by Eugène Sue
“Look at those unhappy creatures!”
“Resignation, misery and sorrow here below, everlasting reward above — otherwise as everlasting and frightful tortures!” cried Cautin. “The Church so decrees; it is the law of God!”
“Blasphemer! Your words are like those of the impostor physicians who pretend that man was born for fevers, the pest and ulcers, and not for health!”
At the sight of the approaching and well-armed troop, the women and children were first afraid and ran to hide in their hovels; but stepping forward, Ronan called out to them:
“Poor women! Poor children! Be not afraid — we are your good friends the Vagres!”
The Vagrery caused the Franks and the bishops to tremble, but it was often blessed by the poor. Women and children, all of whom had at first fled with fear into their hovels, now emerged again, and one of the mothers said to Ronan:
“Do you want to know the road? I shall show it to you.”
“Are you running away from the leudes of the seigneurs?” said another. “None has passed this way; you can march on in safety.”
“Women,” answered Ronan, “your children are naked, you and your husbands toil from dawn to dusk; you are barely covered in rags; you lie down to sleep upon poorer straw than the swine; you live upon decayed beans; often you munch grass like cattle!”
“Alas! It is the truth! Our lives are wretched, indeed!”
“Here we have for you linen, cloth, dresses, covers, mattresses, bags of grain, full pouches, provisions of all sorts. Give, my Vagres! Give, Odille, to these poor people! Give, bishopess of the Vagrery! Give and give again!”
“Take — take, sisters!” said the bishopess with eyes moist with compassionate tears, as she helped the Vagres to distribute the booty taken at her house. “Take, sisters! Yesterday I was a slave as yourselves, to-day I am free! Take, sisters!”
“Take and make merry, dear women; and may your little ones never be torn from you!” said Odille as she also gave a hand in the distribution of the booty. And she wiped her eyes as she exclaimed: “How good Ronan, the Vagre, is to the poor!”
“Blessings upon you!” cried the poor mothers, weeping for joy. “It is better to meet a Vagre than a count or a bishop.”
It was a pleasure to see with what ardor the Vagres, perched upon the carts, distributed what they had taken from the wicked bishop; it was a pleasure to see how the poor mothers’ faces brightened with happiness at the unlooked-for alms. Amazed and enraptured they contemplated the heap of all manner of articles that they had never yet made acquaintance with. The children, more impatient than their elders, merrily hitched themselves by twos, threes and fours to a mattress in order to transport it into one of the huts, or they put their thin arms around a bundle of linen and sought to lift it in. Suddenly, however, a wrathful and threatening voice, a veritable mar-plot, froze the marrow of the poor folks with terror.
“Woe unto you! Damnation upon your families! if you dare to touch with sacrilegious hands the goods of the Church! Tremble! Tremble! It is a mortal sin! You, your husbands, your children, you will all be thrown into the flames of hell for all time!”
It was Bishop Cautin. Despite the remonstrances of the hermit-laborer, he dashed in among the startled slaves, and fulminated his anathemas.
“Oh! We shall touch nothing of all that is offered us, holy bishop!” answered the mothers with a shudder. “We shall not touch any of the goods of the Church.”
“My Vagres!” cried Ronan, “Hang the bishop on the nearest tree! We shall not lack for a cook.”
Already they were seizing the holy man, who now grew paler and trembled in greater terror than the most awe-struck of the mothers who had just been running over with joy, when the monk again interposed to save Cautin from the noose.
“The hermit!” cried the mothers and their children. “The hermit-laborer!”
“Blessed be you, the friend of the sorrowful!—”
“Blessed be you, the friend of little children!—”
And the hands of all the little ones took hold of the robe of the hermit, who said in his sweet and clear voice:
“Dear women, dear little ones; take what is given you; take without fear; Jesus said: ‘Woe unto the rich who share not their bread with those who hunger, and their cloak with those who are cold.’ Your bishop gives you all these good things. Take all that is offered to you!”
“Blessings upon you, holy bishop!” exclaimed the mothers, raising their arms in thankfulness to Cautin. “Blessed be you, good father, for your generous gifts!”
