Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

CHAPTER XI.

The banquet passed, like the scene which followed the tournament, in enthusiastic assertions of the fair queen's rights, although she was not present. In this instance, Philip Augustus, all clear-sighted as he was, suffered himself to be deceived by his wishes; and believed fully that his barons would aid him in the resistance he meditated to the usurped authority of the pope.

The promises, however, which wine, and wassail, and festivity call forth, are scarcely more lasting than the feast itself; and, without we can take advantage of the enthusiasm before it dies, and render it irrevocable by urging it into action, little can ever be gained from any sudden emotion of a multitude. If Philip doubted its durability, he did not suffer the shade of such a doubt to appear. The vaunt of every young knight he thanked as a promise; and every expression of admiration and sympathy, directed towards his queen, he affected to look upon as a pledge to espouse her cause.

The Count Thibalt d'Auvergne was the only one that made neither boasts nor promises; and yet the king--whether judging his mind of a more stable fabric than the others, or wishing to counterbalance the coldness he had shown him on his first appearance at the court,--now loaded him with honours, placed him near him, spoke to him on all those subjects on which he deemed the count was best calculated to speak: and affecting to consider his advice and assistance of great import, in arranging the relations to be established between the crown of France and the new French colony, which had taken Constantinople, he prayed him to accompany the court to Compiègne, for which place it set out the next day.

The king's favour and notice fell upon the calm cold brow and dark thoughtful eye of Thibalt d'Auvergne like sunshine in winter, melting in no degree the frozen surface that it touched. The invitation, however, he accepted; saying, in the same unmoved tone, that he was anxious to see the queen, whom he had known in years long gone, and to whom he could give fresh news from Istria, with many a loving greeting from her father, whom he had seen as he returned from Palestine.

The queen, Philip replied, would be delighted to see him, and to hear all that he had to tell; for she had never yet forgot her own fair country--nay, nor let that canker-worm of affection, absence, eat the least bit away of her regard for those she loved.

The very first, Count Thibalt took his leave and departed. De Coucy rose, and was following; but the king detained him for a moment, to thank him for the generous interest he had shown in his queen's rights, which had not failed to reach his ears. He then asked, with a slight shade of concern upon his brow, "Is your companion in arms, beau sire, always so sad? It grieves me truly, to see him look so possessed by sorrow! What is the cause thereof?"

"By my faith! my lord, 'tis love, I believe," replied De Coucy; "some fair dame of Palestine--I wot not whether heathen or Christian, rightly; but all I know is this:--Some five years ago, when he first joined us, then warring near Tyre, he was as cheerful a knight as ever unhorsed a Saracen; never very lively in his mirth, yet loving gaiety in others, and smiling often: when suddenly, about two or three years after, he lost all his cheerfulness, abandoned his smiles, grew wan and thin, and has ever since been the man you see him."

The shade passed away from the king's brow; and saying, "'Tis a sad pity! We will try to find some bright eyes in France that may cure this evil love," he suffered De Coucy to depart.

All that passed, relative to the reception of the legate, was faithfully transmitted to Pope Innocent III.; and the very enthusiasm shown by the barons of France in the cause of their lovely queen made the pontiff tremble for his authority. The immense increase of power which the bishops of Rome had acquired by the victory their incessant and indefatigable intrigues had won, even over the spirit of Frederick Barbarossa, wanted yet the stability of antiquity; and it was on this account that Innocent III. dreaded so much that Philip might successfully resist the domination of the church even in one single instance.

There were other motives, however, which, in the course, of the contest about to be here recorded, mingled with his conduct a degree of personal acrimony towards the king of France. Of an imperious and jealous nature, the pontiff met with resistance first from Philip Augustus, and his ambition came only in aid of his anger. The election of the emperor of Germany was one cause of difference; Philip Augustus supporting with all his power Philip of Suabia; and the pope not only supporting, but crowning with his own hands, Otho, nephew of John, king of England,--although great doubts existed in regard to his legitimate election.

As keen and clear-sighted as he was ambitious, Innocent saw that in Philip Augustus he had an adversary as intent upon increasing his own authority, as he himself could be upon extending the power of the church. He saw the exact point of opposition; he saw the powerful mind and political strength of his antagonist; but he saw also that Philip's power, when acting against his own, must greatly depend upon the progress of the human mind towards a more enlightened state, which advance must necessarily be slow and difficult; while the foundations of his own power had been laid by ages of superstition, and were strengthened by all those habits and ceremonies to which the heart of man clings in every state, but more especially in a state of darkness.

Resolved at once to strike the blow, it happened favourably for the views of the pope, that the first question where his authority was really compromised, was one in which the strongest passions of his adversary were engaged, while his own mind was free to direct its energies by the calm rule of judgment. It is but justice also to say, that though Innocent felt the rejection of his interference as an insult, and beheld the authority of the church despised with no small wrath, yet all his actions and his letters, though firm and decided, were calm and temperate. Still, he menaced not without having resolved to strike; and the only answer he returned to the request of the cardinal of St. Mary's for farther instructions, was an order to call a council of the bishops of France, for the purpose of excommunicating Philip as rebel to the will of the church, and of fulminating an interdict against the whole of the realm. So severe a sentence, however, alarmed the bishops of France; and, at their intercession, the legate delayed for a time its execution, in hopes that, by some concession, Philip might turn away the wrath of the church.

In the meanwhile, as if the blow with which he was menaced but made him cling more closely to the object for whose sake he exposed himself, Philip devoted himself entirely to divert the mind of Agnes de Meranie from contemplating the fatal truth which she had learned at last. He now called to her remembrance the enthusiasm with which his barons had espoused her cause; he pointed out to her that the whole united bishops of France had solemnly pronounced the dissolution of his incomplete marriage with the Princess of Denmark; and he assured her, that were it but to protect the rights of his clergy and his kingdom from the grasping ambition of the see of Rome, he would resist its interference, and maintain his independence with the last drop of his blood.

At other times he strove to win her away even from the recollection of her situation; and he himself seemed almost to forget the monarch in the husband. Sometimes it was in the forests of Compiègne, Senlis, or Fontainbleau, chasing the stag or the boar, and listening to the music of the hounds, the ringing horns, and the echoing woods. Sometimes it was in the banquet and the pageant, the tournament or the cour plenière, with all its crowd, and gaiety, and song. Sometimes it was in solitude and tranquillity, straying together through lovely scenes, where nature seemed but to shine back the sweet feelings of their hearts; and every tone of all summer's gladness seemed to find an echo in their bosoms.

