CHAPTER IX.
AT THE MORT
From the start of the hunt, the Emperor of the Franks had rushed headlong on the heels of the hounds. Amael, at first somewhat uneasy at the disappearance of his grandson in the midst of so large a concourse of cavaliers, was taken by accident towards that part of the forest whither the stag was leading the hounds from cover to cover. Amael even had the opportunity to assist, shortly before nightfall, at the killing of the stag, which, exhausted with fatigue after four hours of breathless running, turned at bay before the hounds when they had reached him at last, and strove to defend himself against them with the aid of the magnificent spread of antlers that crowned his head. The Emperor had not for a moment lost track of the hounds. He followed them speedily at the mort, together with a few others of the hunters. Jumping from his horse, he ran limping towards the animal at bay that already had gored several hounds with his sharp horns. Choosing with an experienced eye the opportune moment, Charles drew his hunting knife, and, rushing upon the desperate animal, plunged the weapon into the stag just above its shoulder, threw it down and then abandoned it to the hounds, that fiercely precipitated themselves upon the warm quarry and devoured it amidst the sonorous fanfare of the hunters' horns that thus announced the close of the chase and called their scattered fellows to reassemble. With his bloody knife in his hand, and after having contemplated with lively satisfaction the wild pack now red at their nozzles and contending with one another for the shreds of the stag's flesh, the Emperor's eyes fell upon Amael, to whom he called out gaily:
"Eh, seigneur Breton – am I not a bold hunter?"
"You will pardon my sincerity, but I find that at this moment the Emperor of the Franks, with his long knife in his hand, and his boots and coat spattered with blood, looks more like a butcher than like an illustrious monarch."
"I feel happy, nevertheless, and consequently inclined to be indulgent, seigneur Breton," replied the Emperor, laughing; then, lowering his voice, he observed to Amael: "Now, see how the clothes of the seigneurs of my court look."
In fact, most of the Emperor's seigneurs and officers, now hastening in on horseback to his presence from all sides of the thickets in response to the horns, presented an appearance that contrasted sadly with that which they had presented a few hours before. Magnificently attired at the start of the hunt, those seigneurs, who looked so resplendent in their rich tunics of silk, now presented a sight that was as ridiculous as it was pitiful. The embroideries on their tunics, at first so rich in color, were now frayed, soiled with mud, and torn by the branches of the trees and the thorns of the briars; the feathers that floated proudly from their caps, now drooped, wet, broken and draggled, resembling long, dislocated, and limp fish-bones; the boots of oriental leather had vanished under a thick coat of slush, and not a few of them, torn by the thorns, exposed their owners' hose, not infrequently also their skin itself. They shivered and looked distressed. Charles, on the contrary, simply and warmly dressed in his thick sheep-skin coat, which reached down over his boots of rough leather, and his head covered with his badger-skin bonnet, rubbed his hands with a cunning look of satisfaction in his eyes at the sight of his courtiers shivering with the cold and the wet. After contemplating the spectacle for a moment, Charles made a sign of intelligence to Amael and said to him in an undertone:
"Just before breaking ranks for the hunt, I recommended you to observe the magnificence of the costumes of these coxcombs, who are as vain as Asiatic peacocks, and even more devoid of brains than the bird whose spoils they wear. Look at them now – the fine fellows!" Amael smiled approvingly, while the Emperor, shrugging his shoulders, turned to the seigneurs with his squalling voice: "Oh, ye most foolish of people, which is at this moment the most precious and useful of all our raiment? Mine, which I bought with barely a sou? Or yours, which you have had to pay for through the nose?"
At this judicious raillery, the courtiers remained silent and confused, while the Emperor, placing both his hands on his spacious paunch, roared out aloud.
"Charles," Amael said to him unheard by the others, "I prefer to hear you speak with that sly wisdom than to see you disemboweling stags."
But the Emperor did not answer the aged Breton. He suddenly interrupted the discourse, extending his hand towards a group of nearby serfs, and crying out:
"Oh! Look at that pretty girl!"
Amael followed with his eyes the direction indicated by Charles and saw amid several of the woodcutter slaves of the forest who had been attracted by curiosity to see the hunt, a young girl barely covered in rags, but of remarkable beauty. A much younger child of about ten or eleven years held her by the hand. A poor old woman, as wretchedly clad as the girl, was in the company of the two. The Emperor of the Franks, whose large eyes glistened like carbuncles with the fire of lust, repeated, addressing Amael:
"By the cape of St. Martin! The girl is beautiful. Is it that your hundred years on your back render you insensible to the sight of such rare beauty, seigneur Breton? What a beautiful girl!"
"Charles, the misery of that creature strikes me more strongly than her beauty."
