Isoline felt hope rising within her at the words of her father, and shut her eyes not to be reminded of the horrible reality by the sight of the hideous stone mask and of the instruments of punishment. The maid hid her face on the breast of her fatherand murmured with emotion: "Oh, if only your words would prove true! If we only could quit this castle! So far from regretting our lost riches, I would thank God for affording me the opportunity of working for my venerated father!"
"Damosel Isoline, I shall know how to provide," gayly replied Bezenecq. "Moreover, who knows, but I may soon find an assistant. Who knows but that some worthy lad will demand you in marriage, falling in love with this charming face, when it shall have regained its rosy hue?," added the merchant, tenderly embracing his daughter.
"Father!" screamed Isoline, pointing with a gesture of dread toward the wall where the hideous stone mask was sculptured, and whose eyes seemed lighted from within. "Look, look at those flashes of light that escape from it! Some one has been spying upon us!"
The merchant quickly turned his head in the direction of the wall indicated by Isoline and to which he had given his back up to that instant. But the light had disappeared. Bezenecq took it for an illusion, proceeding from the wrought-up spirit of Isoline, and answered: "You must have deceived yourself. How do you expect the eyes of that rude figure to flash light? It would require a candle in the middle of the wall. Is that possible my child? Regain your senses!"
Suddenly the door of the cell opposite the mask was opened. Bezenecq the Rich and his daughter saw the bailiff, Garin the Serf-eater, enter with the scribe of the seigneur of Plouernel, and followed by several men of sinister mien. One of these carried a forge-bellows and a bag of coal; another bore several faggots. Isoline, for a moment reassured by her father, but now recalled to reality by the approach of the gaolers, uttered a scream of fright. In order to calm the agonies of his daughter, Bezenecq rose and said to the bailiff in a firm voice, while pointing to the scribe: "That, dear sir, is certainly the notary of the seigneur of Plouernel?" Garin the Serf-eater nodded in theaffirmative. "This notary," continued the bourgeois of Nantes, "comes to obtain my signature to the document by which I consent to pay ransom?" The bailiff again nodded in the affirmative. Addressing himself then to his daughter and affecting absolute calmness, almost cheerfulness: "Fear nothing, dear child, I and these worthy men will soon agree, after which, I am certain, we shall have nothing to fear from them and they will set us free. Note, then, master scribe, I am ready, by means of an authentic deed in favor of the seigneur of Plouernel, to give and cede to him all my possessions, consisting of five thousand and three hundred silver pieces, deposited with my friend Thibault, the silversmith and minter of the Bishop of Nantes; secondly, eight hundred and sixty gold pieces and nine bars of silver, deposited in my house in a secret closet that I shall indicate to the person whom the seigneur count may commission to go to Nantes; thirdly, a large quantity of silver vessels, precious fabrics and furniture, which it will be easy to bring here by wagon, upon the written order that I shall issue to my confidential servant. There, finally, remains my house. Seeing it would not be quite practicable, worthy masters, to transport that also, I shall write and place in your hand a letter to my friend Thibault. Only two days before my departure from Nantes he promised to buy my house for two hundred pieces of gold. He will keep his promise, I am sure, especially when he learns of the tight place that I now find myself in. Accordingly, that's two hundred more gold pieces that, at my order, Thibault will have to deliver to the envoy of the seigneur of Plouernel. These assignments made, there remain to me and my daughter the clothes we have on. Now, worthy scribe, draw up the assignment, I shall sign it, and I shall join to it the letters to my servant and to my friend the silversmith. He knows too well the fashion of these times to fail to acquiesce in my wishes in the matter of the deposit that he has and of the purchase of the house. He will deliver the sum to the messenger whom the seigneur countis to dispatch to Nantes. As to the money in the secret closet of my house, it will be easy to find it with the help of this key and the directions that I shall dictate to the scribe——"
"The notary will first have to draw up the assignment, then, you shall write the letters to your friend," broke in Garin. "The directions for the secret closet will follow. Now hurry up."
"You are right, worthy bailiff," replied the bourgeois of Nantes with eagerness, fully at ease by the tone of Garin; and, leaning towards his daughter, who was seated on the edge of the bed, he said to her in an undertone: "Was I not right, my dear bundle of fears, in assuring you that, by a complete surrender of all my goods, these worthy masters would abstain from harming us?" Again embracing Isoline, whose fears began to make room for hope, and wiping with the back of his hand the tears that, despite himself, he was shedding, he turned to Garin: "Excuse me, bailiff, you would understand my emotion if you knew the foolish fears of this child. But what else can we expect! At her age, having until now lived happily at my side, she is easily alarmed——"
"First item: Five thousand and three hundred silver pieces deposited with the silversmith Thibault," recited the scribe, interrupting Bezenecq with his harsh voice; and, taking his seat on the edge of the gridiron, he wrote, on his knees for a desk, by the light of one of the lanterns. "Next and secondly," he pursued, "how many pieces of gold are there in the secret treasure of the Nantes house?"
"Eight hundred and sixty pieces of gold," Bezenecq hastened to answer, as if in a hurry to disengage himself of his riches; "and also nine bars of silver of different thicknesses." And, thus proceeding to enumerate his goods to the scribe, who entered them apace, the merchant pressed the hands of his daughter in an intoxication of pleasure to add to her confidence and courage.
"And now, Bezenecq the Rich," said Garin, "we shall wantthe two letters to your confidential servant and your friend Thibault the Silversmith."
"Kind scribe," answered the merchant, "lend me your tablet, give me two parchment sheets and a pen, I shall write yonder on my daughter's knees," and, suiting the act to the words, he placed himself at Isoline's knees, where he lay the notary's tablet, and wrote the letters, occasionally addressing the poor child with a smile: "Do not shake my table that way; you will have these worthy gentlemen form a poor opinion of my handwriting." The two letters finished, the merchant passed them over to Garin, who, after reading them, said:
"Now, we want the directions for the secret treasure, without which the assignment may not be effective."
"Here are two keys," said the merchant, drawing them from his pocket. "The one opens the door of a little vault which connects with the room that serves as my office——"
"In the room that serves as office," repeated the scribe, writing while he repeated the words of the merchant. The latter proceeded: "The other key opens an iron-bound box back of the vault. In that box will be found the bars of silver and a casket containing the eight hundred and sixty gold pieces. I own not another denier. And here, worthy masters, you have me and my daughter as poor as the poorest serf. I have not wronged the seigneur of Plouernel a single obole. But, for all that, we shall not lose courage!"
While the scribe finished transcribing the directions of Bezenecq, the latter, occupied only with his daughter, did not notice, any more than she, what was going on a few steps off in that cell, so feebly lighted by the lanterns, seeing that night had already fallen. One of the gaolers commenced heaping the coals and fagots under the gridiron.
"The seigneur of Plouernel may send his messenger to Nantes with an escort," Bezenecq observed to Garin the Serf-eater. "If the messenger is quick he can be back to-morrow night. Weshall surely, my daughter and I, be set at liberty when the seigneur count will be in possession of my property. Only, while waiting for the hour of our departure from the castle, be generous enough, bailiff, to have us taken to some other place, whatever it be, only less depressing than this. My daughter is broken down with fatigue; moreover, she is very timid. She would spend a sad night in this cell, surrounded by instruments of torture."