“I give nothing!” cried Cautin. “You shall burn eternally in hell, if you listen to that apostate hermit!”
The larger number of the women looked undecided from Ronan to the bishop and the hermit. They put their hands forward and withdrew them again from the articles that were offered them. But two of the oldest of them resolutely drew away from the goods of the Church, and throwing themselves down upon their knees murmured affrighted:
“Holy Bishop Cautin! Pardon us for having even for a moment harbored the thought of committing so great a crime. Mercy! Mercy!”
“Fear not, my sisters!” resumed the hermit. “Your bishop gives you all these good things. He knows that the Lord has equal love for all his children, and does not wish that some should be naked and freeze, while others perspire under the useless weight of twenty gowns; that some should suffer hunger, while others are filled to repletion. Fear not that your bishop will either hunger or suffer cold; he has new and warm clothing on; he knows not what to do with so many robes; he can not drink all those pouches of wine; he can not eat up all these provisions! Take, take — the goods of a bishop are the property of the poor.”
Most of the unhappy mothers, convinced by the words of the hermit, and also driven by the lash of their needs, began busily to transport the proffered goods of the Church into their huts, aided by their children. Only three elderly ones dared not to join; they remained on their knees and smote their breasts.
“Dear daughters in Christ! Persevere in your holy horror for sacrilege!” the bishop cried to the three kneeling women. “You will enter paradise and will hear the seraphim play on the harp before the Lord, while they sing His praises!”
“My Vagres!” again Ronan called out. “A rope! Let the hypocritical babbler be strung up high and dry! It is evident that he has made up his mind to hang!”
With a gesture the hermit arrested the anger of the Vagres and said:
“Bishop, do you recognize the words of Jesus of Nazareth as divine? ‘Him that taketh away thy cloak forbid not to take away thy coat also.’ What thought did Jesus mean to convey by these words, but that only too often theft has want for its cause, and that charity should be exercised and pity had for such want. Relinquish voluntarily these superfluous goods, you who have taken the vow of poverty, charity and chastity!”
“Keep still, tempting hermit, who dare contradict our bishop! We may not lay our fingers on the goods of the Church!” cried one of the three kneeling women. “We would be damned for all time!”
“Yes, yes,” shouted the other two. “Keep still, hermit!”
“Poor creatures! Steeped in ignorance and blindness!” exclaimed Ronan. “Do you care for the life of your bishop?”
“We would undergo a thousand deaths for his sake!”
“Oh! Pious women!” cried Cautin ecstatically. “What a superb part of paradise will not be yours! And now, until the day of eternal life come, I give you absolution for all your past sins, and all the future ones that you may commit.”
“Oh, beloved bishop!” cried the kneeling mothers smiting their chests. “A saint among saints! Thanks — thanks to you!”
“Listen to me, ye poor sheep who mistake the butcher for the shepherd,” said Ronan to them. “If you do not forthwith profit by our offer, we shall hang the bishop before your very eyes.”
“Here is a rope,” said Wolf’s-Tooth, and he put the noose around Cautin’s neck.
“Dear daughters, take everything!” cried the prelate acting under a new inspiration. “Your father in Christ requests you, adjures you, orders you to accept the booty — accept it quick!” he added as he felt the noose tighten.
One of the three kneeling women rose and obeyed with alacrity; the other two remained on their knees and said:
“You are only trying us, holy bishop!”
“But these heathens are going to hang me—”
“A holy man like you does not fear martyrdom.”
“No, my daughters, I do not fear martyrdom — but I think I am indispensable for the salvation of my flock. I pray you, carry that booty away! If you do not, I shall damn you! I shall excommunicate you! Confounded old hags! Miserable wretches, you will have to answer for my death on the day of judgment!”
“Holy bishop, you seek to try us to the last. You just said to us that to touch the goods of the Church is mortal sin. Would you order us to commit a mortal sin?”
“No! No!” screamed the other of the two mothers who had remained on their knees; she smote her breast and added: “Holy man, you could never think of ordering us to commit mortal sin! You are to receive martyrdom!—”
“And from the heavens above you will throw your blessings upon us, great and good St. Cautin!”
