleeing from the castle of the Sire of Beaumont; he is the guardian of
my sister who accompanies me, and he sought to violate her. He is riding
after us with his men. You are armed. For pity's sake defend us; help me
to protect my sister!..."

"I know the heart and courage of Jocelyn," said Denise deeply moved. "He
surely took the part of the unfortunate girl!"

"Without hesitating, because, as he said to me, in his capacity of
champion he could not refuse so good a case. The Sire of Beaumont
arrived with his two equerries...."

"And the combat started!" cried Denise joining her hands. "Poor Jocelyn!
Alone against three!"

"He was strong enough to overcome them. Unfortunately, however, at the
very start of the action one of the combatants dealt him such a furious
blow from behind with a mace on the head that Jocelyn's casque was
broken. He fell from his horse unconscious ... and when he awoke he
found himself half naked lying on straw, and aching at every limb at the
bottom of a dungeon."

"Poor Jocelyn!" said Marguerite. "That dungeon, no doubt, was some
prison cell in the castle of Beaumont, whither our wounded friend was
transported after the combat, stripped of his arms and in a dying
condition?"

"Yes, dear Marguerite; and Jocelyn remained in that cell, a prey to a
devouring fever, until his recent release."

"How he must have suffered! But, uncle, how did our poor friend manage
to come out?"

"A few days after taking Jocelyn prisoner, the Sire of Beaumont departed
with his men to fight the English. Whether he was killed or captured at
the rout of Poitiers is not known. But two days ago the Sire of
Beaumont's castle was attacked and taken by the troop of a certain
Captain Griffith."

"That horrible adventurer, who pushed forward as far as St. Cloud and
gave us such a fright?" asked Denise. "I remember you left the city at
the head of the militia, ran against and forced him to retreat. Good
God! In what hands did poor Jocelyn fall!"

"Be not alarmed, dear child! By a singular accident our friend has had
only cause to praise the adventurer. That savage and eccentric warrior
seems sometimes to yield to generous impulses. After having, according
to their wont, sacked the castle of Beaumont, massacred the men and
violated the women, the band delved down into the subterranean passages
in quest of booty. Thus they came to Jocelyn's dungeon, broke his chains
and lead him to Captain Griffith, who on that day happily happened to be
in a good humor. He cross-questioned our friend, and no doubt struck by
his brave and robust appearance, despite all his sufferings, made him an
offer to enlist in his company. Jocelyn declined. Griffith, who was half
in his cups, then ordered Jocelyn to be furnished with clothes and two
florins, and, alluding to our friend's thinness said to him: 'When you
shall have regained some meat on your bones you will prove a rude
customer; if I again run across you I should be pleased to break a lance
with you. You are free. Go! And my patron saint, the Devil, be good to
you!"

"That Griffith is a dreadful bandit!" repeated Denise. "And yet I cannot
but feel thankful to him for having liberated Jocelyn."

"And then," put in Marguerite, "our friend proceeded straight back to
Paris?"

"Yes," answered Marcel sadly, "here another and unexpected sorrow
awaited him."

"Oh!" said Denise, "his father's death? It must have been a severe blow
to him!"

"Yes; the blow was severe. Picture to yourself what he must have felt.
On his arrival, he hastened joyfully to the house of our old friend
Lebrenn, the book-seller. There he first learned of his loss.... He
spent the whole of yesterday and the night in solitude and mourning.
This morning he came to see me at the town hall. This evening we shall
be at least able to offer him the consolation of a tried friendship."

Agnes the Bigot came in at this juncture and handed to Marcel a small
gold medal enameled in green and bearing the letters "C" and "N,"
surmounted by a crown. "A man," she announced, "wrapped up to the nose
in a cloak and whose eyes are barely visible, is in the shop; he wishes
to see Master Marcel without delay; he handed me the medal with orders
to bring it to you."

Marcel was visibly surprised at the sight of the medal, and said to his
wife: "Dear Marguerite, I shall not be able to enjoy even the short hour
of rest that I promised myself. Leave me alone now. Go down with Denise.
Jocelyn cannot now be long coming. Do not stay supper for me"; and
turning to Agnes the Bigot: "Lead the man upstairs."

"Marcel," said Marguerite uneasily, while the servant withdrew to
execute her master's orders, "you are fatigued, and will you not take
even time enough for a meal?"

"In a few minutes, when I go down again, I shall take a few mouthfuls
before leaving."

"What! Another night!"

