The Poniard's Hilt; Or, Karadeucq and Ronan. A Tale of Bagauders and Vagres

by Eugène Sue

  CHAPTER II.

  BISHOP AND COUNT.

  In the summer season Bishop Cautin inhabited a villa situated not farfrom the city of Clermont, the seat of his episcopacy. Magnificentgardens, crystalline springs, thick arbors, green lawns, excellentmeadows, gold harvests, purpled vines, forests well stocked with game,ponds well supplied with fish, excellently equipped stables--such werethe surroundings of the holy man's palace. Two hundred ecclesiasticalslaves, male and female, cultivated the church's "vineyard," withoutcounting the domestic personnel--the cup-bearer, the cook and hisassistants, the butcher, the baker, the superintendent of the bath, theshoemaker, the tailor, the turner, the carpenter, the mason, the masterof the hounds, besides the washerwomen and the weavers, most of thelatter young, often handsome female slaves. Every evening one of thesegirls took to Bishop Cautin, who lay softly tucked on a feather bed, acup of warm and highly spiced wine. Early in the morning another girltook in a cup of creamy milk for the first breakfast of the pious man.And thus lived that good apostle of humility, chastity and poverty!

  And who is that portly, handsome and still young woman, who resemblesDiana the huntress? With her bare neck and arms, clad in a simple linentunic and her long black hair half undone, she leans on her elbows overthe balcony that crowns the terrace of the villa. At once burning andlanguishing, the eyes of this woman now rise towards the starry sky, nowseem to peer through this mild summer's night, under shelter of which,with the stealthy step of wolves, the Vagres are wending their waytowards the bishop's residence. The woman is Fulvia, Cautin's bishopess,whom he married when, still a simple friar, he did not yet aspire to abishopric. After he was promoted to the higher office that he now fillsin the hierarchy, he piously calls her "my sister," agreeable to thecanons of the councils.

  "Woe is me!" the bishopess was saying. "Woe to these summer nightsduring which one is left alone to inhale the perfume of the flowers, tolisten to the murmur of the nocturnal breezes in the foliage of thetrees, murmurs that so much resemble the stolen kisses of lovers! Oh! Ialways fear the unnerving heat of these summer nights! It penetratesthrough my whole frame! I am twenty-eight years of age. I am now twelveyears, married, and I have counted these conjugal years with my tears! Arecluse in the city, a recluse in the country by the orders of my lordand master, my husband, Bishop Cautin, who spends his time in thewomen's part of the house among my female slaves, whom the profligatedebauches while pleading the canons of the councils that, he says, orderhim to live chastely with his wife--such is my life--my sad life! Myyouth is ebbing away without my enjoying a single day of love or offreedom. Love! Freedom! Shall I grow old without knowing you? Woe isme!"

  And the handsome bishopess rose, shook her black hair to the nightbreeze, puckered her black eyebrows and cried defiantly:

  "Woe to violent and debauched husbands! They hurl women into perdition!Loved, respected, treated, if not as wife, at least truly as his sisterby the bishop, I would have remained chaste and gentle. But disdainedand humiliated before the lowest of the domestic slaves, I have grown tobe wrathful and vindictive. From the height of this terrace, and oftenmy cheeks mantling with shame, I follow with distracted gaze the youngslaves of the field when they go out to work in the morning and returnin the evening. I have struck my husband's concubines with myhands--and yet, poor wretches that they are, they do not yield to thelover who begs, but to the master who orders. I struck them in anger,not in jealousy. Before that man became odious to me, I was indifferentto him. Nevertheless, I might have loved him, had he wished it--and ashe willed. 'Sister-wife' of a bishop--it looked attractive! How muchgood could not be done! How many tears could not be dried! But I havehad only my own to dry, soon finding myself degraded and despised. Themeasure overflows; I have wept enough; I have moaned enough; I havesufficiently resisted the temptations that devour me! I shall flee fromthis house, even at the risk of being captured and sold as a slave! Canit be called to live, this dragging of my days in this opulent villa, agilded grave? No! No! I wish to leave this sepulchre! I wish to breathethe free air! I wish to see the sun! I wish to move free in space! Icrave a single day of love and freedom! Oh! If I could only see againthe young lad, who more than once went by this terrace early in themorning! What warm and loving glances he shot at me! What a beautifuland fearless face looked from under his red headcover! What a robust andgraceful build did not his Gallic blouse reveal with the belt of hishunting knife! He must be some forester slave of the neighborhood! Aslave! What does it matter! He is young, handsome, nimble and amorous!My husband's concubines also are slaves! Oh! Shall I never enjoy a dayof love, of freedom?"

