225s
And they are merchants as well as beggars. You rarely pass along the street without being accosted by a guide who offers you his services and begs you to give him the preference. If you are seated on the hillside, three or four children come dropping out of the sky, bringing you butterflies, stones, curious plants, bouquets of flowers.
If you go near a dairy, the proprietor comes out with a porringer of milk, and will sell it to you in spite of yourself. One day as I was looking at a young bull, the drover proposed to me to buy it.
This greediness is not offensive. I once went up the brook of la Soude, behind Eaux-Bonnes: it is a sort of tumbledown staircase which for three leagues winds among the box in a parched ravine. You have to clamber over pointed rocks, jump from point to point, balance yourself along narrow ledges, climb zigzag up the scarped slopes covered with rolling stones. The foot-path is enough to frighten the goats. You bruise your feet on it, and at every steprun the risk of getting a sprain. I met there some young women and girls of twenty, all barefooted, carrying to the village, one a block of marble in her basket, another three sacks of charcoal fastened together, another five or six heavy planks; the way is nine miles long, under a mid-day sun; and nine miles for the home journey: for this they are paid ten sous.
Like the beggars and the merchants, they are very crafty and very polite. Poverty forces men to calculate and to please; they take off their cap as soon as you speak to them and smile complaisantly; their manners are never brutal or artless. The proverb says very truly: “False and courteous Béarnais.” You recall to mind the caressing manners and the perfect skill of their Henry IV.; he knew how to play on everybody and offend nobody. In this respect, as in many others, he was a true Béarnais. With the aid of necessity, I have seen them trump up geological disquisitions. In the middle of July there was a sort of earthquake; a report was spread that an old wall had fallen down; in truth the windows had shaken as if a great wagon were passing by. Immediately half of the bathers quitted their lodgings: a hundred and fifty persons fled from Cauterets in two days; travellers in their night-shirts ran to the stable to fasten on their carriages, and to light themselves carried away thehotel lantern. The peasants shook their heads compassionately and said to me: “You see, sir, they are going from the frying-pan into the fire; if there is an earthquake, the plain will open, and they will fall into the crevices, whereas here the mountain is solid, and would keep them safe as a house.”
That same Jeannette who already holds so honorable place in my history, shall furnish an example of the polite caution and the over-scrupulous reserve in which they wrap themselves when they are afraid that they shall be compromised. The master had drawn the neighboring church, and wanted to judge of his work after the manner of Molière.
“Do you recognize that, Jeanette.”
“Ah! monsieur, did you do that?”
“What have I copied here?”
“Ah! monsieur, it is very beautiful.”
228s
"But still, tell me what it is there.”
She takes the paper, turns it over and over again, looks at the artist with a dazed air and says nothing.
“Is it a mill or a church?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Is it the church of Laruns?”
“Ah! it’s very beautiful.”
You could never get her beyond that.
We had a wish to know if the fathers were equal to the sons; and we have found the history of Bearn in a fine red folio, composed in the year 1640, by Master Pierre de Marca, a Béarnais, counsellor of the king in his state and privy councils, and president in his court of the parliament of Navarre; the whole ornamented with a magnificent engraving representing the conquest of the Golden Fleece. Pierre de Marca makes several important discoveries in his book, among others, that of two kings of Navarre, personages of the ninth century, until then unknown: Séméno Ennéconis, and En-néco Séménonis.
Although filled with respect for Sémêno Ennéconis and Enneco Semenonis, we are desperately wearied with the recital of the suits, the robberiesand the genealogies of all the illustrious unknown. Paul maintains that learned history is only good for learned asses; a thousand dates do not make a single idea. The celebrated historian of the Swiss, Jean de Muller, once wanted to rehearse the list of all the Swiss nobility, and forgot the fifty-first descendant of some undiscoverable viscount; he became ill with grief and shame; it is as if a general should wish to know how many buttons each of his soldiers had on his coat.