Philip succeeded; and Agnes de Meranie, though her cheek still remained a shade paler than it had been, and her soft eyes had acquired a look of pensive languor, had--or seemed to have--forgotten that there was a soul on earth who disputed her title to the heart of her husband, and the crown of her realm. She would laugh, and converse, and sing, and frame gay dreams of joy and happiness to come, as had been ever her wont; but it was observed that she would start, and turn pale, when any one came upon her suddenly, as if she still feared evil news; and, if any thing diverted her thoughts from the gay current in which she strove to guide them, she would fall into a long reverie, from which it was difficult to wake her.

Thus had passed the time of Philip Augustus and Agnes de Meranie, from their departure for Compiègne, the day after the tournament. The hours of Count Thibalt d'Auvergne, however, had been spent in a very different manner from that which he had anticipated. He had, it is true, made up his mind to a painful duty; but it was a duty of another kind he was called to perform. As his foot was in the stirrup to join the royal cavalcade, for the purpose of proceeding to Compiègne, according to the king's invitation, a messenger arrived from Auvergne, bearing the sad news that his father had been suddenly seized with an illness, from which no hope existed of his recovery; and D'Auvergne, without loss of time, turned his steps towards Vic le Comte.

On his arrival, he found his parent still lingering on the confines between those two strange worlds, the present and the future: the one which we pass through, as in a dream, without knowing the realities of any thing around us; the other, the dreadful inevitability of which we are fond to clothe in a thousand splendid hopes, putting, as it were, a crown of glory on the cold and grimly brow of Death.

'Twas a sad task to watch the flickering of life's lamp, till the flame flew off for ever! The Count d'Auvergne, however, performed it firmly; and having laid the ashes of his father in the earth, he stayed but to receive the homage of his new vassals, and then turned his steps once more towards Paris, leaving the government of Auvergne to his uncle, the famous Count Guy, celebrated both for his jovial humour and his predatory habits.

CHAPTER XII.

We must now once more go back a little in our history and return to Sir Guy de Coucy, who, on the morning of his friend's departure for Auvergne, stood at the door of their common dwelling to see him set out. In the hurry of such a moment there had been no time for many of those arrangements between the two friends, which the Count d'Auvergne much wished to have made. However, as he embraced De Coucy at parting, according to the custom of the day, he whispered in his ear: "The besants we brought from the Holy Land are in my chamber. If you love me, De Coucy, remember that we are brothers, and have all things in common. I shall find you here at my return. If I come not soon I will send you a messenger." De Coucy nodded his head with a smile, and, leaning on his large two-handed sword, saw the Count d'Auvergne mount his horse and depart.

"Farewell, D'Auvergne!" said he, as he turned to re-enter the house,--"perhaps we may never meet again; but De Coucy forgets not thy generous kindness, though he will not use it. Our fortunes are far too unequal for us longer to hold a common purse."

Be it remarked, however, that the scruples which affected De Coucy on this occasion were rather singular in the age in which he lived; for the companionship of arms, which, in their romantic spirit, the knights of even a much later period often vowed to each other, were frequently of a stricter and more generous nature than any of our most solid engagements of life at present; involving not only community of fortune and of fate, but of friendships and of enmities, of pleasures and pains, and sometimes of life or death.^[15] When once two knights had exchanged arms, as was often the case, it became their duty to assist each other on every occasion, with body and goods, during the expedition in which they were engaged; and sometimes, even for life, to share all wealth between them, both present and to come; and in case of one dying, while under an engagement to do battle, (or under a wager of battle, as it was called,) his companion, or brother in arms, was bound to fill his place, and maintain his honour in the duel.

While in the Holy Land, cut off from frequent supplies, and in imminent and continual dangers, De Coucy had found no inequality between himself and Count Thibalt de Auvergne; but now, placed amidst the ruinous expense of tournaments and courts, he resolved to break off at once an engagement, where no parity of means existed between himself and his companion.

Slowly, and somewhat sadly, De Coucy returned to his own chamber, feeling a touch of care that his light heart had not often known before. "Hugo de Barre," said he, "give me a flask of wine; I have not tasted my morning's cup, and I am melancholy."

"Shall I put some comfits in it, beau sire?" demanded the squire. "I have often known your worship get over a bad fit of love, by a ladle-full of comfits in a cup of Cyprus."

"As thou wilt, Hugo," answered the knight; "but 'tis not love I want to cure, now-a-day."

"Marry! I thought, sire Guy," replied Hugo de Barre, "that it was all for love of the Lady Isadore; but then, again, I fancied it was strange, if you loved her, that you should leave her at Senlis, and not go on with her to her own castle, and strive to win her!"

"Her father was going to lodge with the sire de Montmorency, my cousin Enguerand's sworn foe," replied De Coucy; "and even after that, he goes not home, but speeds to Rouen, to mouth it with John, king of England.--By my faith!" he added, speaking to himself, "that old man will turn out a rebel from simple folly. He must needs be meddling with treason, but to make himself important. Yet D'Auvergne says he was a good warrior in his day. I wish I could keep his fingers from the fire, were it but for his daughter's love--sweet girl!"

Had De Coucy been alone, he would probably have thought what he now said, yet would not have spoken it; but having begun by addressing his attendant, he went on aloud, though the latter part of what he said was, in reality, merely a part of his commune with himself. Hugo de Barre, however, who had, on more than one occasion been thus made, as it were, a speaking-block by his master, understood the process of De Coucy's mind, and stood silent till his lord had done.

"Then you do love the lady, beau sire?" said he at last, venturing more than he usually did upon such occasions.

"Well, well! Hugo, what is it to thee?" demanded De Coucy. "I will not keep thee out all night, as when I courted the princess of Syracuse."

"Nay, but I love the Lady Isadore better than ever I did the princess of Syracuse," replied the squire; "and I would stay out willingly many a night for her sake, so she would be my lord's true lady. Look ye, my lord! You have seen her wear this bracelet of cloth of gold," he continued, drawing forth a piece of fine linen, in which was wrapped a broad band of cloth of gold, not at all unlike the bracelets of gilded wire, lately so much the mode amongst the fair dames of London and Paris. "I asked one of her maidens to steal it for me."

"You did not, surely, Hugo!" cried De Coucy. "How dare you be so bold with any noble lady, sirrah?"

"Nay, then, I will give it back," replied the squire. "I had intended the theft to have profited your lordship; but I will give it back. The Lady Isadore, it is true, knew that her damsel took it; but still it was a theft; and I will give it back again. She knew, too, that it was I who asked it; and doubtless guessed it was you, beau sire, would have it; but I had better give it back."

"Nay, nay! good Hugo," replied De Coucy; "give it me. I knew not you were so skilful in such matters. I knew you were a good scout, but not in sir Cupid's army.--Give it me!"