"Now that you mention these engines of punishment," said Garin the Serf-eater, with a strange smile, and taking the hand of the bourgeois, "come, Bezenecq the Rich, I wish to explain their use to you, especially their mechanism."
"I am not inquisitive to learn the details."
"Draw near to us, Bezenecq the Rich."
"That surname of 'Rich' that you insist in applying to me, is no longer mine," said the merchant with a sad smile; "rather call me Bezenecq the Poor."
"Oh," exclaimed Garin, as if in doubt and shrugging his shoulders. He then added: "Come on, Bezenecq the Rich!"
"Father!" cried out Isoline, uneasy, seeing her father stepping away from her. "Where are you going? Father, father, stay with me!"
"There is nothing to fear, dear child. Stay where you are. I am to give the bailiff certain directions as to the route that the messenger of the seigneur count will have to take." And, fearing to displease Garin, he followed him, happy at the thought that Isoline could not hear the explanations he was to receive from the Serf-eater. The latter stopped first before the iron gibbet that terminated in a carcan. One of the gaolers having raised the lantern at the order of Garin, he said to the merchant: "As you see, that carcan opens at will. You may guess its object."
"Yes. The neck of the patient being inserted in it, the poor fellow remains fast!"
"Just so. He is made to climb the ladder you see here. Then, as his neck is in the carcan, all you have to do is to close the collar with a latch and remove the ladder. The gibbet being raised nine or ten feet above the floor, you may imagine the rest."
"The patient remains hanged and strangled?"
"Not at all! He remains suspended, but not hanged. The carcan is too wide to strangle. Then, while our man is thus kicking in the air an equal distance between the ceiling and the floor, this large stone is fastened to his feet by means of these straps to moderate his kicking and induce him to keep quiet."
"That strain must be terrible."
"Terrible, Bezenecq the Rich, terrible! Just think of it! The jaws are dislocated, the neck is stretched, the jointures of the knees and hip crack fit to be heard ten paces off. And yet,—would you believe it?—there are people of such a stubborn make-up that they do not yield to this first trial?"
"What I do not understand," answered the merchant, suppressing his horror, "is that, instead of exposing themselves to this torture, they do not forthwith and loyally surrender all they own, as I have done. One, at least, escapes physical suffering and regains his freedom. Not so, worthy bailiff?"
"Bezenecq the Rich, you are the pearl of townsmen. It is evident that you are of extraordinary sagacity."
"You flatter me. I merely put myself through a very simple process of reasoning," rejoined the merchant, endeavoring to capture the good will of Garin. "I reasoned thus with my daughter: Suppose my whole fortune were placed on board a vessel; it goes down; I lose all my wealth; I find myself in the same position that I am in to-day: but so far from allowing myself to be discouraged, I start to work anew with fresh vigor to sustain my child. Is not that the better choice, worthy bailiff? Would you not do likewise?"
"You never will be reduced to that, Bezenecq the Rich. You have inexhaustible resources."
"You love to banter; you love to give me that surname of 'Rich,' to me, now no less poor than Job."
"No, no; I do not banter. But let's return to the torture. I was saying that if the first trial failed to convince a stubborn fellow to give up his goods, he is then put through the second torture, which I shall now explain," and Garin, keeping the hand of the merchant, conducted him to the iron prong. "You see this prong? It is of well-beaten metal, strong enough to hold the weight of an ox."
"I readily believe it. That hook is, indeed, of large dimensions——"
"Our stubborn guest having resisted the trial of the carcan, he is hooked naked on this prong, either by the flesh of the back, or by the skin of his bowels, or by any other and more sensitive part of the body."
"Speak not so loud," implored the merchant, hardly able to restrain his indignation and horror, "my daughter might overhear you."
"You are right," answered the bailiff, with a sardonic smile; "your daughter's blushes must be spared. Well, now Bezenecq the Rich, think of it. I have seen stubborn fellows remain suspended from that hook by the skin for a whole hour, bleeding like a cow in the shambles, and still refuse to relinquish their goods! But they never resist the third trial, with which I am now about to entertain you, Bezenecq the Rich. Give me your ear, the description will interest you."
"Strange!" suddenly exclaimed the merchant, interrupting Garin the Serf-eater. "I smell smoke. Whence does the smell proceed?"
"Father, there is a fire!" cried out Isoline, horrified. "They are making a fire under the iron bars!"
The bourgeois of Nantes turned around sharply and saw the heaped-up combustibles under the gridiron beginning to take fire. Several tongues of flame lighted with their ruddy glow the black walls of the cell, while forcing themselves through thick columns of smoke. A frightful suspicion flashed through the mind of the merchant, but he dared not even allow his thoughts to dwell upon them; and, wishing to comfort his daughter, said to her: "Be not afraid, you dear bundle of fears, that fire is built to drive off the chill in this cell; we may have to spend the night here. I was thanking the worthy bailiff for his thoughtfulness." But immediately upon this answer, uttered only in order to reassure his daughter, the merchant, shivering, despite himself with fear, turned to Garin: "Speaking truly, why is that fire made under the gridiron?"
"Merely to give you an idea of the omnipotence of this last test, Bezenecq the Rich. I now commence the description."
"It is superfluous. I take your word for it."
"A fire is built under the gridiron, as they are doing now; when the fire has ceased to shoot up flames, a necessary precaution, and consists of a bed of live coals, the recalcitrant patient is stretched naked upon the gridiron, and he is kept there with the aid of those rings and iron chains. At the end of a few instants the skin of the patient, red and shriveling, rips up, bleeds, then turns black. I have seen the hot coals patter with fat that, clotted with blood, dripped from the body of men even less fat than you, Bezenecq the Rich."
"Hold on, bailiff! I must confess to you my heart fails me, my head reels at the mere thought of such infliction," said the bourgeois of Nantes, shivering from head to foot. "I am ready to faint. Let me out of this cell with my daughter. I have assigned to your master my whole fortune. You have taken everything——"
"Come, come, Bezenecq the Rich," broke in the bailiff, "a man who empties himself as easily as you did at the first word, andwithout having suffered the least tortures, must have reserved other riches. That's what we'll learn all about in a moment."
"I? I have reserved part of my fortune!" exclaimed the merchant, struck almost speechless with amazement. "I have given you all, down to my last piece."
"You observed, my wily friend, that despite the assignment of all the property that you were credited with having, I continued to call you Bezenecq the Rich. I feel certain you still merit the name. Come, now! You must disgorge. Come, let's have the rest of your fortune."
"Upon the salvation of my soul, I have nothing left! I have given you all I possess."
"May not the three tests draw from you some admission to the contrary?"
"What tests are you speaking of?"
"The tests of the carcan, of the hook and of the gridiron. Yes, if you do not surrender to me the other property that you are hiding from us, you will undergo the three tests under the very eyes of your daughter," and saying this, Garin the Serf-eater raised his voice in such a way that Isoline, hearing his threats, darted through the gaolers and threw herself distracted at the feet of the bailiff, crying: "Mercy! Mercy upon my father! Have pity upon us!"