We have found that these good mountaineers have ever loved gain and booty. It is so natural to wish to live, and live well too! Above all is it pleasant to live at the expense of others! Time was when, in Scotland, every shipwrecked vessel belonged to the coast-side people; the wrecked ships came to them like herrings in the season, a hereditary and legitimate harvest; they felt robbed if one of the crew attempted to keep his coat. It is so here with strangers. The rear-guard of Charlemagne, under Roland, perished here; the mountaineers rolled down upon it an avalanche of stone; then they divided the stuffs, the silver, mules and baggage, and each one betook himself to his den. In the like manner they treated a second army sent by Louis le Débonnaire. I fancy they regarded these passages as a blessing from heaven, a special gift from divine Providence.
231s
Fine cuirasses, new lances, necklaces, well-lined coats, it was a perfect magazine of gold, iron, and wool. Very likely the wives ran to meet them, blessing the good husband who had been the most thoughtful of the welfare of his little family, and brought back the greatest quantity of provisions. This artlessness in respect of theft still exists in Calabria. In Napoleon’s time, a prefect was scolding a well-to-do peasant wild was behind-hand with his contributions; the peasant replied, with all the openness of an upright man: “Faith,your Excellency, it’s not my fault.”
232s
“For fifteen days now have I taken my carabine every evening, and have posted myself along the highway to see if no one would pass. Never a man goes by; but I give you my word I’ll go back there until I have scraped together the ducats I owe you.”
Add to this custom of thieving an extreme bravery! I believe the country is the cause of one as well as the other; extreme poverty removes timidity as well as scruples; they are leeches on the body of others, but then they are equally prodigal of their own; they can resist as well as take an advantage; if they willingly take another’s goods, they guard their own yet more willingly. Liberty has thriven here from the earliest times, crabbed and savage, home-born and tough like a stem of their own boxwood. Hear the tone of the primitive charter:"These are the tribunals of Bearn, in which mention is made of the fact that, in old times, in Beam they had no lord, and in those days they heard the praises of a certain knight. They sought him out, and made him their lord during one year; and after that, he was unwilling to maintain among them their tribunals and customs. And the court of Bearn then came together at Pau, and they required of him to maintain among them their tribunals and customs. And he would not, and thereupon they killed him in full court.”
In like manner the land of Ossau preserved its privileges, even against its viscount. Every robber who brought his booty into the valley was safe there, and might the next day present himself before the viscount with impunity: it was only when the latter, or his wife in his absence, came into the valley to dispense justice that he was judged. This scarcely ever happened, and the land of Ossau was “the retreat of all the evil livers and marauders” of the country round.
These rude manners, filled with chances and dangers, produced as many heroes as brigands. First comes the Count Gaston, one of the leaders of the first crusade; he was, like all the greatmen of this country, an enterprising and a ready-minded man, a man of experience and one of the vanguard. At Jerusalem he went ahead to reconnoitre, and constructed the machines for the siege; he was held to be one of the wisest in counsel, and was the first to plant upon the walls the cows of Bearn. No one struck a heavier blow or calculated more exactly, and no one was fonder of calculating and striking. On his return, he fought against his neighbors, twice besieged Saragossa, and once Bayonne, and, along with king Alphonso, won two great battles against the Moors. Ah, what a time was that, for minds and muscles framed for adventure! No need then to seek for war; it was found everywhere, and profit along with it.
234s
Such a fine career as those cavalcades had among the marvellous cities of the Asiatic Saracens and of the Spanish Moors! What a quantity of skulls to cleave, of gold to bring home! It was thus that the overflow of force and imagination was discharg was no foolish affair of a random shot or clumsybullet, in the midst of a well-ordered manouvre. Then one encountered all the hazards, the unforeseen, of knight-errantry; the senses were all awake; the arms wrought and the body was a soldier; Gaston was killed as a private horseman in ambuscade, with the bishop of Huesca.