"Nay, beau sire, I had better give it back," replied the Squire; "and then I will fall into my duty again, and look for nothing but routiers, cotereaux, and the like. But there is something more I wished to tell you, sir: old Giles, the squire of the good Count Julian, told me, that if his lord keep his mind of going to Rouen, he must needs in three weeks' time pass within sight of our own--that is to say, your own--castle. Now, would it not be fair sport, to lay an ambush for the whole party, and take them prisoners, and bring them to the castle?"

"By my faith! it would," replied the knight. "But how is this, Hugo?--thou art a changed man. Ever since I have known thee, which is since I was not higher than my dagger, thou hast shown thyself as stiff and sturdy a piece of old iron, as any of the corslets that hang by the wall; and now thou art craving bracelets, and laying ambushes for fair ladies, as if thou hadst been bred up in the very palace of Love. Methinks that same damsel, who stole the bracelet for thee, must have woke up some new spirit in thy heart of stone, to make thine outward man so pliable. Why, compared to what thou wert, Hugo, thou art as a deer-skin coat to a steel plastron. Art thou not in love, man? Answer me!"

"Something like it, I fear me, beau sire," replied the squire. "And as it is arranged between me and Alixe, that if you win the lady, I am to have the maid, we are resolved to set our wits to work to help your lordship on."

"By my life! a hopeful plot," replied De Coucy: "and well do I know, Hugo, that the maid's good word is often as much gained as the mistress's smile. But go, order to saddle; leave the bracelet with me; and as soon as the horses be ready, De Coucy will spur on for the home of his fathers."

The squire delivered the bracelet to his lord, and left the apartment; and no sooner was he gone, than De Coucy carried the bracelet to his lips, to his forehead, and his heart, with as much fervour of devotion, as ever monk showed for the most sacred relic of his church.

"She knew that her damsel took it!--she knew that it was for me!" exclaimed he in an ecstasy of delight, which every one who can feel, may have felt on discovering some such unlooked-for source of happiness. Stretching out his hand, De Coucy then took up the rote, which, as a true trouvère, he made his inseparable companion. It was an age when poetry was a language--the real, not the figurative language of love--when song was in the heart of every one, ready to break forth the moment that passion or enthusiasm called for aid;--and, in the acme of his gladness, the young knight sang to the instrument a ballad, composed, indeed, long before; but the concluding verse of which he altered to suit his feelings at the moment.

De Coucy sang, and then again pressed the token which he had obtained to his lips, and to his heart; when suddenly a loud "Haw, haw! haw, haw!" startled him from his pleasing dreams, and he saw Gallon the fool standing beside him.

"Haw, haw!" cried Gallon; "my master's turned juggler, and is playing with scraps of gold ribbon, and singing songs to them. By my dexterity! I'll give up the trade: the mystery is no longer honourable--every fool can do it."

"Take care that one fool does not get his ears slit," answered De Coucy.--"Tell me, sir, and tell me truly,--for I know thee, Gallon, and that thou art no more fool than may serve thy turn,--where hast thou been since daybreak, this morning?"

"I went out on the road to Compiègne," replied Gallon gravely, "to see how the wolf looked in the sheepfold; and whether the falcon comported himself sociably in the dove's nest. Farther, I sought to behold how the shepherd enjoyed the sight of sir wolf toying with the lamb; and still farther----"

"Villain!" cried De Coucy, "what mean you? Speak me no more apologues, or your skin shall suffer for it! What mean you, I say?" and De Coucy suddenly seized the juggler by the arm, so as to prevent him from escaping by his agility, which he frequently did, from the blow which he menaced to bestow on him with his other hand.

"Well! well!" cried Gallon, ever willing to say any thing that he thought might alarm, or mortify, or pain his hearers. "I went first, beau sire, to inquire of a dear friend of mine, at the palace--who fell in love with me, because, and on account of, the simple beauty and grace of my snout--whether it be true, that Philip the Magnificent had taken actual possession of the lands of your aunt's husband, the Count de Tankerville; and I find he has, and called in all the revenues to the royal treasury. Oh! 'tis a great king and an expeditious!--Haw, haw, haw!" and though within reach of the young knight's arm. Gallon the fool could not repress his glee at the sight of a slight shade of natural mortification that came over his lord's countenance.

"Let him," cried De Coucy,--"let him take them all! I would rather that he had them than the duke of Burgundy. Better they should go to strengthen a good king, than to nourish a fat and overgrown vassal.--But you escape me not so, sir Gallon! You said you went on the road to Compiègne to see how the wolf looked, in the sheepfold! Translate, sir fool! Translate! What meant you?"

"Simply to see Count Thibalt d'Auvergne and Queen Agnes de Meranie," replied the jongleur.--"Haw, haw!--Is there any harm in that?"

De Coucy started, as if some one had struck him, experiencing that sort of astonishment which one feels, when suddenly some fact, to which we have long shut our eyes, breaks upon us at once, in all the sharpness of self-evidency--if one may use the word. "'Tis impossible!" cried he. "It cannot be! 'Tis not to be believed!"

"Haw, haw, haw!" cried Gallon the fool. "Not to be doubted, beau sire De Coucy!--Did he not join your good knighthood as blithe and merry as a lark, after having spent some three months at the court of Istria and Moravia?--Did he not go on well and gaily, till the news came that Philip of France had wedded Agnes de Meranie?--Then did he not, in your own tent, turn paler than the canvass that covered him?--And did he not thenceforth wax wan and lack-witted, sick and sorrowful?--Ha, haw? Ha, haw!"

"Cease thy grinning, knave!" cried De Coucy sharply, "and know, that even if he does love the queen, 'tis in all honour and honesty; as one may dedicate one's heart and soul, one's lance and song, to the greatest princess on all the earth, without dreaming aught to her dishonour."

"Haw, haw, haw! haw, haw!" was all the answer of Gallon the fool; and darting away from the relaxed grasp of De Coucy, on whose brow he saw clearly a gathering storm, he rushed down, shouting "Haw, haw! haw, haw!" with as keen an accent of triumph, as if he had gained a victory.

"Is it possible?" said the knight to himself, "that I have been blind for nearly two years to what has been discovered by an idiot on the instant? God bless us all, and the holy saints!--D'Auvergne! D'Auvergne! I pity thee, from my soul! for where thou hast loved, and loved so fair a creature, there wilt thou still love, till the death. Nor art thou a man to seek to quench thy love in thy lady's dishonour--to learn to gratify thy passion and to despise its object, as some men would. Here thy very nobleness, like plumes to the ostrich, is thy bane and not thy help. And Philip too. If e'er a king was born to be jealous, he is the man. I would not for a dukedom love so hopelessly. However, D'Auvergne, I will be near thee--near to thy dangers, though not to thy wealth."