"Mercy depends upon him," said Garin, imperturbably. "Let him surrender to our seigneur what he still holds in reserve."
"Father!" cried out the young girl, "I know not what the extent of your wealth is. But if, in your tenderness for me, you sought to reserve aught to shelter me against poverty, I conjure you give it all! Oh, dear father, surrender everything!"
"You hear!" resumed Garin the Serf-eater, smiling fiendishly upon the couple, and seeing the demoralizing effect upon the merchant of the imprudent words that terror had drawn from Isoline, "I am not the only one to suspect you of hiding from us a part of your treasures, Bezenecq the Rich. Like a good fatheryou have sought to keep a fat dower for your daughter. Come, now, you must give us the dower!"
"Garin," one of the gaolers approached to notify the bailiff, "the coals are red hot. They may go out if you put the man through the trials of the carcan and the hook."
"As a favor to this young girl I shall be generous," said Garin. "The gridiron test will be enough, but stir the coals. And now answer, Bezenecq the Rich. I ask you for the last time, yes or no, will you give all you possess to my seigneur, the Count of Plouernel, including your daughter's dower?"
"It is my daughter whom I shall make the answer to," answered the merchant, in a solemn voice. "Gaolers will not believe me;" and addressing Isoline in a voice broken with tears: "I swear to you, my child, by the sacred memory of your mother, by my tenderness for you, by all the pleasures you have afforded me since your birth,—I swear to you, by the salvation of my soul, I have not a denier left; I have surrendered all to the Seigneur of Plouernel!"
"Oh, father, I believe you!" exclaimed the girl at his feet, and turning to Garin, she extended her hands towards him in prayer: "You have heard my father's oath; you may join mine to it."
"I hold Bezenecq the Rich incapable of leaving his daughter thus penniless," retorted the bailiff. Turning then to the gaolers: "He will now have to confess to us. Strip him, stretch him on the gridiron and stir the coals. Let the brand flame up."
The men of the seigneur of Plouernel threw themselves upon Bezenecq the Rich. Despite the resistance and the heart-rending, desperate cries of his daughter, whom they brutally held back, they stripped the bourgeois of Nantes, spread him upon the gridiron, and, by means of the iron chains, fastened him over the burning coals. "Oh, my father!" exclaimedBezenecq, "I have disregarded your advice ... I now undergo the punishment for my cowardice ... for my selfishness ... I die under the torture for having been afraid to die arms in hand at the head of the serfs in revolt against the Frankish seigneurs.... Triumph, Neroweg! Yet, perchance, the terrible day of reprisals will come to the sons of Joel!"
In her apartment, lighted by a lamp, Azenor the Pale was engaged in the preparation of the magical philter, promised by her to the seigneur of Plouernel. After blowing some powder on a fluid that she had poured into a flagon, she pulled out of a chest a little vial, whose contents she drank. Laying down the vial, she remarked with a sinister smile: "Now, Neroweg, you may come ... I am ready for you." Then, taking up the flagon, half full with a solution of several powders, she proceeded: "This flagon must now be filled with blood ... the imagination of these ferocious brutes must be struck ... come...." she added with a sigh, turning towards the turret where the little Colombaik was secreted. Raising the curtain that masked the alcove, Azenor saw before her the innocent little creature huddled in a lump in a corner, and silently weeping. "Come," said the sorceress to him in a sweet voice, "come to me." The son of Fergan the Quarryman obeyed, he rose and advanced timidly. Wan, thin, broken with want, his pale mien had, like his mother's, Joan the Hunchback's, an inexpressible charm of kindness. "Must you always be sad?" inquired Azenor, sitting down and drawing the child near to her and to a table on which lay a poniard. "Why do you always weep?" The little fellow wept afresh. "What's the cause of your sorrow?"
"My mother, my father," faltered the child, without ceasing to weep, "I do not see them any more!"
"You love your mother and father very much?" Instead of answering the sorceress, the poor little one threw himself sobbing upon her neck. The woman could not resist the impulse of respondingto the childish prompting of a caress, and she embraced Colombaik at the very moment when, fearing he had been disrespectful to Azenor, the child was about to drop on his knees before her. Sinking upon the floor, he broke out into copious tears. The young woman, more and more moved, silently contemplated Colombaik, murmuring to herself: "No, no ... I lack courage.... I shall not kill that poor child, a few drops of his blood will be enough for the philter." Already her hand approached the poniard on the table, when suddenly her ear caught an unusual noise in the turret. It was like the scraping of a chain drawn with difficulty over an iron bar. The sorceress, alarmed, pushed the child back and ran toward the turret at the moment that Fergan the Quarryman stepped in, pale, bathed in perspiration and holding in his hand his iron pick. Azenor drew back, dumb with stupor and fear, while Colombaik, with a cry of joy, rushed to the quarryman, holding up his arms to him and calling: "My father! my father!" Beside himself with happiness, Fergan dropped his iron bar, took up the child in his robust arms, and, raising him to his breast, pressed him passionately, interrogating the face of Colombaik with inexpressible anxiety, while the child, taking between his little hands the gruff face of the quarryman, covered it with kisses, muttering: "Good father! Oh, good father! I see you again at last!"
The serf, without noticing the presence of the sorceress, devoured Colombaik with his eyes. Presently he observed, with a profound sigh of relief: "He is pale, he has been weeping, but he does not seem to have suffered; they can't have hurt him!" Embracing Colombaik with frenzy, he repeated several times: "My poor child! How happy your mother will be!" But his paternal alarms being calmed, he remembered that he was not alone, and not doubting that Azenor was the sorceress, whose dreaded name had reached as far as the serfs of the seigniory, he put his child down, took up again his pick, approached the young woman slowly with a savage mien and said to her: "So,it is you, who have children kidnapped to serve your diabolical sorceries?" and with glistening eyes he raised his iron bar with both hands. "You will now die, infernal witch!"
"Father, do not kill her!" cried out the child impetuously, clasping the quarryman's legs with both his hands. "Oh, do not kill this good lady who was embracing me just as you came in!"
Fergan looked at Azenor, who, somber, pensive, her arms crossed upon her palpitating breast, seemed to brave death. Turning to the child: "Was this woman embracing you?"
"Yes, father; and since I have been here she has been kind to me. She has sought to console me. She even often rocked me in her arms."
"Why, then," said the quarryman to the sorceress, "did you have my child kidnapped? What have you to say!"
Azenor the Pale, without answering the question of the serf, and pursuing the thought that turned in her head, said: "Where does the passage run out through which you have penetrated to this turret?"
"What's that to you!"
The young woman stepped to a cabinet of massive oak, took from it a casket, opened it, and displaying before the quarryman the gold pieces that it was filled with, said: "Take this casket and let me accompany you. You have been able to enter this donjon by a secret passage, you will be able to get out again. We shall escape together from this accursed den. I pay a rich ransom."
"You ... you mean to accompany me?"
"I wish to flee from this castle, where I am a prisoner, and run to rejoin at Angers William IX., Duke of Aquitaine——" Stopping short and leaning her ear towards the door, Azenor made a sign of silence to Fergan, and proceeded in a whisper: "I hear voices and steps on the staircase. Someone is coming up here.... It is Neroweg!"