“Bishop, do you hear these poor old women? You sowed, now you are harvesting. Come, my Vagres, draw the rope!”
Once more the hermit interposed in order to protect the prelate. At that moment the Vagres who were on the carts were heard crying:
“The leudes! The Frankish warriors!”
“There are seven of them! They are on horseback! They are leading a gang of chained men! Up, my Vagres! Death to the leudes! Freedom to the slaves!”
“Death to the leudes! Freedom to the slaves!” shouted the Vagres and ran to their arms.
“The Franks have come to capture me and take me back to the burg of the count!” cried little Odille. “Oh, Ronan, protect me!”
“There will not be one of them left alive to carry you back!”
“Ronan, no imprudence!” said the hermit. “These horsemen may be only a scouting party riding ahead of a numerous troop. Send out scouters against scouters; keep the bulk of your men in reserve and have them entrench themselves behind the wagons.”
“Monk, you are right. You talk like an experienced soldier. You must have made war?”
“A little — occasionally — whenever it was necessary to protect the weak against the strong.”
“Frankish warriors!” cried Cautin clasping his hands with a triumphant air. “Friends! Allies! I am saved! Help, dear brothers in Christ! This way, my beloved sons in God! Fall upon this rabble. Deliver me from the hands of the Philistines! This way, my—”
Giving a jerk to the rope around the neck of the holy man, Ronan suddenly checked his flow of speech by drawing the noose tight.
“Bishop, no useless cries!” said the hermit; “and you, Ronan, no violence; drop that rope!”
“Very well; but I shall bind his arms; and if he again breaks in upon my ears I shall run my sword through him—”
“The Frankish riders have reined in their horses the moment they caught sight of the wagons,” cried one of the Vagres; “they seem to be deliberating what to do.”
“Our deliberation will not be long. There are seven of the mounted Franks; let six Vagres follow me, and by the faith of Ronan, it will not be long before there will be seven conquerors less in Gaul!”
“Here are the six of us — let us forward!”
The Master of the Hounds was among the six Vagres. Seeing him examine the handle of his axe, the bishopess leaped down from her wagon, and, her eyes sparkling, her nostrils inflated and her cheeks on fire, she rolled up the right sleeve of her silk robe, and thus baring her white, beautiful and strong arm up to the shoulder, she cried:
“Give me a sword! A sword!”
“Here is one! What will you do with it, beautiful bishopess in Vagrery?”
“I shall fight beside my Vagre!” Saying this the bishopess seized the proffered weapon like a Gallic woman of ancient days, and dashed forward upon the foe.
“Little Odille, you wait here for me. When the Franks are slain I shall return to you,” said Ronan to the young girl, who, pale with fear, sought to hold him back with both hands and rested upon him her beautiful blue eyes now moist with tears. “Do not tremble, poor child!”
“Ronan,” she murmured convulsively seizing the arm of the Vagre, “I have neither father nor mother left; you delivered me from the count and the bishop; you have a good heart; you are full of pity for the poor; you have treated me with the tenderness of a brother; it was only last night that I saw you for the first time, and yet it seems to me that I have known you long, long—”
And the girl took both the Vagre’s hands, kissed them, and added with tremulous lips:
“If those Franks should kill you!—”
“If they should kill me, little Odille?”
Saying this the Vagre turned his head towards the hermit, and pointing to him with his eyes added:
“Should the Franks kill me, yonder good hermit-laborer will protect you.”
“I promise you, my child, should misfortune befall your friend, I shall protect you.”
“Little Odille,” Ronan now said with almost embarrassed mien, “one kiss on your forehead — it will be first, and may be the last.”
The child was weeping silently; she reached her girlish forehead to Ronan; he touched it with his lips, and raising his sword dashed off on a run. Hardly had Ronan left when the cry of the Vagres was heard attacking the leudes. At the cries, Odille threw herself distracted into the arms of the hermit, hid her face on his breast and sobbed aloud:
“They will kill him! They will kill him!”