That which pleases me in history is the minor circumstances, the details of character. A mere scrap of a phrase indicates a revolution in the faculties and passions; great events are contained in it at their ease, as in their cause. Here in the life of Gaston is one of those words. The day that Jerusalem was taken, quarter had been granted to a large number of Mussulmans. “But the next day, the rest, displeased at seeing that there were any infidels alive, mounted upon the roofs of the temple, and massacred and mangled all the Saracens, both men and women.” * There was neither reasoning nor deliberation; at the sight of a Mussulman’s dress, their blood mounted in wrath to their face, and they sprang forward, like lions or butchers, struck them down and dismembered them. Lope de Vega, an antique Christian, a severe Spaniard, renewed this savage and fanatical sentiment:
* The following fact is from the Siege of Antioch: “Many ofour enemies died, and some of the prisoners were led beforethe gate of the city, and there their heads were cut off, inorder to discourage those who remained in the city.”
Garcia Tello. Father, why have you not brought a Moor for me to see him!
The elder Tello; (showing him the prisoners.) Well, Garcia, those are Moors.
Garcia. What? Those are Moors? They look like men.
Old Tello. And indeed they are men.
Garcia. They do not deserve to be.
Old Tello. And why?
Garcia. Because they believe neither in God nor in the Virgin Mary; the sight of them makes my blood boil, Father.
Old Tello. Are you afraid of them?
Garcia. No more than you, Father. (Going toward the prisoners.) Dogs, I would tear you in pieces with my hands; you shall know what it is to be a Christian. (He darts upon them and pursues them.)
Old Tello. Ah, the good little fellow! Gracious Heaven! He is fine as coral.
Tello. Mendo, see that he does them no harm.
Old Tello. Let him kill one or two; so do they teach a falcon to kill when he is young.
In fact, they are falcons or vultures. In the song of Roland, when the doughty knights ask from Turpin the absolution of their sins, the archbishop for penance recommends them to strike well.
But at the same time they have the mind and the soul of children. “Deep are the wells, and the valleys dark, the rocks black, the defiles marvellous.” That is their whole description of the Pyrenees; they feel and speakin a lump. A child, questioned about Paris, which he had just seen for the first time,replied: “There are a great many streets, and carriages everywhere, and great houses, and in two squares two tall columns.” The poet of old times is like the child; he does not know how to analyze his impressions. Like him, he loves the marvellous, and takes delight in tales where all the proportions are gigantic.
237s
In the battle of Roncevaux everything is aggrandized beyond measure. The worthies kill the entire vanguard of the Saracens, a hundred thousand men, and, afterward, the army of King Marsile, thirty battalions, each composed of ten thousand men. Roland winds his horn, and thesound travels away thirty leagues to Charlemagne, and is echoed by his sixty thousand hautboys. What visions such words awakened in those inexperienced brains! Then all at once the bow was unbent; the wounded Roland calls to mind “men of his lineage, of gentle France, of Charlemagne his lord who supports him, and cannot help but weep and sigh for them.” At the conclusion of the carnage with which they filled Jerusalem, the crusaders, weeping and chanting, went barefoot to the holy sepulchre. Later, when a number of the barons wanted to leave the crusade of Constantinople, the others went to meet them, and entreated them on their knees; then all embraced each other, bursting into sobs. Robust children: that expresses the whole truth; they killed and howled as if they were beasts of prey, then when once the fury was calmed, they were all tears and tenderness, like a child who flings himself upon his brother’s neck, or who is going to make his first communion.
I return to my Béarnais; they were the most active and circumspect of the band. The counts of Bearn fought and treated with all the world; they hover between the patronage of France, Spain and England, and are subject to noone; they pass from one to the other and always to their own advantage, “drawn,” says Matthew Paris, “by pounds sterling, or crowns, of which they had both great need and great abundance.” They are always first where fighting is to be done or money to be gained; they go to be killed in Spain or to demand gold at Poitiers. They are calculators and adventurers; from imagination and courage lovers of warfare,—lovers of necessity and reflection.
239s
And in this manner their Henry won the crown of France, thinking much of his interests and little of his life, and always poor. After the camp at La Fère, when he was already recognized as king, he wrote: “I have only a pretence of a horse on which to fight, and no entire armor that I can put on; my shirts are in tatters, my pourpoints out at the elbows. My saucepan is many a time upset, and now these two days I have dined and supped withone and another, for my purveyors say that they see no way of furnishing my table any longer, especially since they have received no money for six months.”