"The count!" exclaimed the quarryman, with savage joy, steppingtowards the door: "Oh, Worse than a Wolf, you will no longer bite! I shall kill the wretch!"
"Keep still or we are lost," interrupted Azenor in a low voice. "The Count is not alone; think of your child!" and pointing with rapid gesture to the cabinet of massive oak, she hastily whispered to the serf: "Push that piece of furniture across the door. Be quick! We shall have time to flee! Your enemy, Neroweg, has only a few more steps to climb! I hear his spurs clank upon the stone floor!"
Fergan, thinking only of the safety of his child, followed the advice of Azenor, and, thanks to the herculean strength he was endowed with, succeeded in pushing the massive piece of furniture across the door, which, thus barricaded, could not swing open into the room. The sorceress hastily wrapped herself in a mantle; took from the cabinet whence she had extracted the casket, a little leathern bag containing precious stones, and said to the quarryman, holding the casket out to him: "Take this gold and let's flee."
"Carry your gold, yourself! I shall carry my child and my pick to defend him!" answered the serf, taking up his iron bar with one hand, and placing on his left arm little Colombaik, who held fast by his father's neck. At that very moment the fugitives heard from without the sound of the key that turned in the lock, followed by the voice of the seigneur of Plouernel: "Who is holding that door back inside? Is that one of your enchantments, accursed sorceress?"
While the Count was beating against the door, and, redoubling his imprecations, vainly sought to force it, the quarryman, his son and Azenor, gathered in the turret, prepared to flee by the secret passage. One of the slabs of the flooring, being swung aside by means of a counterweight and chains wound around an iron axis, exposed the first step of a ladder so narrow that it could barely allow passage to one person at a time, and of such a slope at that spot that its first ten rungs could be cleared onlyby sliding down almost on the back from step to step. Azenor was the first to undertake the narrow passage; the little Colombaik imitated her; the two were followed by Fergan, who then readjusted the counterweight. The stone slab, back again in its place, again masked the secret passage. This steep portion of the ladder was wrought in an abutment of the turret, where its base projected beyond the wall of the donjon. Its foot connected with the narrow stone spiral, which, wrought in the ten-foot thick wall, descended to the lowest depths of the donjon. At each landing, a skilfully masked outlet opened upon this secret passage, lighted by not a ray from without. But Fergan, equipped with his tinder box, punk and wick, of the kind that he helped himself with in the quarries, lighted the passage, and, with his iron pick in one hand, his light in the other, preceded his son and Azenor down the stone spiral. The descent was but slowly effected.
Presently the fugitives, leaving above them the level of the landing where the hall of the stone table was located, and which was situated on the ground floor, arrived at the place that corresponded with the subterranean cells. Here the passage served not merely as a means of retreat in case of a siege, it also afforded the chatelain an opportunity to spy upon the prisoners and overhear their confidential communications. By its construction, the cell of Bezenecq the Rich gave special facilities for such espionage. Furthermore, a slab three feet square by two inches thick, fastened in a strong oaken frame on hinges, constituted a sort of stone door, undistinguishable from the inside of the somber apartment, but easy to push open from without. Thus the seigneur reserved to himself an access to those subterraneous chambers, unknown even to the dwellers of the castle. Above the opening and within the cell was sculptured that hideous mask, whose sight had frightened the daughter of the merchant. The two eyes and the mouth of this grim figure, bored through the full thickness of the wall and exteriorly chiseled in the form ofa niche, permitted the spy, posted at that place of concealment, to see the prisoners and overhear what they said. Thus it happened a few hours before that Fergan, climbing up by the light of his wick, had overheard the conversation between the Bishop of Nantes and Jeronimo, the legate of the Pope, and then that of the bourgeois of Nantes and his daughter. The fugitives were now on a level with the cell of Bezenecq, when suddenly brilliant rays of light shot through the openings in the stone mask, proceeding from a light within.
Fergan was in advance of his child and Azenor. He halted at the sound of rawkish peals of laughter—frightful, like those of a maniac. The serf peeped through the holes pierced in the eyes of the mask, and this was what he saw by the light of a lantern placed upon the ground. Two naked corpses, the one suspended by the neck from the iron gibbet fastened in the wall, the other by the groins from the iron prong. The former, rigid, horribly distended and dislocated by the enormous weight of the stone attached to his feet; the latter, hooked by the flesh upon the sharp prong that penetrated his entrails, was bent backwards with his arms dangling against his legs. These victims, captured shortly before, from a new troop of travelers on the territory of the seigneur of Plouernel and taken to this cell, better fitted out than the others with instruments of torture, did not survive the experience. The corpse of Bezenecq the Rich was chained to the gridiron above the dying embers of the coal fire. The agonies of that unhappy man had been so excruciating that his members, held fast by the iron bands, had been convulsively distended. Undoubtedly at the moment of expiring he had made a supreme effort to turn his head towards his daughter, so as to die with her in sight. The face of the merchant, blackened, frightful to behold, retained the expression of his agony. A few steps from the corpse of her father, cowering upon the straw bed, her knees held in her arms, Isoline swayed to and fro, emitting at intervals rythmic peals of maniacal laughter. She hadgone crazy. Fergan, moved with pity, was considering how to deliver the daughter of Bezenecq, when the door of the cell opened and Gonthram, the eldest son of Neroweg, stepped in, a torch in his hands and his cheeks of purple. His eyes, his unsteady walk, all announced a high stage of inebriety. Approaching Isoline, he struck against the gridiron, where lay the corpse of the bourgeois of Nantes. Unmoved by that spectacle, Gonthram stepped towards the young girl, seized her rudely by the arm, and said in a maudlin voice: "Come, follow me!" The demented girl seemed not to hear, she did not even raise her eyes, and continued swaying to and fro and to laugh. "You are quite gay," observed the whelp; "I also am gay. Come upstairs. We shall laugh together!"
"Oh, traitor!" broke in a new personage, precipitating himself out of breath into the cell. "I made no doubt what you had in your mind when I saw you leave the table the moment my father went up to the sorceress!" And throwing himself upon his brother, Guy, the second son of Neroweg, cried out: "If you want the girl, you will have to pay for her with your blood!"
"Vile bastard! You, the son of my mother's chaplain! You dare to threaten me!" In his rage, increased by intoxication, Gonthram raised his burning torch, struck his brother with it in the face and drew his sword. Guy, uttering a furious imprecation, also drew his sword. The struggle was short. Guy fell lifeless at the feet of his brother, who exclaimed: "The bastard is dead. I am the better man. The girl is mine!" and rushing back to Isoline: "Now, you are mine!"
"No!" resounded a menacing voice, and before Gonthram, who had taken up the daughter of Bezenecq in his arms, had time to turn around, he received over his head a crushing blow with an iron bar, throwing him down upon his brother's body. From the place of concealment, where Fergan had stood, he saw the commencement of the fratricidal strife and had entered the cell by the secret opening when the fight was at its height between thetwo sons of Neroweg. Time was passing. Some of the men of the seigneur of Plouernel, observing the prolonged absence of the two whelps, might at any moment come down. Fergan took the poor maniac by the hand and led her to the secret opening. "Now, stoop, dear child, and get through the aperture." Isoline remained motionless. Renouncing all hope of being understood by her, Fergan pressed his two hands with force upon the shoulders of the child. "Woman," the serf cried out to Azenor the Pale, who had remained outside of the cell, contemplating the two bleeding bodies of the sons of Neroweg, "take the hand of this poor girl and try to draw her out."