"I convoked a night meeting to the convent of the Cordeliers," explained
Marcel, assuming a serious expression; "the funeral of Perrin Mace may
be the signal for transcendent happenings. We must be ready for all
eventualities--"

The provost did not finish the sentence, seeing the closely cloaked man
appear at the door led by Agnes. Marguerite left feeling all the more
alarmed, the unfinished words of her husband having recalled to her mind
the recent conversation with Petronille Maillart. After the departure of
the two women, the stranger, first making certain that the door was
closed, removed his cloak and threw it on a chair. The man, extremely
small of stature, twenty-five years at the most, and dressed plainly in
a buff jacket, was of distinguished and regular features; yet despite
the gracefulness of his carriage, the affability of his manners and the
almost caressing melody of his voice, there lingered a sardonic and
insidious leer in his smile that betrayed the wickedness of his soul and
the perversity of his heart. More and more concerned by the man's
presence, Marcel seemed to accept his visit as one of those disagreeable
duties that men in public life must frequently submit to; nevertheless
his icy attitude and his look of suspicion fully revealed the aversion
he entertained for his caller, to whom he said: "I did not expect to
receive this evening the King of Navarre in my house."

Charles the Wicked--that was the man's well deserved nickname--answered
with a smile and with his insinuating voice, that most perfidious of all
his charms: "Do not kings pay each other mutual visits? What is there
surprising in that Charles, King of Navarre, should pay a visit to
Marcel, King of the people of Paris? We are sovereigns, both of us."

"Sire," answered Marcel impatiently, "please to state the purpose of
your visit. What do you wish of me? No useless words!"

"You are short of speech."

"Shortness is the language of business. Moreover, it is well to measure
the words one utters in your presence."

"Do you, then, continue to mistrust me?"

"Always, more than ever."

"I love frankness."

"Come, to the point, direct, and without mental reservation."

For a moment Charles the Wicked remained silent; then boldly fixing his
viper's eyes upon the provost, he answered, slowly weighing each word:

"What do I wish, Marcel? I wish to be King of the French.... This
astonishes you!"

"No," answered the provost with a coolness that stupefied Charles the
Wicked; "sooner or later you were bound to make the disclosure."

"You foresaw things from a great distance.... How long is it since you
foresaw it?"

"Since I saw your creature Robert le Coq, Bishop of Laon, throw himself
with ardor on the side of the popular party, and show himself one of the
most violent enemies of King John, whose daughter you married--"

"Nevertheless, if my memory does not fail me, you made good use of the
influence of the Bishop of Laon in the States General to induce them to
accept your famous ordinance of reforms."

"I use any instrument that aids me in doing good."

"And then you break it?"

"If necessary. But Robert le Coq is too subtle to be broken.
Nevertheless, despite his finesse, I have penetrated his secret
motives."

"And that is?"

"The people of Paris have with their keen eyes and tongues surnamed the
Bishop of Laon 'a two-edged dirk;' the people, Sire, are right. By
showing himself so hostile to King John, your father-in-law, and
afterwards so hostile to the Regent, your brother-in-law, the Bishop of
Laon played a double game. He aimed, with the aid of the popular party,
to first of all dethrone the reigning dynasty; and then ... to give the
crown to you. That is the reason, Sire, why I am not taken by surprise
at your admission that you wish to be King of the French."

"What do you think of my pretensions?"

"Your chances are fair of mounting the throne. I am ready to admit
that."

"With your help, Marcel?"

"I might enter into your projects."

"Is that true!" cried the King of Navarre, unable to conceal his joy;
but after a short moment's reflection, and casting upon the provost a
defiant look, he presently proceeded: "Marcel, you are laying a trap for
me.... I know how and more than once you have expressed yourself
regarding me. Your words were extremely severe."

"Sire, you are called _Charles the Wicked_. I hold the name fits you.
But you are active, subtle, venturesome; you command numerous armed
bands; your partisans are powerful; your wealth considerable. You are a
force, that, at a given moment, may be useful. For that reason I caused
your release from prison where your father-in-law kept you locked up."

"So that I, Charles, King of Navarre, am to be merely an instrument in
the hands of Marcel, the cloth merchant."