A month later, at Fontaine-Française, he charged an army at the head of eight hundred cavaliers, and fired off his pistol by way of sport, like a soldier. But at the same time this father of his people treated the people in the following manner: “The prisons of Normandy were full of prisoners for the payment of the duty on salt. They languished there in such wise that as many as six-score of their corpses were brought forth at one time. The parliament of Rouen besought His Majesty to have pity on his people; but the king had been told that a great revenue was coming from that tax, and said that he was willing that it should be raised, and seemed that he would wish to turn the rest into mockery.”
240s
A good fellow, no doubt, but a devil of a good fellow; we French are fond of such; they are likable, but sometimes deserve hanging. These had prudence into the bargain, and were made to be officers of fortune."Gassion,” says Tallemant des Reaux, “was the fourth of five sons. When he had finished his studies, he was sent to the war; but otherwise he was but poorly furnished. For his sole horse his father gave him a docked pony, that might have been thirty years old; its like was not in all Bearn, and it was called, as a rarity,Gassion’s Bob-tail.Apparently the young man was scarcely better provided with money than with horses. This pretty courser left him four or five leagues from Pau, but that did not prevent him from going into Savoy, where he entered the troops of the duke, for there was then no war in France. But the late king having broken with this prince, all Frenchmen had orders to quit his service; this forced our adventurer to return to the service of the king.
“At the taking of the pass of Suze, he did so well, although only a simple cavalier, that he was made cornet; but the company in which he was cornet was broken, and he came to Paris and asked for the mantle of a musketeer. He was refused on account of his religion. Out of spite, with several other Frenchmen he went over to Germany, and, although in his troop there were men of higher position than he, knowing how to talk in Latin, he was everywhere received for the chief of the band. One of these made the advances for a company of light-horse that they were going toraise in France for the king of Sweden; he was lieutenant of it; his captain was killed, and now he is himself a captain. He soon made himself known as a man of spirit, so that he obtained from the king of Sweden the privilege of receiving orders only from His Majesty in person; this was on condition of marching always at the head of the army and of filling in a measure the position of forlorn hope. While thus employed, he received a frightful pistol-shot in the right side, the wound of which has since opened several times, now to the peril of his life, and now the opening answering as a crisis in other illnesses.”
242s
He was a thorough soldier, and above all a lover of valor. A rebel peasant, at Avranches, fought admirably before a barricade, and killed the Marquis de Courtaumer, whom he took for Gassion. Gassion had search made everywhere for this gallant man, in order that he might be pardoned and to put him in his regiment. The Chancellor Séguier took the affair like a lawyer; some time after, having seized the peasant, he had him broken on the wheel.He treated civil affairs just as he did military ones. He sent word to a merchant in Paris who had become bankrupt, owing him ten thousand livres, “that it would not be possible for him to let remain in the world a man who was carrying away his property.” He was paid.
“He led men into war admirably. I have heard related an action of his, very bold and at the same time very sensible; before he was major-general, he asked several noblemen if they wished to join his party. They went with him. After having gone about the whole morning without finding anything, he said to them: ‘We are too strong; the parties all fly before us. Let us leave here our horsemen, and go away alone.’ The volunteers followed him; they went on until they were near to Saint-Omer. Just then two squadrons of cavalry suddenly appeared and cut off their way; for Saint-Omer was behind our people.
“‘Messieurs,’ said he to them, ‘we must pass or die. Put yourselves all abreast; ride full speed at them and don’t fire. The first squadron will be afraid, when they see that you mean to fire only into their teeth; they will rein back and overthrow the others.’” It happened just as he had said: our noblemen, well mounted, forced the two squadrons and saved themselves, almost to a man.
“Another, also very daring; which, however,seems to me a little rash. Having received notice that the Croats were leading away the horses of the Prince d’Enrichemont, he wanted to charge upon them, accompanied by only a few of his horsemen, and, as there happened to be a great ditch between him and the enemy, he swam across it on his horse, without looking to see if any one followed him, so that he encountered the enemy alone, killed five of them, put the rest to flight, and returned with three of our men whom they had taken, and who perhaps helped him in the struggle. He led back all the horses.”