"Why take this insane woman along?" said Azenor to Fergan. "She will retard our march and increase the difficulties of our flight."
"I wish to save this unfortunate being."
Sustained by Fergan, who preceded Colombaik, carrying the lighted wick, Isoline descended with difficulty the steps of the staircase. Penetrating ever deeper into the bowels of the earth, the fugitives arrived at the bottom of the stone spiral that connected with a tunnel, bored through the living rock at such a depth that, passing under the sheet of water of the gigantic pit, from the midst of which the donjon rose, it issued out into the open half a league away from the castle at a place concealed amid tumbling bowlders and brushwood.
Day was slowly breaking upon the fateful night during which the fugitives effected their escape from the manor of Plouernel. Joan the Hunchback, seated at the threshold of her hut, which lay at the extremity of the village, incessantly turned her eyes, red with weeping, towards the road by which Fergan, absent since the previous morning in quest of Colombaik, was expected. Suddenly the female serf heard from afar a great tumult, caused by the approach of a large crowd of people. At intervals confused and prolonged clamors were heard rising above the din, frantically crying out: "God wills it! God wills it!" Finally Joan saw a crowd of people turning a road that led to the village. At the head marched a monk mounted on a white mule, whose bones protruded from its skin, together with a man-at-arms astride of a small black horse, not less lean than the mule of his companion.
The monk, called by some Peter the Hermit, but by most Cuckoo Peter, wore a tattered brown frock, on the left sleeve of which near the shoulder was sewn a cross of red material, the rallying sign of the Crusaders on the holy march of the Crusade. A rope served him for a belt. His unhosed feet, shod in worn-out sandals, rested on wooden stirrups. His cowl, pushed back, exposed a bald head, boney and grimy like the rest of his face, bronzed by the hot sun of Palestine. His hollow eyes, glistening with a somber fire, flamed from the depths of their orbits. His haggard looks expressed savage fanaticism. In one hand he held a cross of rude wood, hardly planed, with which ever and anon he smote the crupper of his mule to quicken its pace.
The companion of Cuckoo Peter was a Gascon knight surnamedWalter the Pennyless. Of a physiognomy as grotesque and jovial as that of the monk was savage and funereal, the mere sight of the knight provoked a smile. His eyes, sparkling with mischief, his inordinately long nose, that almost kissed the chin, his rakish mouth, slit from ear to ear, his features hinged on a perpetual grin, amused from the start, and when he spoke, his buffoonery and his mirthful sallies, delivered with southern spirit, carried hilarity to its highest pitch. Wearing on his head a rusty, cracked and knocked-in casque, ornamented with a bunch of goose feathers, his chest covered with a breast-plate no less rusty, no less cracked and no less knocked in than his casque, Walter the Pennyless also wore the red cross on the left sleeve of his patched cloak. Shod in cowhides, fastened with cords around his long heron legs, he bore himself with as triumphant an air on his lean black hirsute horse, that he named the "Sun of Glory," as if he bestrode a mettlesome charger. His long sword, sheathed in wood, named by him the "Sweetheart of the Faith," hung from his leathern shoulder belt. On his left arm he bore a shield of tin, covered with vulgar pictures. One of these, filling the upper part, represented a man clad in rags, knapsack on back and pilgrim staff in hand, departing on the Crusade, as indicated by the cross of red stuff painted on his shoulder. The lower picture represented the same man, no longer wan and haggard, no longer dressed in tatters, but splendidly fitted out, bursting with fat, and spread upon a bed, covered with purple cloth, beside a beautiful Saracen woman, with nothing on but collar and bracelets. A Saracen, wearing a turban and humbly kneeling, poured out the contents of a coffer full of gold at the foot of the bed where the Crusader was frolicking with his female bedfellow in an obscene posture. The very crudity of the idea expressed by these vulgar pictures was calculated to make a lively impression upon the childish imagination of the multitude.
At the heels of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless followeda mob of men, women and children, serfs and villeins, mendicants and vagabonds, prostitutes and professional thieves, the latter distinguishable by their cropped ears, as well as the murderers, some of whom, in a spirit of sanguinary ostentation, bedecked their breasts with pieces of black cloth bearing in white one, or two, sometimes three skulls—a sinister emblem, denoting that the holy Crusade gave absolution for murder, however frequently committed by the criminal. All bore the red cross on the left sleeve. Women carried on their backs their children too young to walk, or too tired to proceed on the route. Other women, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, leaned on the arms of their husbands, loaded with a bag containing all their havings. The least poor of the Crusaders traveled on donkeys, on mules or in wagons. They carried all their belongings with them, even to their pigs and chickens. The latter, fastened by the legs to the rails of the wagons, kept up a deafening cackle. Other poor people dragged their milk goats after them, or a loaded sheep, or even one or more cows.
Contrasting with this tattered multitude, here and there some couples were seen, the cavalier in the saddle, his paramour on the crupper, happy to escape through that holy pilgrimage the jealous or disturbing surveillance of a father or a husband. These runaways also took the route of the Orient. Among them was Eucher with the handsome Yolande, dispossessed of her father's heritage by the seigneur of Plouernel. They had sold a few jewels, given one-half the proceeds to Yolande's mother, and with the rest the lovers bought a mule on which to follow the Crusaders to Jerusalem.
This mob, consisting of three or four thousand persons, moving from Angers and surrounding localities, recruited its forces all along the route with new pilgrims. The faces of the serfs and villeins breathed joy. For the first time in their lives they left an accursed land, soaked in the sweat of their brow and in their blood, and to which, from generation to generation, theyand their fathers had been chained down by the will of the seigneurs. At last they tasted a day of freedom, an inestimable happiness to the slave. Their joyous cries, their disorderly songs, gross, licentious, resounded far and wide, and ever and anon they repeated with frenzy the words, hurled out by Cuckoo Peter in a hoarse voice: "Death to the Saracens! Let's march to the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre! God wills it!" At other times they echoed the Gascon cavalier, Walter the Pennyless: "To Jerusalem, the city of marvels! Ours is Jerusalem, the city of pleasures, of good wine, of beautiful women, of gold and of sunshine! Ours is the Promised Land!"
Singing, dancing, uproarious with gladness, the troop crossed the village and passed by the hut of Fergan. The serfs, instead of betaking themselves to the fields for their hard day's labor, ran ahead of the train, shut in at that moment between two lines of ruined houses that bordered the road. Joan, standing at the threshold of her door, looked at this mob as it passed, with a mixture of astonishment and fear. A big scamp of a gallows bird, nicknamed by his companions Corentin the Gibbet-cheater, was giving his arm to a young wench that went by the name of Perrette the Ribald. She noticed poor Joan the Hunchback at her door and cried out to her, alluding to her deformity: "Halloa, you there, who carry your baggage on your back, come with us to Jerusalem; you will be admired there as one of the prodigies among the other marvels!"