At this point, the contemplations of De Coucy were interrupted by the return of Hugo de Barre, his squire, informing him that the horses were ready; and at the same time laying down on the table before his lord a small leathern bag, apparently full of money.

"What is that?" demanded De Coucy.

"The ransom of the two knights' horses and armour, overthrown by your lance in the yesterday's tournament," replied the squire.

"Well, then, pay the two hireling grooms," said De Coucy, "whom we engaged to lead the two Arabians from Auvergne, since we discharged the Lombards who brought them thither."

"They will not be paid, beau sire," replied the squire. "They both pray you to employ the hire which is their due in furnishing them with each a horse and arms, and then to let them serve under your banner."

"Well, be it so, good Hugo," replied the knight. "Where--God knows where I shall find food to cram their mouths withal! 'Twill add too, however, to my poor following. Then, with thee and the page, and my own two varlets, we shall make seven:--eight with Gallon the fool. By my faith! I forgot the juggler, who is as stout a man-at-arms as any amongst us. But, as I said, get thee gone with the men to the Rue St. Victor, where the Haubergers dwell. Give them each a sword, a shield, a corslet, and a steel bonnet: but make them cast away those long knives hanging by their thighs which I love not;--they always make me think of that one wherewith the villain slave of Mahound ripped up my good battle-horse Hero; and would have slain me with it too, if I had not dashed him to atoms with my mace. Ride quick, and overtake me and the rest on the road: we go at a foot-pace." So saying, Guy de Coucy descended the narrow staircase of his dwelling; and, after having spoken for a few moments with one of the attendants of the Count d'Auvergne, who had remained behind, he mounted his horse, and rode slowly out of the city of Paris.

There is no possible mode of progression, that I know of, more engendering of melancholy than the foot-pace of a horse when one is alone. It is so like the slow and retarded pace which, whether we will or not, we are obliged to pursue on the high-road of life; and each object, as it rises on our view, seems such a long age in its approach, that one feels an almost irresistible desire, at every other step, to give the whip or spur, and accelerate the heart's slow beatings by some more rapid movement of the body. Did one wish to cultivate their stupidity, let them ride their horse, at a walk, over one of the long, straight roads of France.

The face of the country, however, was in those days very different from what it is at present; and the narrow, earthy road over which De Coucy travelled, wound in and out over hills and through forests: now plunging into the deep wood; now emerging by the bright stream; now passing, for a short space, through vineyards and fields, with a hamlet or a village by the road-side; now losing itself in wilds and solitudes, where one might well suppose that Adam's likeness had been never seen.

The continual changing of the objects around relieved, of course, the monotony of the slow pace at which De Coucy had condemned himself to proceed, while expecting of his squire's return; and a calm sort of melancholy was all he felt, as he revolved in his mind the various points of his own situation and that of his friend the Count d'Auvergne.

In regard to himself, new feelings had sprung up in his bosom--feelings that he had heard of, but never known before. He loved, and he fancied he was beloved; and dreams, and hopes, and expectations, softer, calmer, more profound than ever had reached him in camps or courts, flowed in upon his heart, like the stream of some deep, pure river, and washed away all that was rude and light, or unworthy in his bosom. Yet, at the same time, all the tormenting contentions of hope and fear--the fine hair balancings of doubt and anxiety--the soul torturings of that light and malicious imp, Love, took possession of the heart of De Coucy; and he calculated, within the hundred thousandth part of a line, how much chance there existed of Isadore of the Mount not loving him,--and of her loving some one else,--and of her father, who was rich, rejecting him, who was poor,--and of his having promised her to some one else;--and so on to infinity. At length, weary of his own reasonings thereupon, and laughing at himself for combating the chimeras of his own imagination, he endeavoured to turn his thoughts to other things, humming as he went--

"--And so will I," continued De Coucy mentally. "It shall prompt me to great deeds, and to mighty efforts. I will go to every court in Europe, and challenge them all to do battle with me upon the question. I will fight in every combat and every skirmish that can be met with, till they cannot refuse her to me, out of pure shame."

Such were the determinations of De Coucy in the age of chivalry, and he was one more likely than most men to keep such determinations. They, however, like all resolutions, were of course modified by circumstances; and in the mean while, his squire, Hugo, rejoined him with the two varlets, who had been hired in Auvergne to lead his horses, but who were now fitted to make a figure in the train of so warlike a knight.

Still the prospect of his cold and vacant home, with no smile to give him welcome, and, as he well knew, nothing but poverty for his entertainment, sat somewhat heavily upon the young knight's heart. To lodge upon the battle plain, under a covering that scarce excluded the weather; to feed on the coarsest and most scanty food; to endure all perils and privations, for chivalry's, religion's, or his country's sake, was nothing to the bold and hardy soldier, whose task and pride it was so to suffer: but, for the châtelain, De Coucy, to return to the castle where his fathers had lived in splendour,--to the bowers and halls where his infancy had been nursed with tenderness,--and to find all empty and desolate; the wealth and magnificence wasted in the thousand fruitless enterprises of the crusades, and the loved and familiar laid low in the melancholy dwellings of the gone, was bitter, sadly bitter, even for a young, light heart, and unquenchable spirit like his.

One of his ancestors, who, in the reign of Henry the First, had founded the younger branch of the De Coucy's, of which he was now the sole representative, had done important services to the crown, and had been rewarded by the hand of Aleonore de Magny, on the Seine, heiress of the last terre libre, or free land, in France; and this his race had maintained, in its original freedom, against all the surrounding barons, and even against the repeated efforts of every successive king, who, on all occasions, attempted to exact homage by force, or to win it by policy. His father, indeed, before taking the cross, which he did at the persuasion of Louis the Seventh, had put his lands under the protection of the king, who, on his part, promised to guard its inviolability against all and every one; and acknowledged by charter under his hand and seal, that it was free and independent of the crown.

The manoir, or castel, of every baron of the time, was always a building of more or less strength; but it is to be supposed, of course, that the château attached to lands in continual dispute, was fortified with an additional degree of precaution and care. Nor was this wanting in the château of De Coucy Magny, as it was called: wall, and battlement, tower, turret, and bartizan, overhung every angle of the hill on which it was placed, and rendered it almost impregnable, according to the mode of warfare of those days.

When De Coucy had left it, with his father's men-at-arms, though age had blackened it, not one stone was less in the castle-walls,--not a weed was on the battlements; and even the green ivy, that true parasite which sucks the vital strength of that which supports it, was carefully removed from the masonry.

