The Poniard's Hilt Part 17

What delightful feasts are those held in Vagrery! Does, stags, wild-boars, killed by the Vagres the day before in the thickets of the forest that shade the fastness of Allange--all, together with the oxen from the wagons, have been dispatched and grilled over a roaring oven.

What! An oven in a forest? An oven large enough to embrace oxen, does, stags and wild-boars? Yes; the good G.o.d has dug for the good Vagres a number of large pits in the secluded fastnesses of Allange. They are s.p.a.cious craters, now extinct like other volcanic apertures in Auvergne.

Is not one of these deep semi-circular grottoes, in which a man can stand upright, a veritable bake-house? Fill up the grotto with dry wood; one or two dead oaks will suffice; set the pyre on fire; it burns up high and becomes a brasier: the bottom, the walls, the lava vault--all are soon red hot, and into the chasm, ablaze like the mouth of h.e.l.l, stags, does, whole wild-boars and oxen are rolled in to broil. That done, the opening of the grotto is closed with lava rocks, a huge oven of glowing embers. Four or five hours later, oxen and game, grilled to the point, are served steaming and toothsome upon the table. What!

Tables also in Vagrery! Certes, and covered with the finest of green carpet. What table? What carpet? The lawn of a forest clearing. And for seats? Again that lawn. For tent the lofty oaks; for ornaments the arms suspended from the branches. For dome the starry sky. For chandelier the moon at her fullest. For perfumery the night odor of wild flowers. For musicians the nightingales and all the other songsters of the woods.

Several Vagres, placed on watch at the outskirt of the forest and near the approaches of the fastnesses of Allange, guarded the troop against a surprise in case that, the sack and burning of the villa becoming known, the Frankish counts and dukes of the region should fear an attack upon their own burgs, and start with their leudes in the pursuit of the Vagres.

Despite his ire, Bishop Cautin excelled himself as a cook. Long before had a certain sauce known to be a favorite with the bishop been the subject of talk in Vagrery. The holy man was ordered to produce it. He did. He filled with it a large caldron into which each one dipped his roast, whether of game or beef--it was a toothsome sauce, made of old wine and oil, aromated with wild thyme. It was p.r.o.nounced delectable.

Biting into her Vagre's roast with her white teeth the bishopess remarked:

"I now no longer wonder that he who was my husband always showed himself so implacable towards his kitchen slaves, and that he had them whipped for their slightest negligence--the seigneur bishop was a better cook than any of them. No wonder he was hard to please!"

Only two of the guests did not join in the spirit of the feast--the hermit-laborer and the young female slave who sat near Ronan. As to Ronan, he did ample justice to the repast; but the monk seemed to be absorbed in contemplation as he looked up at the starry vault overhead, and little Odille also dreamed--as she contemplated Ronan. The gold and silver vases, whatever their previous destination, circulated from hand to hand; the wine pouches collapsed in even measure as the stomachs of the drinkers became inflated; merry jokes, loud outbursts of laughter, kisses stolen and given from and by Vagres and Vagresses;--it was a mirthful and giddy festivity. Ever and anon, nevertheless, and generally on the subject of some pretty face, a dispute would break out between two Vagres, just as used to happen during the ancient banquets of the Gauls. Then swords would be taken down from the trees and crossed by the combatants, but never in hatred, ever in the exuberance of spirit:

"That thrust is for you--mine shall the pretty girl be!"

"And this other thrust is for you--the damsel shall be mine!"

"Hit! That is for her roguish eyes!"

"Parried! Mine remains the daisy!"

"I'm wounded! Help, my belle!"

"I die! Good-bye to my love!"

The wounded Vagre was attended to; the dead one was covered with leaves.

Honor to the brave who will be born anew in yonder worlds, and long live the feasts of the Vagrery! And the exchange of repartees continued--some were mirthful, others strange, and not a few sad. The repartees reflected the state of affairs in Gaul, her people, and the miseries of the nation as she lay debased and demoralized at the feet of the conquerors; the repartees produced a picture better than chroniclers or historians could ever reproduce it, even if ever this country of iron should find its historian.

"Ah! What happy days these are!" exclaimed Wolf's-Tooth as he gnawed on the ivory of his second shoulder of doe. "Ah! what jolly days do we owe to these times of disorder, of pillage, of combats on the highways, of sieges of burgs and episcopal villas and of their smoldering embers that we leave behind! Ah! What rollicking times do not these Frankish Kings furnish us with!"

"Ronan said it--old Gaul is on fire--let us dance and drink upon the ruins--let us make love on the ashes of the palaces and upon the extinguished coals of the episcopal villas that we turned into bonfires!"

"Oh, great bishop! Oh, great St. Remi! Blessings upon you, who, at the basilica of Reims, in the midst of incense and flowers, now over fifty years ago baptized Clovis as a submissive son of the Roman Church!