"Sire, you have your views; I have mine, and I shall express them to
you. The Regent, hypocritic and stubborn, mocks at his oaths. He signed
and promulgated the reform ordinances; he embraced me in tears, calling
me his good father; he swore by God and all the saints that he desired
the welfare of the people and that he would loyally adhere to the great
measures decreed by the national assembly. The Regent has broken all his
promises. His ruse, his well calculated indolence, his ill will, the
increasing audacity of the court and the nobility, who rule supreme in
their domains, either hamper or prevent the execution of the new edicts.
The Regent is secretly inciting the jealousy of a large number of
communal cities against Paris, that, as they put it, 'is seeking to
govern Gaul'. The nobility in its deliberate inaction, and sheltered by
its fortified castles, allows the English to extend their depredations
to the very gates of Paris. The royal false money continues to ruin
commerce and to destroy credit. Finally, only two days ago, the Regent's
favorite caused a bourgeois of Paris to be mutilated and executed under
our very eyes, thereby proclaiming the contempt of the court for the
laws enacted by the States General. The plan of the court is simple: to
tire out the country by disasters: to render impossible the good results
that were justly expected from the national assembly, a popular
government where the King is no longer master but servant: finally, the
court expects that one of these days it can tell the people, whose
sufferings will have become intolerable by these machinations: 'Ye
people, behold the fruit of your rebellion. In lieu of having remained
submissive, as in the past, to the sovereign authority of your kings,
you have wished to reign, yourselves, by sending your deputies to the
States General; you now pay the penalty of your audacity. May this rough
lesson prove to you once more that princes are born to command and the
people to obey. And now, pay your taxes and resume your secular yoke
with humble repentance'!"

"So help me God! You could not have been better instructed upon the
projects of my brother-in-law and his councilors if you had attended
their secret meetings! And if they triumph, would you despair?"

"Despair?--For the present, Sire; but I would remain full of hope in the
future. The conquest of freedom is as assured as it is slow, laborious
and painful.... I do not even now despair of the present. I propose to
make a last attempt with the Regent."

"And if you fail, will you come to me?"

"Between two evils, Sire, one is forced to choose the lesser."

"In short, you believe you will find in me what the Regent lacks?"

"You have an immense advantage over him. You wish to become King of the
French, while the Regent is that by birth."

"Do you forget my royalty of Navarre?"

"To speak truly, I did forget it, Sire ... just as you forget it for the
crown of France. As I was saying, a King by the right of birth looks
upon all reform as an encroachment upon his power.... You, on the
contrary, look upon the reforms as a means whereby to usurp power. Now,
then, however perfidious, however wicked you, Charles the Wicked, may
be, I dare you to fail to announce your access to the throne--and that
in your own interest--by great and useful measures to the public
welfare. That much would be gained ... later, we shall see...."

"And throw me down?"

"I shall work to that end, Sire, with all my powers, the moment you turn
from the straight path. You are forewarned."

"And, Master Marcel, you would destroy your own work without scruple?"

"Without scruple! Moreover, better so than as it happened with the first
and second dynasties when the stewards of the royal palace or the large
feudal seigneurs dethroned the kings and changed dynasties."

"And who would then accomplish the rough task? I would like to know the
artisan."

"The people, Sire!... That people, still in its infancy and credulous,
must learn that at its breath it can waft away the sovereign masters who
impose themselves upon it by force and cunning, and whom the church
consecrated. Some day, this very century perhaps, that people will come
of age; it will realize the ruinous and superfluousness of the royal
power. But that day is not yet. In our days, the people, ignorant and
enslaved to habit, would wish to crown a new master the moment they
overthrow an old one. They rely on princes. You, Sire, are one of these
predestined beings. You can even pretend to reign over Gaul by virtue of
one of your ancestors, who was himself deprived of the crown for the
benefit of his cousin Philip of Valois, the father of King John. It is,
accordingly, not impossible that you may some day reign over France ...
a deplorable possibility ... yet tangible enough!"

"You must have courage to speak that wise to me."

"Instead of telling you the truth, I would otherwise be basely
flattering you, whose first thought, if to-morrow you are King, would be
to rid yourself of me. I indulge in no illusions on that head."

"Rid myself of you, who would have served me!"

"For that very reason! My presence would be a constant reminder of your
debt. But that matters not. Whether I die to-day or to-morrow, whether
you be king or not, whether or not my last effort with the Regent fail,
whether the court party triumph or is now vanquished--whatever may
happen, the future belongs to the popular party even if the present may
slip. Yes; whatever people may do, the ordinance of the reforms of 1356
and the sovereign act of the national assembly in this generation will
leave imperishable traces behind them. I have sowed too hastily, some
say, and they add, 'a slow crop follows a hasty planting.' Be it so! But
I have sowed. The seed is in the earth. Sooner or later the future will
gather the crop. My task is done. I can die. And now, Sire, I sum up: If
I fail in my last attempt with the Regent, I shall take recourse with
you. You will be first appointed captain-general of Paris ... it will be
your first step towards the throne.... We shall then take measures to
lead things to a happy issue, ac

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