But, oh! how fast decay speeds on, even by the neglect of ten short years! When De Coucy returned, the evening sun was setting behind the hill on which the castle stood; and, as he led his scanty band of horsemen up the winding and difficult path, he could see, by the rough, uneven outline of the dark mass before him, what ravages time had already made. High above the rest, the donjon, which used to seem proud of its square regularity, now towered with one entire angle of its battlements given way, and with many a bush and shrub waving its long feathery foliage from window and from loophole; while the neglected state of the road, and even the tameness of the wild animals in the woods near the château; the hares and the deer, which stood and gazed with their large round eyes for many moments at De Coucy and his followers before they started away, told, with a sad moral, that man was seldom seen there.

De Coucy sighed as he rode on; and, stopping at the gates of the barbican, which, thickly plated and studded with iron, opposed all entrance, wound a long blast upon his horn. A moment after, the noise of bolts and bars was heard, as if the doors were about to be thrown open; but then again came the sound of an old man's voice, exclaiming in a tone of querulous anger--"Hold, hold! Villain Calord! Will you give up the castle to the cotereaux? Hold, I say! or I will break thy pate! I saw them from the beffroy. They are a band of cotereaux. Go round to the serfs' sheds, and bid them come and take their bows to the walls. Up you, and ring the bancloche, that we may have the soldiers from Magny!"

"Onfroy! Onfroy!" shouted De Coucy. "Open your gates! 'Tis I, Guy de Coucy!"

"Your voice I know not!" roared the old man in reply. "My young lord had a soft, sweet voice; and yours is as deep as a bell. I know not your voice, fair sir.--Man the walls, I say, Calord! 'Tis all a trick," he continued, speaking to his companion. "Sound the bancloche!"

"If you know not my voice," cried De Coucy, "surely you should know the blast I have sounded on my horn!"

"Sound again, beau sire!--sound again!" cried the old man. "I will know your blast among ten thousand, if you be a De Coucy; and if you be my young lord, I will know it in all the world."

De Coucy put his horn to his lips and reiterated his blast, when instantly the old man exclaimed--"'Tis he!--'tis he, Calord!--Open the gates--open the gates, quick! lest I die of joy before I see his face again! 'Tis he himself! The blessed Virgin, queen of heaven, be praised for all things--Give me the keys--give me the keys, Calord!" and no sooner were the doors pushed back, than casting himself on his knees before his lord's horse, with the tears of joy coursing each other rapidly down his withered face, the old seneschal exclaimed, "Enter, noble châtelain! and take your own; and God be praised, my dear boy! and the holy Virgin, and St. John, and St. Peter, but more especially St. Martin of Tours! for having brought you safe back again from the dangers of Palestine, where your noble father has left his valiant bones! Here are the keys, which I offer into your hand, beau sire," he continued, looking earnestly at De Coucy, and wiping the salt rheum that obscured his sight. "And yet I can scarce believe," he added, "that young Guy, the last of the three fair youths--he who was not up to my shoulder when he went, whom I first taught to draw a bow, or wheel a horse--that young Guy, the page--and a saucy stripling he was too--my blessing on his waggish head!--that young Guy the page should have grown into so tall and strong a man as you, beau sire!--Are you not putting upon me? Was it truly you that blew that blast?" and his eye ran over the persons who followed behind his lord.--"But no!" he added, "it must be he! I know his blue eye, and the curl of his lip; and I have heard how he is a great knight now-a-days, and slays Saracens, and bears away the prizes at tournays:--I have heard it all!"

De Coucy calmly let the old man finish his speech, without offering to take the keys, which from time to time he proffered, as a sort of interjection between the various parts of his disjointed discourse. "It is even I, good Onfroy," replied he at last: "keep the keys!--keep the keys, good old man!--they cannot be in worthier hands than yours. But now let us in. I bring you, as you see, no great reinforcement; but I hope your garrison is not so straitened for provisions, that you cannot give us some supper, for we are hungry, though we be few."

"We will kill a hog--we will kill a hog, beau sire!" replied the old man. "I have kept chiefly to the hogs, beau sire, since you were gone, for they cost nothing to keep--the acorns of the forest serve them--and they have increased wonderfully! Oh, we have plenty of hogs; but as to cows, and sheep, and things of that kind, that eat much and profit little, I was obliged to abandon them when I sent you the last silver I could get, as you commanded."

De Coucy signified his perfect indifference as to whether his supper consisted of mutton, beef, or pork; and riding through the barbican, into the enclosure of the walls, he crossed the court and alighted at the great gates of the hall, which were thrown open to receive him.

Calord, the servant or varlet of the seneschal, had run on before, to light a torch; for the day was beginning to fail, and the immense apartment was of its own nature dark and gloomy; but still, all within was dim. The rays of the torch, though held high, and waved round and round, scarcely served to show some dark lustreless suits of armour hung against the walls; and the figures of some of the serfs, who had stolen into the farther extremity of the hall, to catch a glimpse of their returned lord, seemed like spirits moving about on the dark confines of another world; while more than one bat, startled even by the feeble light, took wing and fluttered amongst the old banners overhead. At the same time, as if dreary sounds were wanting to complete the gloominess of the young knight's return, the clanging of his footsteps upon the pavement of the empty hall, awoke a long, wild echo, which, prolonged through the open doors communicating with untenanted halls and galleries beyond, seemed the very voice of solitude bewailing her disturbed repose.

It all fell cold upon De Coucy's heart; and, laying his hand on the old seneschal's shoulder, as he was about to begin one of his long discourses:--"Do not speak to me just now, good Onfroy!" said the young knight; "I am not in a vein to listen to any thing. But throw on a fire in yon empty hearth; for, though it be July, this hall has a touch of January. Thou hast the key of the books too:--bring them all down, good Onfroy; I will seek some moral that may teach contentment.--Set down my harp beside me, good page." And having given these directions, De Coucy cast himself into the justice-chair of his ancestors, and, covering his eyes with his hands, gave himself up to no very sweet contemplations.

CHAPTER XIII.

It would seem a strange command in our day, were any one to order his servant to bring down the library; and certainly would infer a much more operose undertaking than fell to the lot of old Onfroy, the seneschal, who, while Calord, his man, cast almost a whole tree in the chimney, and the varlets of De Coucy unloaded his baggage-horses, easily brought down a small wooden box, containing the whole literature of the château. And yet, perhaps, had not the De Coucys, from father to son, been distinguished trouvères, no such treasure of letters would their castle have contained; for, to count the nobles of the kingdom throughout, scarce one in a hundred could read and write.

De Coucy, however, had wasted--as it was then called--some of his earlier years in the study of profane literature, till the death of his two elder brothers had called him from such pursuits; from which time his whole course of reading had been in the romances of the day, where figured either Charlemagne with his peers and paladins, or the heroes, writers, and philosophers of antiquity, all mingled together, and habited as knights and magicians.