Blessings upon you, St. Remi, the patron of highwaymen and bandits!"

"Where is she? Aye, where is she, the proud and powerful Gaul of the days of the Chief of the Hundred Valleys, of the Sacrovirs, the Vindexes, the Civiles, the Victorias?"

"Who is the present inheritor of Gaul's one-time valor? The Vagres, the 'Wolves-Heads,' the 'Wolves!' It is they alone who still carry on the struggle against the barbarians!"

"And yet we are hunted like wild beasts, put to the rack and hanged if taken!"

"But our nails are sharp and our teeth trenchant to tear to pieces and devour our enemies!"

"And yet they call us robbers!"

"And murderers!"

"And sacrilegious wretches!"

"Brothers, we but follow the example of our glorious new masters--the Frankish kings, dukes and counts; they kill, we ma.s.sacre; they pillage, we steal; they lay waste, we burn down. Death to the seigniory!"

"Sad are the times in which we live!" said the bishopess as she unloosened her long black tresses to the wind. "These are days of sanguinary fury! days of unbridled debauchery! days of vertigo, in which one rushes into evil paths with wild ecstasy. Oh, holy virtue of our mothers! tender chast.i.ty! n.o.ble and undefiled love! Where shall we look for you in these days? Shall we look for you in the hut of the female slave whom her masters outrage? Shall we look for you in the house of the free woman, whose very hearth is turned under her own eyes into a brothel? Oh! Let us shut our eyes, and die young! Will you die, my Vagre? To-morrow, at the first rays of the sun; to-morrow, at the hour when the birds awake; to-morrow put your hand in mine, and let us depart together for those unknown worlds, whither our ancestors bravely and willingly took their departure in order to live together!"

"Let love reign until to-morrow! And until then, a sweet kiss, my Vagress!"

The Master of the Hounds received the kiss, while his neighbor, grave like a man half-seas over, said in a magisterial voice:

"Brothers, I have an idea--"

"Your idea, Symphorien, seems to be to drain that amphora to the very bottom."

"Yes, to begin with--and then to prove to you--_logice_ and _a priori_--"

"To the devil with your Roman tongue!"

"Brothers, not because one is a Vagre does it follow that he can not be versed in letters and philosophy. I used to teach rhetoric to the young clerks of the Bishop of Limoges. I received a call from the Bishop of Tulle for the same office. As I was crossing the Jargeaux mountains on the way from the one town to the other, I was captured in the woods by a band of bad Vagres--there are good and bad Vagres. And those Vagres sold me to a slave merchant, and he sold me again to the bishop of--"

"The devil take this rhetorician! Look at him traveling up hills and down dales."

"Such is frequently the effect of rhetoric. It carries one across the plains of imagination. But let me return to what I wanted to prove to you _logice_--it is this: We need not worry ourselves over the leudes nor any other armed bands that might be in pursuit of us, because, _logice_--the Lord G.o.d will perform a miracle in our favor to disengage us of our enemies."

"A miracle in favor of us, Vagres? Are we, perchance, on such good terms with heaven?"

"We are on all the better terms with heaven for living like wolves, like true wolves. Therefore, _logice_, the Lord will deliver us from our enemies by miracles. And that I shall now proceed to prove to you."

"To the proof, learned Symphorien--to the proof! We are waiting for your arguments."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MIRACLE OF ST. MARTIN.

The rhetorician straightened himself up and proceeded to the proof.

"I'm at it," he said. "But first of all, brothers, answer me this question: Under whose royal claws did this beautiful land of Auvergne fall?"

"Under the claws of Clotaire, the last and worthy son of King Clovis.

Having married the widow of his second nephew Theobald, Clotaire now owns Auvergne by double right. He is now in this year 558 the sole king of all conquered Gaul. Glory to the Saints in heaven! Now, then, that Clotaire is the wedder of the whole human race. The bishops have married him as many times as it has pleased him to celebrate fresh weddings; they remarried him even during the lives of most of his wives. They married him to Gundiogue, the wife of his own brother; they married him to Radegonde, to Ingonde and, a fortnight later to the latter's sister, called Aregonde; they married him to Chemesne, to several others, and finally to Waltrade, the widow of his second nephew Theobald. But all these are only peccadillos--"

"Learned, very learned Symphorien, you promised to prove to us _logice_ that heaven would rain miracles in our favor; but your rhetoric tends to prove just one thing--that Clotaire is an eternal wedder--"

"My rhetoric first establishes the premises, you will presently see what conclusions flow from them--_ergo_, I shall establish one more prefigurement, which I shall also need for my argument. It is this: Among other crimes, this Clotaire committed one before which even Clovis might have recoiled. The affair happened in Paris in the year 533, in the old Roman palace inhabited by the Frankish kings. Now listen--"

"We are listening, learned Symphorien. It is pleasant to the ear to hear the praises of kings."