The quondam light-horseman reappeared beneath the general’s uniform. Thus he always remained the comrade of his soldiers. When any one had offended the least of his cavalrymen, he took the man with him and had satisfaction given in one way or another.
244s
“La Vieuxville, since superintendent, intrusted to him his eldest son to learn the trade of war.The young man treated Gassion magnificently at the army. 'You are trifling with yourself, Monsieur le Marquis,’ said he: ‘of what use are all these dainties? ‘S death! we only want good bread, good wine and good forage.’ He thought of his horse as much as of himself.”
245s
He was a poor courtier and troubled himself little about ceremonies. One day he went to the communion before the prince palatine, and the following Sunday, having found his place taken, he would never allow that a nobleman should give it up, and went to seek a place somewhere else. Nevertheless he was scarcely courtly towards ladies, and on this point not at all worthy of Henry IV.
“At court, many young ladies who were pleased with him, were wheedling him, and said: ‘Of atruth, monsieur, you have performed the finest possible deeds.’—‘That’s a matter of course,’ said he. When one said: ‘I should be glad to have a husband like M. de Gassion.’—‘I don’t doubt it,’ answered he.
“He said of Mlle, de Ségur, who was old and ugly, ‘I like that young woman; she looks like a Croat.’
“When Bougis, hislieutenant de gendarmes, stayed too long in Paris in the winter-time, he wrote to him: ‘You are amusing yourself with those women, and you will die like a dog; here you would find fine chances. What the devil do you find in the way of pleasure in going to court and making love! That is pretty business in comparison with the pleasure of taking a quarter!’”
His brother, Bergerê, seems to have had little taste for this pleasure. Gassion, then a colonel, on one occasion ordered him to charge at the head of fifty cavaliers, and declared that if he gave way he would run him through the body with his sword. An admirable method for forming men! Bergerê found his account in it, and afterwards went into action like any other man.
The two adventurers had a thoroughly military ending. Their brother the president, for economy’s sake, had Bergerê embalmed by a valet de chambre who mangled him shockingly. As for Gassion, he awaited burial during three months."The president, tired of paying for the funeral hangings, had them returned, and others put up which cost him tensolsless a day. At last he had a small vault constructed between two gates in the old cemetery; he had them interred one day when there was a sermon without any solemnity whatever, and so that no one could say that he had gone there on their account.” Three out of four heroes have been similarly buried, like dogs.
The last of the d’Artagnans, those heroic hunters after paying adventures, was (according to an inscription, said to be false) born at Pau, rue du Tran, No. 6. A drummer in 1792, he was in 1810 prince royal of Sweden. He had made his way, and along it he had lost his prejudices. Like Henry IV., he found that a kingdom was worth quite as much as a mass; he too made the perilous leap, but in a contrary direction, and laid aside his religion like an old cassock; a question of old clothes: a brand-new royal mantle was worth far more.
247s
250s
The carriage leaves Eaux-Bonnes at dawn. The sun is scarcely yet risen, and is still hidden by the mountains. Pale rays begin to color the mosses on the western declivity. These mosses, bathed in dew, seem as if awakening under the first caress of the day. Rosy hues, of an inexpressible softness, rest on the summits, then steal down along the slopes. One could never have believed that these gaunt old creatures were capable of an expression so timid and so tender. The light broadens, heaven expands, the air is filled with joy and life. A bald peak in the midst of the rest, and darker than they, stands out in an aureole of flame. All at once,between two serrate points, like a dazzling arrow, streams the first ray of the sun.
Beyond Pau stretches a smiling country, golden with harvests, amongst which the Gave winds its blue folds between white and pebbly beaches. On the right, far away in a veil of luminous mist, the Pyrenees lift their jagged tops, and the naked points of their black rocks. Their flanks, furrowed by the torrents of winter, are deeply scored and, as it were, turned up with an iron rake.
251s
The picturesque country and the great mountains are seen to disclose themselves; the fences of the fields are of small rounded stones, in whose fissures abound waving grasses, pretty heaths, tufts of yellow sedum, andabove all tiny pink geraniums, that shine in the sun like clusters of rubies. You are quite ready to seek for nymphs; we come across six in an orchard, not actually dancing, but dirty. They are eating bread and cheese, squatted on their heels, and stare at us with half-open mouth.