A manuscript, however, in those days, was of course much more precious in the eyes of those who could read, than such a thing possibly can be now; and De Coucy, hoping, as many have done since, to shelter himself behind a book, from the sharp attacks of unpleasant thought, eagerly opened the manifold bars and bucklings of the wooden case, and took out the first vellum that his hand fell upon. This proved to be but a collection of tensons, lais, and pastourelles,--all of which he knew by heart, so that he was obliged to search farther. The next he came to had nearly shared the same fate, being a copy of the Life of Louis the Fat, written in Latin a few years before, by Suger, abbot of St. Denis. The Latin, however, was easy, and De Coucy's erudition coining to his aid, he read various passages from those various pages, wherein the great minister who wrote it gives such animated pictures of all that passed immediately previous to the very age and scenes amidst which the young knight was then living. At length his eye rested on the epigraph of the sixteenth chapter, "Concerning the treachery committed at the Roche Guyon, by William, brother-in-law of the king;--concerning, also, the death of Guy; and the speedy vengeance that overtook William."

No title could have been more attractive in the eyes of De Coucy; and skipping a very little of his text, where his remembrance of the language failed him, he went on to read.

"Upon a promontory formed by the great river Seine, at a spot difficult of access, is built an ignoble castle, of a frightful aspect, called La Roche Guyon. On the surface of the promontory the castle is invisible, being hollowed out of the bowels of the high rock. The skilful hand of him who formed it has cut the high rock itself on the side of the hill, and by a mean and narrow opening has practised a subterranean habitation of immense extent.

* * * * *

"This subterranean castle, not more hideous in the sight of men than in the sight of God, had about this time for its lord, Guy de la Roche Guyon,--a young man of gentle manners, a stranger to the wickedness of his ancestors. He had indeed interrupted its course, and showed himself resolved to lead a tranquil and honourable life, free from their infamous and greedy rapacity.

"Surprised by the very position of his wretched castle, and massacred by the treachery of his own father-in-law, the most wicked of the wicked, he lost, by an unexpected blow, both his dwelling and his life.

"William, his father-in-law, was by birth a Norman; and, unequalled in treachery, he made himself appear the dearest friend of his daughter's husband. This man, tormented by black envy, and brewing wicked designs, unhappily found, on the evening of a certain Sunday, an opportunity of executing his diabolical designs. He came then, with his arms covered with a mantle, and accompanied by a handful of assassins; and mingled himself, though with very different thoughts, amongst a crowd of pious people hastening to a church, which communicated by a passage in the rock with the subterranean castle of Guy. For some time, while the rest gave themselves up to prayer, he feigned to pray also; but, in truth, occupied himself in examining attentively the passage communicating with the dwelling of his son-in-law. At that moment, Guy entered the church; when, drawing his sword, and seconded by his criminal associates, William, madly yielding to the iniquity of his heart, cast himself into the doorway, and struck down his son-in-law, who was already smiling a welcome upon him, when he felt the edge of his sword. The noble bride of the châtelain, stupefied at the sight, tore her hair and her cheeks, after the manner of women in their anger, and running towards her husband, without fearing the fate that menaced her, she cast herself upon him to cover his body from the blows of the murderer, crying, while he received a thousand wounds,--'Vile butchers! slay me rather than him!--What has he done to merit death?'"

* * * * *

"Seizing her by the hair, the assassins dragged her away from her husband, who, crushed by their repeated blows, pierced by their swords, and almost torn in pieces with his various wounds, soon expired under their hands. Not contented yet, with a degree of cruelty worthy of Herod, such of his unhappy children as they could find they dashed mercilessly against the rock--"^[16]

"Give me my lance!" cried De Coucy, starting up, with his blood boiling at this picture of an age so near his own--"give me my lance, ho! By all the saints of France----"

But at that moment remembering that the event which Suger recounted must have taken place full fifty years before, and therefore that none of the actors therein could be a fit object for the vengeance which he had thought of inflicting with his own hand, he sat down again, and read out the tale, running rapidly through the murderer's first triumphant contemplation of the property he had obtained by the death of his son-in-law, and even of his own daughter, but pausing with an angry sort of gladness over the detail of the signal punishment inflicted on him and his accomplices. Nor did he find the barbarous aggravation of tearing his heart from his bosom, and casting his body, attached to a plank, into the river Seine, to float to his native place, in any degree too horrible an award for so horrible a villain. On the contrary, starting from his chair, with all the circumstances of his own fate forgotten, he was striding up and down the hall, wishing that this same bloodthirsty Guillaume had been alive then to meet him in fight; when suddenly, just as the old seneschal was bustling in to lay out the table for his young lord's supper, the long, loud blast of a horn sounded at the outer gates.

"Throw open the gates, and see who is there!" cried De Coucy. "By the blessed rood! I have visiters early!"

"In the holy Virgin's name! beau sire, open not the gates to-night!" cried the old seneschal. "You do not know what you do. All the neighbouring barons have driven the cotereaux off their own lands on to yours, because it is here a terre libre; and there are at least two thousand in the woods round about. Be ruled. Sir Guy!--be ruled!"

"Ha, say you?" cried De Coucy. "But how is it, good Onfroy, that you can then drive out the swine you speak of, to feed in the forest?"

"Because--because--because, beau sire," replied the old man, hesitating as if he feared the effect of his answer,--"because I agreed with their chief, that if he and his would never show themselves within half a league of the castle, I would pay him a tribute of two fat hogs monthly.

"A tribute!" thundered De Coucy, striking his clenched fist upon the table--"a tribute!" Then suddenly lowering his voice, he added: "Oh, my good Onfroy! what are the means of a De Coucy shrunk to, that his castle, in his absence even, should pay a tribute to thieves and pick-purses! How many able serfs have you within the walls? I know your power was small. How many?"

"But nine good men, and three old ones," replied the seneschal, shaking his head sadly; "and they are but serfs, you know, my lord--I am but weakling, now-a-day; and Calord, though a freeman, has known no service."

"And how many vassals bound to furnish a man?" demanded De Coucy.--"Throw open the gates, I say!" he continued, turning fiercely upon Calord, while the horn sounded again. "I would fain see the coterel who should dare to take two steps in this hall with Guy de Coucy standing by his own hearth. How many vassals, Onfroy?"

"But seven, beau sire," replied the old man, looking from time to time towards the door of the hall, which led out into the court, and which Calord had left open behind him,--"but seven, Sir Guy; and they are only bound to a forty days' riding in the time of war."

"And now tell me, Onfroy," continued De Coucy, standing as calmly with his back towards the door as if he had been surrounded by a host of his friends. "If you have paid this tribute, why are you now afraid of these thieves?"