  In the meantime, what is the bishop doing while his bishopess, lost inrevery on the balcony over the terrace, contemplates the stars, sighsinto the darkness, and breathes her sorrows and her devilish hopes uponthe midnight breezes? The holy man is drinking and conferring with CountNeroweg, who happens on this night to be his guest. The banquet hall inwhich they are seated is built after the Roman fashion. It is a spaciousroom, ornamented with marble pillars, and decked with gilded work andfresco paintings. Gold and silver vases are ranged on ivory sideboards.The floor is slabbed with rich mosaics that are pleasing to the eye. Butstill more pleasing to the eye is the large table loaded with drinkingcups and half-emptied amphoras. The leudes, Neroweg's companions in armsand his equals in time of peace, have gone to play at dice with thebishop's clerks and familiars in the vestibule, after having partaken ofsupper at the same table with the count, as is the custom. Here andthere along the walls the rough weapons of the leudes are stackedup--wooden bucklers, iron-rimmed staves, 'francisques' or double-edgedaxes, 'haugons' or demi-pikes furnished with iron grappling hooks. Thecount's buckler is illumined with a painting that represents threeeagle's talons. Left alone at table with his guest, the prelate inducesNeroweg to drain cup after cup. At the lower end of the table sits ahermit laborer. He drinks not, neither does he speak. At times he seemsto listen to the conversation of the two topers. Oftener, however, he issteeped in thought.

  The Frank, Count Neroweg, has the appearance and emits the odor of awild-boar in spring; his face resembles a bird of prey, with his beakednose and restless little eyes that alternately assume a savage and thena sleepy look; his coarse yellow hair, tied over his head with a leatherthong, falls back over his neck like a mane; the coiffure of thesebarbarians remained unchanged during the last two centuries. Neroweg'schin and cheeks are closely shaven, but his long reddish moustachedroops down to his chest, which is covered by a doe-skin jacket, shineswith grease, and is dotted with wine spots. Long leathern strapscriss-cross over his lower hose from his coarse iron-spiked shoes up tohis knees. He has removed his heavy sword from his broad and looselyhanging baldric and laid it upon a seat nearby, beside a stout hollyclub. Such is the convivial guest of the prelate, such is Count Neroweg,one of these new masters of the old lands of Gaul.

  Bishop Cautin resembles a large, fat, ruttish fox--lascivious and slyeyes, red ears, a mobile and pointed nose, hirsute hands. He prinks inhis violet robe of fine woven silk. And what a paunch! One would saythere was a barrel under the gown.

  As to the hermit-laborer--all respect for that priest, a worthy discipleof the young man of Nazareth! He is thirty years of age at the most. Hisface is pale, and it is at once mild and firm; his beard is blonde, hishead is prematurely bald; his long brown robe, made of some coarsematerial, is here and there frayed by the brambles on the lands that histoil has cleared. The man's bearing is rustic, his hands are strong, theplow and the hoe-handle have made them horny.

  The bishop again fills another large cup to the Frank, saying:

  "Count--I repeat it--the twenty gold sous, the meadow lands and thelittle blonde female slave--either I must have them, or you get noabsolution!"

  "Bishop! I shall fall upon your house with all my leudes and sack it; Ishall roast you over a slow fire--and you will give me absolution--"

  "Impious man! Sacrilegious blasphemer! Pharaoh! Hog of profligacy!Reservoir of wine! How dare yo
u hold such language to your bishop! Andyou a son of our apostolic Church!"

  "You shall give me absolution, will ye, nill ye!"

  "Oh! The beast! Is it that you are itching to fall into the very bottomof hell? Is it that you are itching to remain for centuries insuccession broiling in pails full of burning pitch! You seem to beitching after a thorough trouncing with the forks of the devils! Devilswith toads' heads, rams' horns, serpents for their tails, elephants'trunks for arms, and cloven hoofs--aye archcloven!"

  "Did you see them?" queried the Frank with a savage and yet frightenedmien. "Did you, bishop? Did you see those demons?"

  "Whether I saw them! They brought before me in a cloud of bitumen andsulphur Duke Rauking, who, the sacrilegious wretch! struck Bishop Basilewith his cane!"

  "And did the devils carry off Duke Rauking?"

  "They threw him into the bottomless pit! I counted them; there werethirteen of them; a large red devil, that was Lucifer, led them. Such afate is in store for you, if I refuse you absolution."

  "Bishop, you may be saying all that only to frighten me out of my twentygold sous, the fine meadow lands, and the pretty blonde slave!"