Coarraze still preserves a tower and gateway, the remains of a castle. This castle has its legend, which Froissart recounts in a style so flowing and agreeable, so minute and expressive, that I cannot refrain from quoting it at length.
The Lord of Coarraze had a dispute with a clerk, and the clerk left him with threats. About three months after, when the knight least thought of it, and was sleeping in his bed with his lady, in his castle of Coarraze, there came invisible messengers, who made such a noise, knocking about everything they met with in the castle, as if they were determined to destroy all within it: and they gave such loud raps at the door of the chamber of the knight, that the lady was exceedingly frightened. The knight heard it all, but did not say a word, as he would not have it appear that he was alarmed, for he was a man of sufficient courage for any adventure. These noises and tumults continued, indifferent parts of the castle, for a considerable time, and then ceased. On the morrow, all the servants of the household assembled, and went to their lord,’ and said, ‘My lord, did you not hear what we all heard this night?’ The Lord de Coarraze dissembled, and replied, ‘What is it you have heard?’
253s
They then related to him all the noises and rioting they had heard, and that the plates in the kitchen had been broken. He began to laugh, and said, ‘It was nothing, that they had dreamed it, or that it had been the wind.’ ‘In the name of God,’ added the lady, ‘I well heard it.’
“On the following night the noises and rioting were renewed, but much louder than before, and there were such blows struck against the door and windows of the chamber of the knight, that it seemed they would break them down. The knight could no longer desist from leaping out of his bed, and calling out, ‘Who is it that at this hour thus knocks at my chamber door?’ He was instantly answered, ‘It is I.’ ‘And who sends thee hither?’ asked the knight. ‘The clerk of Catalonia, whom thou hast much wronged; for thou hast deprived him of the rights of his benefice; I will, therefore, never leave thee quiet, until thou hast rendered him a just account, with which he shall be contented.’—‘What art thou called,’ said the knight, 'who art so good a messenger?’—‘My name is Orthon.’—‘Orthon,’ said the knight, ‘serving a clerk will not be of much advantage to thee; for if thou believest him he will give thee great trouble: I beg thou wilt therefore leave him and serve me, and I shall think myself obliged to thee.’ Orthon was ready with his answer, for he had taken a liking to the knight, and said, ‘Do you wish it?’—‘Yes,’ replied the knight; ‘but no harm must be done to any one within these walls.’—‘Oh, no,’ answered Orthon; ‘I have no power to do ill to any one, only to awaken thee and disturb thy rest, or that of other persons.’—‘Do what I tellthee,’ added the knight, ‘we shall well agree, and leave this wicked priest, for he is a worthless fellow, and serve me.’—‘Well,’ replied Orthon, ‘since thou wilt have it so, I consent.’
“Orthon took such an affection to the Lord de Coarraze, that he came often to see him in the night-time, and when he found him sleeping, he pulled his pillow from under his head, or made great noises at the door or windows; so that when the knight was awakened, he said, ‘Orthon, let me sleep.’—‘I will not,’ replied he, ‘until I have told thee some news.’ The knight’s lady was so much frightened, the hairs of her head stood on end, and she hid herself under the bed-clothes. ‘Well,’ said the knight, ‘and what news hast thou brought me?’ Orthon replied, ‘I am come from England, Hungary, or some other place, which I left yesterday, and such and such things have happened.’ Thus did the Lord de Coarraze know by means of Orthon all things that were passing in different parts of the world; and this connection continued for five years; but he could not keep it to himself, and discovered it to the Count de Foix, in the manner I will tell you. The first year, the Lord de Coarraze came to the Count de Foix, at Orthès, or elsewhere, and told him, ‘My lord, such an event has happened in England, in Scotland, Germany, or some other country,’ and the Countde Foix, who found all this intelligence prove true, marvelled greatly how he could have acquired such early information, and entreated him so earnestly, that the Lord de Coarraze told him the means by which he had acquired his intelligence, and the manner of its communication.