"By the navel of the Pope! By the buttocks of Satan! You are right, my ribald!" cried the Gibbet-cheater. "There can be no hunchbacks in Jerusalem, a land of beautiful Saracen women, according to our friend Walter the Pennyless. We shall exhibit this hunchback for money. Come on!" said the bandit, seizing Joan by the arm, "follow us, you camel!"
"Yes, yes," added Perrette the Ribald, laughing loudly and seizing the other arm of the quarryman's wife, "come to Jerusalem; come to the land of marvels!"
"Leave me alone!" said the poor woman, struggling to disengageherself. "For pity's sake, leave me! I am expecting my husband and my child!"
Forced to follow her persecutors, and carried, despite herself, by the stream of the Crusaders, Joan, fearing to be stifled or crushed under foot by the crowd, sought no longer to struggle against the current. Suddenly, instead of proceeding onward, the mob swayed back, and these words ran from mouth to mouth: "Silence! Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless are going to speak! Silence!" A deep silence ensued. Halting in the middle of a large open space, where, gaping with curiosity, the serfs of the village stood gathered together, the monk and his companion prepared themselves to harangue these poor rustic plebs. Cuckoo Peter reined in his white mule and rising in his stirrups, he screamed in a hoarse yet penetrating voice, addressing the serfs of the seigniory of Plouernel: "Do you, Christian folks, know what is going on in Palestine? The divine tomb of the Saviour is in the hands of the Saracens! The Holy Sepulchre of our Lord is in the power of the infidels! Woe is us! Woe! Malediction! Malediction!" And the monk struck his chest, tore his frock, rolled his hollow eyes in their sockets, ground his teeth, foamed at the mouth, went through a thousand contortions on his mule, and resumed with increased fury: "The infidel is lord in Jerusalem, the Holy City! The miscreant insults the tomb of Christ with his presence! And you, Christians, my brothers, you remain indifferent before so horrible a sacrilege! Before such an abomination——"
"No, no!" cried back with one voice the mob of the Crusaders. "Death to the infidels! Let's deliver the tomb! Let's march to Jerusalem, the city of marvels and of beauty! God wills it! God wills it!"
The serfs of the village, ignorant, besotted, timid, opened wide their eyes and ears, and looked at one another, never before having heard the name of Jerusalem or of the Saracens mentioned, and unable to explain the fury and contortions of themonk. Accordingly, Martin the Prudent, the same who, two days before, had ventured to depict to the bailiff the sufferings of his fellows, timidly said to Cuckoo Peter: "Holy patron, seeing that our Lord Jesus Christ sits on his throne in heaven, together with God the Father in eternal glory, what can it be to him whether his tomb be in the hands of the people whom you call Saracens? Kindly enlighten us."
"That's what we would like to know," joined another serf, a young fellow who looked less stupid than the others. "We want to know that first."
"Oh, oh!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless. "By my valiant sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith! Here have we a rude questioner. What's your name, my brave lad?"
"My name is Colas the Bacon-cutter."
"As surely as ham is the friend of wine, you must be a relative of my friend Simon the Porkrind-scraper," replied the Gascon knight, amidst peals of laughter from the serfs, who were delighted by this sally. "So, then, you would like to know, my worthy Colas the Bacon-cutter, what it can matter to Jesus Christ, enthroned in heaven with the Eternal Father and the sweet dove, the Holy Ghost, if his sepulchre is held by the Saracens?"
"Yes, seigneur," rejoined the serf; "because, if that displeases him, how is it that, seeing he is God and omnipotent, he does not exterminate them? Why does he not turn those Saracens into pulp at a single wafture of his hand?"
"Woe is us! Abomination! Desolation of the world!" ejaculated Cuckoo Peter, breaking in upon the Gascon adventurer, who was about to answer. "Oh, ye people without faith, ingrates, impious and rebellious children! Jesus Christ gave his blood to redeem you. Is that so or not?"
"Serfs were our fathers, serfs are we, serfs will our children be," retorted Colas the Bacon-cutter. "We have not been redeemed, holy father, as you claim."
The answer of young Colas unquestionably embarrassed the monk; he shot at him threatening glances, writhed on his mule and resumed in a thundering voice: "Malediction! Desolation! Oh, ye of little faith! Jesus has given you his blood to redeem you, and you, in return, refuse to shed the blood of those accursed Saracens, who every day outrage his sepulchre! This is what the divine Saviour has said.... Do you hear?... Here is what he said.... Listen...."
Walter the Pennyless here broke in with his own harangue: "Those accursed Saracens are gorged with gold, with precious stones, with silver vessels; they inhabit a marvelous country where there is a profusion without the trouble of cultivation: Golden wheat fields, delicious fruits, exquisite wines, sweethearts of all complexions! One must go there to believe it! Think of it! Winter is unknown, spring eternal. The poorest of those infidel dogs have homes of white marble and enchanting gardens, embellished with limpid fountains. The beggars, clad in silk, play tennis with rubies and diamonds." A murmur of astonishment, then of admiration ran through the serfs. Their eyes fixed, their mouths agape, their hands clasped, they listened with increasing avidity to the Gascon adventurer. "Such is the miraculous country inhabited by those infidel dogs, and the Christians, the beloved children of the holy Catholic Church, inhabit dens, eat black bread, drink brackish water, shiver under a sky frozen in winter and rainy in summer. No, let all the devils take it! Let my beloved brothers come to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre, exterminate the infidels, and then they will have for their reward the prodigious lands of Palestine! Theirs be Jerusalem, the city of silver ramparts, with golden gates, studded with carbuncles! Theirs be the wines, the beautiful maids, the riches of the accursed Saracens! If you wish all that, good people, it is yours!" Then, turning to Peter the Hermit, "Not so, holy man?"
"It is the truth," answered Cuckoo Peter; "it is the truth.The goods of the sinner are reserved for the just."
In the measure that the adroit lieutenant of Cuckoo Peter had held up to the dazzled eyes of the poor villagers the ravishing picture of the delights and riches of Palestine, a good number of those famished serfs, clad in tatters and who all their lives had not crossed the boundaries of the seigniory of Plouernel, began to tremble with ardent covetousness and feverish hope. Others, more timid or less credulous, hesitated in believing those marvels. Of these old Martin the Prudent was the organ. Turning to his fellows: "My friends, that knight, on the back of that little black horse that looks like an ass, has said to you: 'One must go to that country to believe these marvels by seeing them with his own eyes.' Now, then, it is my opinion that it is better to believe them than to go and see them. It is not enough to depart for those regions. One must be certain of provisions on the route, and to return from such a distance."
"Old Martin is right," put in several serfs. "Let's take his advice and stay home."
"Besides," added another serf, "those Saracens will not allow themselves to be plundered without resisting. There will be blows received ... men killed ... thousands of them."
These views, exchanged aloud, no wise troubled the Gascon adventurer. He drew his famous sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith, and indicating with its point the pictures that ornamented his shield, he cried out in his cheerful and catching accent: "Good friends, see you this poor man with his cane in his hand? He departed for the Holy Land, his pouch as empty as his belly, his knap-sack as hollow as his cheeks. He is so ragged that one would think a pack of dogs had been at him! Look at him, the poor fellow, he is really to be pitied. What misery! What pinching poverty, my friends!"