"Because, Sir Guy," replied the seneschal, "the last month's hogs have not been sent; there being soldiers of the king's down at the town, within sound of the bancloche.--But see, Sir Guy! see! they are pouring into the court! I told you how 'twould be!--See, see!--torches and all! Well, one can die now as well as a week hence!"

De Coucy turned, and at first the number of horsemen that were filing into the court, two at a time, as they mounted the steep and narrow road, almost induced him to bid the gates be shut, that he might deal with them with some equably: but a second glance changed his purpose, for though here and there was to be seen a haubert or a plastron glistening in the torch-light, by far the greater part of the horsemen were in the garb of peace.

"These are no cotereaux, good Onfroy," said he, staying the old seneschal, who was in the act of drawing down from the wall some rusty monument of wars long gone. "These are peaceable guests, and must be as well treated as we may. For the cotereaux, I will take order with them before I be two days older; and they shall find the woods of De Coucy Magny too hot a home for summer weather.--Who is it seeks De Coucy?" he continued, advancing as he saw one of the cavalcade dismounting at the hall door.

"Guillaume de la Roche Guyon," replied the stranger, walking forward into the hall; while De Coucy, with his mind full of all he had just been reading connected with that name, instinctively started back, and laid his hand on his dagger; but, instantly remembering himself, he advanced to meet the cavalier, and welcomed him to the château.

The stranger was a slight young man, without other arms than his sword; but he wore knightly spurs and belt, and in the front of his hat appeared the form of a grasshopper, beautifully modelled in gold. His features had instantly struck De Coucy as being familiar to him, but it was principally this little emblem, joined with a silk scarf hanging from his neck, that fully recalled to his mind the young troubadour he had seen at the château of Vic le Comte.

"I crave your hospitality, beau sire, for myself and train," said the young stranger. "Hardly acquainted with this part of fair France, for my greater feofs lie in sweet Provence, I have lost my way in these forests--But methinks we have met before, noble châtelain;" and as he recognised De Coucy, a slight degree of paleness spread over the youth's face.

De Coucy, however, remarked it not: his was one of those generous natures, from which resentments pass like clouds from the summer sun, and he forgot entirely a slight feeling of jealousy which the young troubadour had excited in his bosom while at Vic le Comte; and, instead of wishing, as he had then done, to have him face to face in deadly arms, he welcomed him to his château with every hospitable greeting.

"'Tis but an hour since I arrived myself, good knight," said he; "and after a ten years' absence my castle is scantily furnished for the reception of such an honourable guest. But see thou servest us the best of all we have, Onfroy, and speedily."

"Haw, haw! haw, haw!" cried Gallon the fool, with his head protruded through one of the doors--"haw, haw! The lion feasted the fox, and the fox got the best of the dinner."

"I will make thee juggle till thy limbs ache," said De Coucy, "and this very night. Sir Gallon! So will I punish thine insolence,--'Tis a juggler slave, beau sire," he continued, turning to Guillaume de la Roche Guyon, who gazed with some astonishment at the juggler's apparition. "I bought him of the Infidels, into whose power he had fallen, several years ago. He must have been once a shrewd-witted knave, and wants not sense now when he chooses to employ it; but for some trick he played his miscreant master, the Saracen tied him by the legs to his horse's tail one day, and dragged him a good league across the sands to sell him at our camp, in time of truce. Poor Gallon himself says his brain was then turned the wrong way, and has never got right again since, so that he breaks his sour jests on every one."

The tables were soon spread, and the provisions, which indeed consisted of little else than pork, or bacon, as it was then called in France, with the addition of two unfortunate fowls, doomed to suffer for their lord's return, were laid out in various trenchers all the way down the middle of the board. De Coucy and his guest took their places, side by side, at the top; and all the free men in the train of either, were ranged along the sides. No fine dressoir, covered with silver and with gold, ornamented the hall of the young knight; all the plate which the crusades had left in his castle, consisting of two large hanaps, or drinking cups, of silver, and a saltcellar in the form of of a ship. Jugs of earthenware, and cups of horn, lay ranged by platters of wood and pewter; and a momentary sting of mortified pride passed through De Coucy's heart, as the poverty of his house stood exposed to the eyes of the young troubadour.

For his part, however, Guillaume de la Roche seemed perfectly contented with his fare and reception; praised the wine, which was indeed excellent, and evinced a traveller's appetite towards the hot steaks of pork, and the freshly slaughtered fowls.

Gradually De Coucy began to feel more at his ease, and, forgetting the poverty of his household display, laughed and jested with his guest. Pledging each other in many a cup, and at last adding thereto many a song, the hours passed rapidly away. Gallon the fool was called; and a stiff cord being stretched across the apartment, he performed feats thereon, that would have broken the heart of any modern rope-dancer, adding flavour and piquancy to the various contortions of his limbs, by the rich and racy ugliness of his countenance.

"That cannot be his real nose?" observed the young Provençal, turning with an inquiring look to De Coucy.

"By all the saints of heaven! it is," replied De Coucy; "at least, I have seen him with no other."

"It cannot be!" said the troubadour, almost in the words of Slawkenbergius, "There never was a nose like that! 'Tis surely a sausage of Bijorre--both shape, and colour, and size. I will never believe it to be a true nose!"

"Ho! Gallon," cried De Coucy. "Bring thy nose here, and convince this fair knight that 'tis thine own lawful property."

Gallon obeyed; and jumping down from his rope, approached the place where the two knights sat, swaying his proboscis up and down in such a manner, as to show that it was almost preternaturally under the command of his volition.

This, however, did not satisfy the young Provençal, who, as he came nearer, was seized with an irresistible desire to meddle with the strange appendix to the jongleur's face; and, giving way to this sort of boyish whim, at the moment when Gallon was nearest, he seized his nose between his finger and thumb, and gave it a tweak fully sufficient to demonstrate its identity with the rest of his flesh.

Gallon's hand flew to his dagger; and it was already gleaming half out of the sheath, when a loud "How now!" from De Coucy stayed him; and affecting to take the matter as a joke, he threw a somerset backwards, and bounded out of the hall.

"I could not have resisted, had he been an emperor!" said the young man, laughing. "Oh, 'tis a wonderful appendage, and gives great dignity to his countenance!"

"The dignity of ugliness," said De Coucy. "But take care that Gallon the fool comes not across you with his dagger. He is as revengeful as an ape."

"Oh, I will give him some gold," said the troubadour. "One touch of such a nose as that is worth all the sheckles of Solomon's temple."

De Coucy laughed, and the evening passed on in uninterrupted glee and harmony; but when the young knight found that his new companion was the grandson of the unfortunate Guy de la Roche Guyon, the account of whose assassination he had just read, his heart seemed to open to him more than ever; and telling him, with a smile at the remembrance of having called for his lance, how much the history had moved him, Guy de Coucy poured forth his free and generous heart in professions of interest and regard. The young stranger seemed to meet him as frankly; but to a close observer perhaps, the very rounding of his phrases would have betrayed more study than was consistent with the same effusion of feeling which might be seen in all De Coucy's actions.