  The prelate rang a bell; one of his confidential servants stepped in;the holy man said to him a few words in Latin while with his eyes heindicated a spot on the mosaic floor. The servant went out again. Thehermit-laborer thereupon addressed the bishop, also in Latin:

  "What you propose to do is an unworthy trick! It is a sacrilegiousfraud!"

  "Hermit, is not everything allowed to the clergy of our holy Church inorder to terrify these brutes of Franks into subjection?"

  "Fraud never is allowed--"

  Cautin shrugged his shoulders, and addressing the count in the Frankishtongue--the prelate spoke the language like any of the barbarians--hesaid:

  "Are you a Christian and a Catholic? Did you receive holy baptism?"

  "Bishop Macaire, twenty years ago, ordered me to step naked into thestone tank of his basilica; he then threw a handful of water upon myhead and mumbled some Latin words."

  "You are a Catholic--a son of our holy Church--by reason of which youmust respect and obey me as your father in Christ!"

  "Bishop, you are trying to confuse me by such language, but I will notbe duped by you. Our great King Clovis conquered and subjugated Gaul atthe head of his brave leudes. My father Gonthram Neroweg was one of hiswarriors, and--"

  "You lie, count! It is to the bishops that your King owed his conquest;it was they who ordered the people to submit to Clovis; without them,your great King would have remained only a chief of brigands. Neverforget that, barbarian! You may now proceed with what you had to say,and speak respectfully."

  "When Theodorik lived, the son of Clovis who had Auvergne as one of hiskingdoms, he allotted to me vast domains in this region--lands, people,cattle and houses, and he sent me here as his representative. He made mewhat is called 'graf' of this country, and what we Franks call 'count';and he authorized me to preside together with the chief bishop of thecity and the magistrates of the city of Clermont."

  "What are you driving at with that long digression?"

  "I wish to prove, first of all, that King Clovis committed many morecrimes than I did, and that his crimes did not prevent him from enteringparadise, as the bishops themselves declare."

  "True enough, brute that you are! But you seem to forget what thatparadise cost him. St. Remi, who baptized him, was so richly endowed byhim that the holy prelate was able to buy an estate in Champagne thatcost him five thousand pounds of silver by weight."

  "I then meant to say that if you are bishop, I am count of the conqueredcountry, and I can force you to give me absolution!"

  "Ah! You blaspheme!" and the bishop struck under the table with hisfoot. "Ah! You dare to defy the anger of the Lord! You--soiled withexecrable crimes!"

  "Well! Yes! Is it perchance an unpardonable crime to kill a brother? Iconfess that I murdered my brother Ursio! Give me absolution!"

  "You seem to forget the murder of your concubine Isanie, and of yourfourth wife Wisigarde, whom you married when two previous ones werestill alive, and you then took a fifth wife, Godegisele--"

  "And did you not give me absolution for all those sins? By the faith ofthe Terrible Eagle, my glorious ancestor! It cost me five hundred acresof the best stretches of my forest, thirty-eight gold sous, twentyslaves, together with the superb cloak of Northern marten skin in whichyou strutted about last winter, and which King Clovis presented to myfather!"

  "You have been absolved of those first crimes--as to them you are aswhite as the pascal lamb, but for the fresh crime of your brother'smurder."

  "I did not kill Ursio out of hatred, I only killed him for his part ofour inheritance."

  "And what else should you have killed your brother for, beast? To eathim up?"

  "Did not the great Clovis also kill all his relatives for theirheritage, and yet you declare that he entered paradise. I also wish togo there, and I have killed fewer people. If you do not promise paradiseto me on the spot and without any further payments, if you refuse togive me absolution, I shall have you torn into pieces by four horses, orhacked to pieces by my leudes."

  "And I tell you that if you do not expiate your fratricide by a gift tothe Church, you shall go to hell, like a new Cain who killed hisbrother."

  "What you are after is my hundred acres of meadow land, my twenty goldsous, and my pretty little blonde slave."

  "What I am after is the salvation of your soul, unhappy man! What I aimat is to save you the torments of hell, the very thought of which shouldmake you shudder with terror."

  "You are always talking of hell. Where is hell?"

  Bishop Cautin again struck the floor with his feet under the table.

  "Count, do you smell that odor of sulphur?"

  "I do feel a pungent odor."

  "Do you see the smoke that is coming up from between those stone slabs?"

  "Whence does that smoke proceed?" cried Neroweg affrighted, rising fromthe table and jumping back from a near place where a thick black vaporwas curling upward. "Bishop, what magic is this? Come to my help!"

  "Oh, Lord God! You have heard the voice of your unworthy servant!" saidCautin clasping his hands and falling upon his knees. "You wish tomanifest yourself to this barbarian!" And turning his head towardNeroweg: "You asked where hell was? Look at your feet--see theabyss--see that sea of flames, all ready to engulf you!"