"Yes, yes," the serfs exclaimed together, "he is really to be pitied."
"And now, my friends, what see you here?," resumed the Gascon adventurer, touching with the point of his sword the second picture on his shield. "Here is our very man, one time poor! You do not recognize him. I do not wonder, he is no longer the same, and yet it is himself, round of cheeks, clad like a seigneur and bursting his skin. Beside him lies a beautiful female Saracen slave, while at his feet a male Saracen comes to surrender his treasure! Well, now, my friends, this man, once so poor, so ragged at home, is you, is I, is all of us, and that same friend so plump, so sleek, so well clad, that, again, will be you, will be I, will be all of us, once we are in Palestine. Come, then, on the Crusade! Come and deliver the tomb of the Saviour! The devil take the rags, the rickety huts, the straw litters and the black bread! Let ours be marble palaces, silk robes, purple carpets, goblets of delicious wines, full purses, and beauteous Saracen women to rock us to sleep with their songs! Come to the Crusade!"
"Come, come!," cried out Cuckoo Peter. "If you are guilty of robbery, of arson, of murder, of prostitution, if you have committed adultery, fratricide or parricide—all your sins will be remitted. Come to the Crusade! Do you need an example, my brothers? William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, an impious fellow, a ravisher, a debauché who counts his crimes and adulteries by the thousands, William IX, that bedeviled criminal, departs to-morrow from the city of Angers for Palestine, white as a paschal lamb."
"And I, white as a swan!" interjected Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. "God wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"
"And I as white as a dove!" said Perette the Ribald, with a peal of laughter. "God wills it! Let's depart for Jerusalem!"
"Yes, yes; let's depart on the Crusade!" cried out the more daring of the villagers, intoxicated with hope. "Let's depart for Jerusalem." Others, less resolute, less venturesome, and of these was the larger number, took the advice of Martin the Prudent, fearing to stake their fate, whatever their present misery, uponthe cast of a dangerous voyage and of unknown countries. They deemed insane the exaltation of their fellows in servitude. Finally, others, still hesitated to take so grave a step, and Colas the Bacon-cutter addressed Walter the Pennyless: "To depart is easy enough. But what will our seigneur say to that? He has forbidden us to leave his domains on pain of having our feet cut off. And he will surely have the order carried out!"
"Your seigneur!" answered the Gascon adventurer breaking out in a horse-laugh. "Scorn your seigneur as you would a wolf caught in a trap! Ask these good people who follow us whether they have bothered about their seigneurs!"
"No, no, the devil take the seigneurs!" cried out the Crusaders. "We are going to Jerusalem. God wills it! God wills it!"
"What!" put in Cuckoo Peter, "the Eternal wants a thing, and a seigneur, a miserable earthworm will dare oppose His will! Oh, desolation! Eternal malediction upon the seigneur, upon the father, upon the husband, upon the mother, who would dare resist the holy impulse of their children, their wives, their serfs, who run to the deliverance of the tomb of the Lord!"
These words of Peter the Hermit were received with acclamation by the Crusaders. The beautiful Yolande and her lover, Eucher, as well as other loving couples, cried out in emulation and louder than the others: "God wills it! There is no will above his!"
"Master Walter the Pennyless," resumed Colas the Bacon-cutter, scratching the back of his ear, "is it far from here to Jerusalem?"
"The distance is from sin to safety!" bellowed Cuckoo Peter. "The road is short for the believers, endless for the impious! Are you a Christian or a miscreant? Are you an idolater or a good Catholic?"
Colas the Bacon-cutter, finding himself, no more than some other serfs who still hesitated, sufficiently instructed by the monk's answer on the distance of the journey, asked again:"Father, it is said to be a long ways from here to Nantes. Is it as far to Jerusalem?"
"Oh, man of little faith!" answered Peter the Hermit, "dare you measure the road that leads to Paradise and to the Holy Virgin?"
"By the four swift feet of my good horse, the Sun of Glory! They are thinking of the length of the road!" exclaimed Walter the Pennyless. "See here, my friends, does the bird that escapes from its cage inquire the length of the road when it can fly to freedom? Does not the ass in the mill, turning his grindstone, and tramping from dawn to dusk in the same circle, travel as much as the stag that roves through the woods at pleasure? Oh, my good friends, is it not better, instead of, like the ass of the mill, incessantly to tramp this seigniorial soil unto which you are chained, to march in search of adventures, free, happy like the stag in the forest, and every day see new countries?"
"Yes, yes," replied Colas, "the stag in the forest is better off than the ass in the mill. Let's depart for Palestine!"
"Yes, let's depart for Palestine!" the cry now went up from several other villagers. "On to that land of marvels!"
"My friends, be careful what you do," insisted Martin the Prudent. "The ass in the mill at least receives in the evening his meager pittance. The stags of the forest do not pasture in herds, hence they find a sufficiency in the woods. But if you depart with this large troop, which swells as it marches, you will be thousands of thousands when you reach Jerusalem. Who, then, my friends, will feed you? Who is to lodge you on the road? Who is to furnish you with clothes and footwear?"
"And who is it that lodges and feeds the birds of the good God, man of little faith?" Cuckoo Peter exclaimed. "Do the birds carry their provisions with them? Do they not raid the harvests along their route, resting at night under the eaves of the houses? Answer, ye hardened sinners!"
"By the faith of the Gibbet-cheater, you may trust that man!" here put in Corentin. "As truly as Perrette is a daisy, our routefrom Angers to this place has been but one continuous raid to us big birds on two legs. What feasts we have had? Poultry and pigeons! Hams and sausages! Pork and mutton! Tons of wine! Tons of hydromel! By my belly and my back, we have raided for everything on our passage, leaving behind us but bones to gnaw at and empty barrels to turn over!"
"And if those people were to complain," added Perrette the Ribald with her usual outburst of laughter, "we would answer them: 'Shut up, ninnies! Cuckoo Peter has read in the holy books that 'the goods of the sinner are reserved for the just!' Are not we thejust, we who are on the march to deliver the holy tomb? And are not yousinners, you who stay here stagnating in your cowardice? And if these ninnies said but a word, the Gibbet-cheater, backed by our whole band, would soon have convinced them with a thorough caning."
These sallies of Perrette and Corentin completed the conversion of those serfs who still hesitated. Seeing in the voyage but a long and merry junket, a goodly number of them, Colas the Bacon-cutter at their head, cried out in chorus: "Let's depart for Jerusalem, the country of beautiful girls, good wines and ingots of gold!"
"Onward, march, my friends! Trouble your heads neither about the road, nor about lodging, nor yet about food. The good God will provide!" cried Walter the Pennyless. "On the march! On the march! If you have provisions, take them along. Have you a donkey? mount him. Have you wagons? hitch on, and put wife and children in them. If you have nothing but your legs, gird up your loins, and on to Jerusalem! We are hundreds upon hundreds; we soon shall be thousands upon thousands; and presently we shall number hundreds of thousands. Upon our arrival in Palestine we shall find treasures and delights for all—beautiful women, good wine, rich robes, and lumps of gold in plenty!"
"And we shall all have gained eternal salvation! We shall have a seat in Paradise!" added Cuckoo Peter in a strident voice,brandishing his wooden cross over his head. "Let's depart for Jerusalem! God wills it!"