“When the Count de Foix heard this, he was much pleased, and said, ‘Lord de Coarraze, nourish the love of your intelligencer. I wish I had such a messenger; he costs you nothing, and you are truly informed of everything that passes in the world.’—‘My lord,’ replied the knight, ‘I will do so.’ The Lord de Coarraze was served by Orthon for a long time. I am ignorant if Orthon had more than one master; but two or three times every week he visited the knight and told him all the news of the countries he had frequented, which he wrote immediately to the Count de Foix, who was much delighted therewith, as there is not a lord in the world more eager after news from foreign parts than he is. Once, when the Lord de Coarraze was in conversation on this subject with the Count de Foix, the Count said, ‘Lord de Coarraze, have you never yet seen your messenger?’—‘No, by my faith, never, nor have I ever pressed him on this matter.’—‘I wonder at that,’ replied the count, ‘for had he been so much attached to me, I should have begged of him to have shown himself in hisown proper form; and I entreat you will do so, that you may tell how he is made, and what he is like. You have said that he speaks Gascon as well as you or I do.’—‘By my faith,’ said the Lord de Coar-raze, ‘he converses just as well and as properly, and, since you request it, I will do all I can to see him.’ It fell out when the Lord de Coarraze, as usual, was in bed with his lady (who was now accustomed to hear Orthon without being frightened), Orthon arrived and shook the pillow of the knight, who was asleep. On waking, he asked who was there. Orthon replied, ‘It is I.’—‘And where dost thou come from?’—‘I come from Prague, in Bohemia.’—‘How far is it hence?’—‘Sixty days’ journey,’ replied Orthon. ‘And hast thou returned thence in so short a time?’—‘Yes, as may God help me: I travel as fast as the wind, or faster.’—‘What, hast thou got wings?’—‘Oh, no.’—‘How, then, canst thou fly so fast?’—‘That is no business of yours.’—‘No!’ said the knight. ‘I should like exceedingly to see what form thou hast, and how thou art made.’—‘That does not concern you to know,’ replied Orthon; ‘be satisfied that you hear me, and that I bring you intelligence you may depend on.’—‘By God,’ said the Lord de Coarraze, ‘I should love thee better if I had seen thee.’—‘Well,’ replied Orthon, ‘since you have such a desire, the first thing you shall seetomorrow morning, in quitting your bed, shall be myself.’—‘I am satisfied,’ said the knight; ‘you may now depart; I give thee thy liberty for this night.’
“When morning came, the knight arose, but his lady was so much frightened she pretended to be sick, and said she would not leave her bed the whole day. The Lord de Coarraze willed it otherwise. ‘Sir,’ said she, ‘if I do get up, I shall see Orthon; and, if it please God, I would neither see nor meet him.’—‘Well,’ replied the knight, ‘I am determined to see him;’ and leaping out of his bed, he seated himself on the bedstead, thinking he should see Orthon in his own shape; but he saw nothing that could induce him to say he had seen him. When the ensuing night arrived, and the Lord de Coarraze was in bed, Orthon came and began to talk in his usual manner. 'Go,’ said the knight; ‘thou art a liar. Thou oughtest to have shown thyself to me this morning, and hast not done so.’—‘No!’ replied Orthon; ‘but I have.’—‘I say, no.’—‘And did you see nothing at all when you leaped out of bed?’ The Lord de Coarraze was silent, and, having considered awhile, said, ‘Yes; when sitting on my bedside, and thinking of thee, I saw two straws which were turning and playing together on the floor.’—‘That was myself,’ replied Orthon, ‘for I had taken that form.’ The Lord de Coarraze said, ‘That will notsatisfy me; I beg of thee to assume some other shape, so that I may see thee and know thee.’ Orthon answered, ‘You ask so much that you will ruin me and force me away from you, for your requests are too great.’—‘You shall not quit me,’ said the Lord de Coarraze; ‘if I had once seen thee, I should not again wish it.’—‘Well,’ replied Orthon, ‘you shall see me to-morrow, if you pay attention to the first thing you observe when you leave your chamber.’—‘I am contented,’ said the knight; ‘now go thy ways, for I want to sleep.’ Orthon departed.