  As the bishop spoke, one of the mosaic slabs sank below the floor, drawndown by an artful contrivance of ropes and weights; a large gap was thusleft open, and out of it a whirl of flames leaped up, spreading asuffocating odor of sulphur.

  "The earth is opening!" cried the terrorized Frank. "Fire! Fire! My feetburn! Help! Help!"

  "It is the everlasting fire," said the bishop rising and striking athreatening attitude, while the count, dropping on both his knees, hidhis face in his hands. "Ah! You asked me where hell was, impious,blaspheming brute!"

  "Father! Good father--have pity upon me!"

  "Do you hear those underground cries? It is the devils; they are comingfor you. Listen! Do you hear them cry: 'Neroweg! Neroweg! Thefratricide! Come to us! Cain, you are ours!'"

  "Oh! Those cries are frightful. Good father in Christ, pray to the Lordthat he forgive me!"

  "Ah! Now you are on your knees, pale and distracted, with hands clasped,your eyes closed with terror! Will you still ask where is hell?"

  "No! No! Holy bishop! Holy Bishop Cautin! Absolve me of the death of mybrother; you shall have the meadow lands, the twenty gold pieces--"

  "And the pretty blonde slave?"

  "Oh! You want my pretty blonde slave also?"

  "I have a donation deed ready made out. You shall order one of yourleudes to come in and sign the parchment as your witness--yonder hermitshall be my witness, and you will sign the document in their presence.The donation will then be in order and binding."

  "I consent to everything--have pity upon me. Order the devils back
.Order them back! Oh! good father, order them away! Keep them fromdragging me to hell!"

  "They will certainly drag you thither if you fail in your promise."

  "I shall keep all my promises."

  "Seeing that you are no longer in doubt of the power of the Lord," thebishop proceeded to say while he again stamped on the floor with hisfoot, "you may rise, count, open your eyes, the abyss of hell is closedagain"; the slab had in the meantime been raised and adjusted in itsformer place. "Hermit, bring the parchment to me and writing materials.You shall be my witness."

  "I decline, seigneur bishop, to aid in the accomplishment of such asacrilegious knavery," the hermit-laborer answered in Latin, "but if Ireveal your trick to that barbarian he will put you to death! I shallnot be the means of your death. God will one day judge you! In themeantime I shall raise my voice against your unworthy comedies."

  "What! Would you be capable of abusing your influence over the masses inorder to incite them to a rebellion in my diocese? Is it a declarationof war that you make to me? Do you not know that the officers of theChurch must stand by one another? Or is it some favor that you mean todraw from me through intimidation? Answer!"

  "To-morrow, before proceeding upon my journey, I shall tell you what Idemand of you--"

  Cautin, who stood in awe of the hermit, rang a bell while the count, whoremained upon his knees, still trembled at every limb, and mopped thecold sweat that inundated his forehead. At the bishop's call, theconfidential servant appeared. The holy man said to him in Latin:

  "The hell was very satisfactory. Have the fires put out!"

  And he added in the Frankish tongue:

  "Order one of the count's leudes, one who can write, to step in. Youshall come back with him; I shall need your services."

  The servant left, and the bishop addressed the kneeling Frank:

  "You have believed, you repent--you may now rise!"

  "My good father, I am afraid of returning to my burg to-night. Thedevils might come for me on the road and take me to hell. I amterror-stricken. Keep me in your house to-night!"

  "You shall be my guest until to-morrow. But I want the pretty blondeslave to be delivered to me this very evening. I promised her to mybishopess, who was once my wife according to the flesh, and is to-day mysister in God. She needs a young girl for her service--and I promisedher that one. The sooner she has her, all the better pleased will shebe."

  "And so, bishop," said the count scratching himself behind his ear, "youmust have that blonde slave?"

  "Will you dare to break your engagement?"

  "Oh, no! No, father! One of my leudes shall take horse, ride to my burg,and bring the slave to you on the crupper."

  The deed of the donation was signed and duly witnessed by the bishop'sservant and one of the count's leudes. It provided that Neroweg, countof the King of Auvergne and the city of Clermont, donated to the Church,represented by Cautin, and in remission of his sins, a hundred acres ofmeadow land, twenty gold sous, and a spinner female slave, fifteen yearsold, named Odille. After the ceremony of signing was concluded thebishop gave the Frankish count absolution for the murder of his brotherand offered him three full cups of wine to comfort him.

  "Sigefrid," said the count to his leude, smothering a last sigh ofregret, "be a good friend to me; ride to my burg; take Odille thespinner girl on the crupper of your horse and bring her here."