"Forward, let's depart for Palestine!" cried out a hundred of the villagers, carried away by Colas, despite the prudent advice of Martin. These ill-starred men, a prey to a sort of delirium, ran to their huts and gathered up the little that they possessed. Some loaded their asses in haste; others, less poor, hitched a horse or a yoke of oxen to a wagon and placed their families on board; while Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless, to the end of inflaming still more the ardor of these new recruits of the faith in the midst of their preparations for the journey, struck up the chant of the Crusades that was soon taken up in chorus by all the Crusaders:
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their happiness! You will be our delight!
"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their happiness! You will be our delight!"
Joan the Hunchback, having succeeded in freeing herself from the hands of Corentin and his wench, had pushed herself not without great pains, out of the compact mob, and was about to start back to her humble home by cutting across the skirt of the village, intending to wait for the return of her husband and child, a return that she hardly ventured to hope for. Suddenly she turned deadly pale and tried to scream, but terror deprived her of her voice. From the somewhat raised ground where she stood, Joan saw, down the plain, Fergan carrying his son in his arms, and running with all his might towards the village, with Garin the Serf-eater at his heels. The latter, giving his horse the spurs, followed the serf, sword in hand. Several men-at-arms on foot, following at a distance the tracks of the bailiff, sought to make up to him in order to render him armed assistance. Despitehis efforts to escape, Fergan led Garin by barely fifty paces. The lead was shortened from moment to moment. Already within but two paces, and believing the quarryman to be within reach of his sword, the bailiff had sought to strike him down by leaning over the neck of his horse. Thanks to several doublings, like those that hares make when pursued by the hound, Fergan escaped death. Making, finally, a desperate leap, he ran several steps straight ahead with indescribable swiftness, and then suddenly disappeared from the sight of Joan as if he had sunk into the bowels of the earth. A second later the poor woman saw Garin reining in his horse with great effort near the spot where the quarryman had just disappeared from view; he raised his sword heavenward, and then, instead of proceeding straight ahead, turned to the left and followed at a full gallop a hedge of green that traversed the valley diagonally. Joan then understood that her husband, having jumped with the child to the bottom of a deep trench, which the bailiff's horse could not clear, at the very moment when he would have been struck down by the bailiff, the latter had been compelled to ride along the edge of the trench to a point where he might cross it, in order to proceed to the village, where he counted upon capturing the quarryman. Joan feared lest her husband and child were hurt in the leap. But soon she saw her little Colombaik climb out of the trench with the aid of his little hand and supported by his father, whose arms only were visible. Presently Fergan also climbed out, picked up the child again, and carrying that dear load, continued to flee at a full run towards the village, which he aimed at reaching before the bailiff. Despite her weakness, Joan rushed forward to meet her child and her husband, and joined them. Fergan, without stopping and keeping the child in his arms, hurriedly said to his wife, almost out of breath and exhausted: "Let's reach the village. Let's get in ahead of Garin, and we shall be safe!"
"My dear Colombaik, you are here at last!" Joan said, while running beside the serf and devouring the child with her eyes,forgetting at the sight of him both the present perils and the past, while Colombaik, smiling and reaching out his little arms, said: "Mother! mother! How happy am I to see you again! Dear, good mother!"
"Oh," said the serf while redoubling his efforts to gain the village before Garin, who was driving his horse at full speed, "had I not been delayed burying a dead woman at the egress of the tunnel, I would have been here before daybreak. We would have met to flee together."
"My child! They have not hurt you?" Joan was thinking only of her child, one of whose hands she had seized and was kissing while weeping with joy, and running beside her husband. At that moment the chant of the Crusaders' departure resounded from afar with renewed fervor: "Jerusalem! City of marvels!"
"What songs are these?" inquired the quarryman. "What big crowd is that, gathered yonder? Whence come all these people?"
"Those are people who are going, they say, to Jerusalem. A large number of the inhabitants of the village are following them. They are like crazy!"
"Then we are really saved!" exclaimed the quarryman, seized with a sudden thought. "Let's depart with them!"
"What, Fergan!" demanded Joan out of breath and exhausted with her precipitate gait. "We to go far away with our child!"
But the serf, who found himself at the most a hundred paces from the village, made no answer, and followed by Joan, he finally reached the crowd, into the midst of which he dived, holding Colombaik and exhausted with fatigue, while, muttering to his wife: "Oh, saved! We are saved!"
Garin, who had continued driving his horse along the trench until he reached a spot where he could cross, observed with astonishment the crowd of people that blocked his way and access to the village. Drawing near, he saw coming towards him several of the serfs who preferred their crushing servitude to the chances of a distant and unknown voyage. Among these was old Martinthe Prudent. Seeking to flatter the bailiff, he said to him trembling: "Good master Garin, we are not of those rebels who dare to flee from the lands of their seigneur to go to Palestine with that troop of Crusaders, that are traveling through the country. We do not intend to abandon the domain of our seigneur. We wish to work for him to our last day."
"S-death!" cried out the bailiff, forgetting the quarryman at the announcement of the desertion of a large number of the serfs. "The wretches who have thought of fleeing will be punished." The crowd, opening up before the horse of Garin, he reached the monk and Walter the Pennyless, who were pointed to him as the chiefs of the Crusaders. "By what right do you thus enter with a large troop upon the territory of my seigneur, Neroweg VI, sovereign Count of Plouernel?" Then, raising his voice still more and turning to the villagers: "Those of you, serfs and villeins, who had the audacity of following these vagabonds, shall have their hands and feet cut on the spot, like rebels——"
"Impious man! Blasphemer!" exclaimed Cuckoo Peter breaking in upon the bailiff in a thundering voice. "Dare you threaten the Christians who are on the march to deliver the tomb of the Lord? Woe be unto you!——"
"You frocked criminal," the bailiff in turn interrupted, boiling with rage, and drawing his sword, "you dare issue orders in the seigniory of my master!" Saying which, Garin, driving his horse towards the monk, raised his sword over him. But Peter the Hermit parried the move with his heavy wooden cross, and struck the bailiff such a hard blow with it over his casque, that the latter, dazed for a moment, let fall his sword.
"Death to the bandit, who would cut off the feet and hands of the avengers of Christ!" several voices cried out. "Death to him! Death!"
"Yes, death!" yelled the serfs of the village, who had made up their minds to depart for the Holy Land, and who abhorred the bailiff. "Death to Garin the Serf-eater! He shall eat none more!" With that, Colas the Bacon-cutter threw him from hishorse, and in a moment the bailiff, trodden under foot, was slaughtered and torn to pieces. The serfs broke his bones, cut off his head, and Colas the Bacon-cutter, taking up the livid head of the Serf-eater with the prong of his pitch-fork, raised the bleeding trophy above the mob. Carrying it on high, he rejoined the troop of the Crusaders, whereupon the crowd marched away singing at the top of their voices:
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem! City of marvels! Happiest among all cities! You are the subject of the vows of the angels! You constitute their happiness! You will be our delight!
"The wood of the cross is our standard. Let's follow that banner that marches on before, guided by the Holy Ghost!
"God wills it! God wills it! God wills it."