The châtelain, however, did not remark any defect; but after having commanded a sleeping cup to be brought to the young Provençal's bedroom, he led him thither himself. Here indeed his pride was somewhat gratified to find that the old seneschal had preserved the sleeping apartments with the most heedful care from the same decay that had affected the rest of the castle, and that the rich tapestries over the walls, the hangings of the bed, and its coverings of miniver and sable, attested that the family of De Coucy Magny had once at least known days of splendour.

The next morning, by sunrise, the whole party in the castle were stirring; and Guillaume de la Roche Guyon gave orders to prepare his horses. De Coucy pressed his stay, but could not prevail; and after having adduced a thousand motives to induce his guest to prolong his visit, he added one, which to his mind was irresistible. "I find," said he, "that during my absence, fighting for the recovery of Christ's cross and sepulchre, a band of lawless routiers and cotereaux have refuged themselves in my woods. Some two thousand, they are called; but let us strike off one-half for exaggeration. Now, I propose to drive them out with fire and sword, and doubt not to muster fifty good men-at-arms. Your train amounts to nearly the same number, and I shall be very happy to share the honour and pastime with so fair a knight, if you be disposed to join me."

The young man coloured slightly, but declined. "Important business," he said, "which he was afraid must have suffered by the mishap of his having lost his way the evening before, would utterly prevent him from enjoying the great honour of fighting under Sir Guy de Coucy;--but he should be most happy," he added, "to leave all the armed men of his train, if they could be of assistance in expelling the banditti from the territories of the Sire de Coucy. As for himself he no way feared to pursue his journey with merely his unarmed servants."

De Coucy, however, declined--somewhat drily too; his favourable opinion of the young stranger being greatly diminished by his neglecting, on any account, so fair an opportunity of exercising his prowess and gaining renown. He conducted him courteously to his horse, notwithstanding, drank the stirrup cup with him at parting, and, wishing him a fair and prosperous journey, returned into his castle.

Guillaume de la Roche Guyon rode on in silence at the head of his troop, till he had descended to the very bottom of the hill on which the château stood; then, turning to one of his favourite retainers, as they entered the forest--"By the Lord! Philippeau," cried he, "saw ye ever such beggarly fare? I slept not all night, half-choked as I was with hog's flesh. And did you hear how he pressed me to my meat, as if he would fain have choked me outright? The Lord deliver us from such poor châtelains, and send them back to fight in Palestine.

"So say I, beau sire," replied the retainer: "if they will take ship thither, we will pray for a fair wind."

"And the cups of horn, Philippeau," cried his lord, "and the wooden platters--did you mark them? Oh, they were well worthy the viands they contained!"

"So say I, beau sire," replied the living echo. "May they never contain any thing better!--for château and châtelain, dinner and dishes, were all of a piece."

"And think of his dreaming that I would go against the honest cotereaux with him!" cried the youth--"risking my horse and my life, and losing my time: all to rid his land of some scores of men as brave as himself, I dare say, and a great deal richer. 'Twould have been a rare folly, indeed!"

"So say I, beau sire," rejoined the inevitable Philippeau; "that would have been turning his man before he had shown himself your master.--Ha, ha, ha!"

"Haw, haw, haw!" shouted a voice in answer, whose possessor remained for a moment invisible. The next instant, however, the legs of a man appeared dangling from one of the trees, a few yards before them; then down dropped his body at the extent of his arms; and, letting himself fall like a piece of lead, Gallon the fool stood motionless in their way.

"Ha!" cried Guillaume de la Roche, drawing forward what was called his aumonière^[17], a sort of pouch by his side, and taking out a couple of pieces of gold, "Our good jongleur come for his guerdon!--Hold, fellow!" and he cast the money to Gallon the fool, who caught each piece before it fell to the ground.

"Haw, haw! haw, haw!" cried Gallon. "Gramercy, beau sire! gramercy! Now will I tell thee a piece of news," he continued in his abrupt and unconnected manner,--"a piece of news that never should you have heard but for these two pieces of gold. Your lady love is at the castle of the Sire de Montmorency. Speed thither fast, and you shall win her yet.--Haw, haw! Do you understand? Win her old father first. Tell him of your broad lands, and your rich castles; for old Sir Julian loves gold, as if it paved the way to heaven.--Haw, haw, haw! When his love is won, never fear but that his daughter's will come after; and then, all because thou hast broad lands enough of thine own, thou shall have all good Count Julian's to back them,--Haw, haw! haw, haw! Thus it is we give to those that want not; and to those who want, we spit in their face--a goodly gift!--Haw, haw! The world is mad, not I--'tis but the mishap of being single in one's opinion!--Haw, haw, haw!" and darting away into the forest without staying farther question, he was soon lost to their sight.

No sooner, however, had Gallon the fool assured himself that he was out of reach of pursuit, than suddenly stopping, he cast himself on the ground, and rolled over and over two or three times, while he made the wood ring with his laughter. "Now have I murdered him!--now have I slaughtered him!--now have I given his throat to the butcher!" cried he, "as sure as if I held his head under knock-me-down De Coucy's battle-axe!--now will he go and buy the old fool Julian's consent and promise, for gold and rich furniture.--Haw, haw, haw! Then will Isadore refuse; and let the De Coucy know.--Haw, haw! Then will De Coucy come with lance and shield, and provoke my gallant to the fight, which for his knighthood he dare not refuse--then will my great man-slayer, my iron-fisted singer of songs, crush me this tiny, smoothed-faced, quaint apparelled imp of Provence, as I've seen a great eater crunch a lark.--Haw, haw! haw, haw! And all for having tweaked my nose, though none of them know any thing about it! He will insult my countenance no more, I trow, when the velvet black moles are digging through his cold heart with their white hands. Ah, cursed countenance!" he cried as if seized with some sudden emotion of rage, and striking his clenched fist hard upon his hideous face--"Ah, cursed countenance! thou hast brought down upon me mock and mimicry, hatred and contempt! Every thing is loved--every thing is sought--every thing is admired, but I; and I am fled from by all that see me. I am hated, and I hate myself--I am the devil--surely I am the devil!--and if so, I will enjoy my reign.--Beware! beware! ye that mock me; for I will live by gnawing your hearts--I will, I will!--Haw, haw!--that I will!" and suddenly bounding up, he caught one of the large boughs above his head, swung himself backward and forward for a minute in the air; and then springing forward, with a loud screaming laugh, flew back to the castle like an arrow shot from a bow.