“Courage, Franks! Courage, my sons in God!” shouted Cautin from the cart-wheel to which he was bound fast. “Exterminate those Moabites! Above all cut to pieces that she-devil wife of mine, that brazen woman with the orange dress with the blue sash and silver embroidered stockings. No mercy for the Jezebel! the shameless wench! the slattern! Hack her to pieces!—”
“Bishop! Bishop! Your words are inhuman. Remember the mercifulness of Jesus towards Magdalen and the adulteress!” exclaimed the hermit, while Odille, with her head resting on the breast of that true disciple of the young man of Nazareth murmured:
“They will kill Ronan! They will kill him!”
“Here I am back to you, little Odille! The Franks did not kill me. The people whom they brought in chains are all set free!”
Who said this? It was Ronan. What? Back so soon? Yes! The Vagres do their work quickly. With one bound Odille was in the arms of her friend.
“I killed one of them — he was just about to run my Vagre through with his sword!” cried the bishopess returning from the encounter. And throwing down her blood-stained sword, her eyes sparkling, her bosom half covered by her long black tresses that, together with her robe, were thrown into disorder by the heat of the combat, she said to the Master of the Hounds: “Are you satisfied with your wife?”
“Strong in the embrace of love, and strong in battle are your arms!” answered the young man delighted. “And now, a full cup of wine!”
“To drink in my very face wine that was mine! To court and caress before my own eyes that impure woman who was my wife!” murmured the bishop. “Oh, monstrous! These are the signs that foretell frightful calamities about to afflict the earth.”
Three of the Vagres were wounded. The hermit attended them with so much skill that he might have been taken for a physician. He was about to proceed to another of the wounded men when his eyes fell upon the people whom the leudes had brought with them and who were now set free by the men of Ronan. These unhappy folks who only a few minutes before were prisoners, were covered with rags; nevertheless the joy of deliverance shone upon their faces. Invited by their liberators to eat and drink in order to recruit their strength, they were eagerly acquit
ting themselves of their task. While they drained the pouches of wine and caused the loaves of bread and the hams to vanish, the monk said to one of them, a robust man despite his grey hair:
“Brother, who are you? Whence do you come?”
“We are colonists and slaves. We formerly owned and cultivated the parcels of land that the son of Clovis newly joined as benefices to the salic and military domains that the Frankish count Neroweg previously held from his father by the right of conquest.”
“Did the count, accordingly, strip you of your fields and houses?”
“Would to heaven, dear hermit, that he had done so!”
“Your answer is strange!”
“The count, on the contrary, left the fields to us, and he even added two hundred acres to them, the accursed man! The two hundred acres belonged to my friend and neighbor Fereol, who fled out of fear for the Franks.”
“Your property is doubled, friend, and yet you complain!”
“Indeed I complain! Is it that you do not know what is going on in Gaul? This is what the count said to me: ‘My glorious King has made me count of this country, and, besides, he has given me as a benefice, which I hope will become hereditary as my military lands, all these domains, including the cattle, houses and people upon them. You will cultivate for me the fields that belong to you; I shall join several new parcels to them; you will be my colonist and your laborers my slaves; all of you will work for me and my leudes; you will furnish them as well as myself with all that we shall need. You shall help my mason and carpenter slaves in the building of a new burg that I shall have erected after the Germanic fashion. It is to be large, commodious and properly fortified, and it is to be located in the center of an old Roman camp that I discovered nearby. Your horses and cattle having become mine will haul the stones and logs of wood that are too heavy for men to carry. Besides that you shall pay me a hundred gold sous annually, ten of which I shall give to the King when I annually render him homage for the lands that I hold.’ ‘A hundred gold sous!’ I cried. ‘My lands, jointly with those of my neighbor Fereol, will not yield such a sum year in and year out! How do you expect me to pay you a hundred gold sous, besides feeding you, your leudes and your retinues, and keeping myself, my family and my laborers, now your slaves, alive?’ Threatening me with his club, the count answered me saying: ‘I shall have my hundred gold sous every year — if you fail, I shall have my leudes cut off your feet and hands—’”