"You are very commiserate, seigneur Breton – so am I. Linen and silk should clothe so charming a figure. No doubt she is the daughter of some woodman slave. I can tell you, one runs at times across wonderfully beautiful girls in the forest. More than once I have dropped the chase in the middle of the heat to pursue another scent. But in honor to truth, I have never seen such a charmer before. It must be her good star that brought her across the path of Charles." Without removing his eyes from the young girl, Charles called to one of the seigneurs in his suite: "Eh! Burchard. Come here; I have orders for you."
The seigneur Burchard quickly alighted from his horse and hastened to obey the call of the Emperor. The latter, moving a few steps away from Amael, whispered a few words in the ear of the seigneur, who, showing himself greatly honored with the mission given him by his master, bowed respectfully, and, leading his horse by the bridle, approached the old woman and the two younger girls who stood by her, motioned to them to follow him, and vanished with his charge behind the group of hunters. A deep flush colored the cheeks of Amael; he puckered his brows, and his features became expressive of as much indignation as disgust. At that same instant Amael noticed that the Emperor was looking about him with a certain degree of uneasiness and calling out aloud:
"Where are my little girls? Can they have lost track of the hunt?"
"August Emperor," said one of the officers, "Richulff, who accompanied your august daughters, told me that when the rain began to fall some of them concluded to return to Aix-la-Chapelle, while the others decided to seek the shelter of the pavilion, where you ordered supper to be held ready."
"Think of the timorous bodies! I wager that my little Thetralde is not among the Amazons who are afraid of a drop of water, and who hastened back to the palace. As they are all safe, I shall not worry. Let us hasten to the pavilion ourselves, because I am ravenously hungry." And remounting his horse, the Emperor added: "We shall find at the pavilion the damsels who have preferred to sup with their father. The stout-hearted lasses shall be well feasted, and I shall bestow rich presents upon them."
Seeing that Charles was manifesting some slight uneasiness on the score of his daughters, Amael, in turn, began to feel preoccupied with regard to Vortigern, whom, for some time, he had been searching for with his eyes among the groups of the approaching knights. As his eyes fell upon Octave, who just then came running in at a gallop, the aged Breton inquired from him with no little anxiety:
"Octave, have you seen my grandson anywhere?"
"We parted company almost at the very start of the hunt."
"He is not with us," proceeded Amael with increasing uneasiness. "Night is here and he is not familiar with the paths of the forest."
"Oh! Oh! seigneur Breton," put in the Emperor of the Franks, who, immediately upon remounting his horse, had drawn near the aged man and overheard his question to the young Roman, "you seem to feel uneasy about your youngster. Well, what if he should have lost his way this evening? He will find it again to-morrow. Do you fear he will die of one night spent in the forest? Is not hunting the school of war? Come, come! Be at ease. Besides, who knows," added Charles with a roguish air. "Mayhap he encountered some pretty woodcutter's daughter in some of the huts of the forest. It is like his years. You surely do not mean to make a monk of him? Pretty lassies are meant for handsome lads."
CHAPTER X.
EMPEROR AND HOSTAGE
Led by the Emperor of the Franks, the cavalcade of hunters rode towards the pavilion where supper was to be partaken of before the return to Aix-la-Chapelle. Charles called Amael to his side, and noticing, as they rode, that the aged Breton continued preoccupied about Vortigern, the Emperor turned to the centenarian with a merry twinkle in his eye:
"What do you think of this day? Have you recovered from your prejudices against Charles the Fighter? Do you think me at all worthy to govern my Empire, a domain as vast as the old Empire of Rome? Do you deem me worthy of reigning over the population of Armorica?"
"Charles, in my youth your grandfather proposed to me that I be the jailer of the last descendant of Clovis, an ill-starred boy, then a prisoner in an abbey, and having barely one suit of clothes to cover himself with. That boy, when grown to man's estate, was, upon orders of Pepin, your father, tonsured and locked up in a monastery, where he died obscure and forgotten. Thus do royalties end. Such is the expiation, prompt or late, reserved for royal stocks that issue from conquest."
"Then the stock of Charles, whom the whole world calls the Great," rejoined the Emperor with an incredulous and proud smile, "is, according to your theory, destined to run out obscurely in some do-nothing king?"
"It is my firm conviction."
"I took you at first for a man of good judgment," replied the Emperor shrugging his shoulders; "I must now admit that I was mistaken."
"This very morning, in your Palatine school, you observed that the children of the poor studied with zeal, while the children of the rich are lazy. The reason is plain. The former feel the need of work to insure their well-being; the latter, being provided with and in possession of ample fortunes, make no effort to acquire knowledge. It is to them superfluous. Your ancestors, the stewards of the palace, have done like the children of the poor. Your descendants, however, being no longer in need of conquering a crown, will imitate the children of the rich."
"Despite a certain appearance of logic, your argument is false. My father usurped a crown, but he left to me at the most the Kingdom of Gaul. To-day Gaul is but one of the provinces of the immense empire that I have conquered. Obviously, I did not remain idle and torpid like the rich boys in your comparison."
"The Frankish Kings, together with their leudes, who later became great landed seigneurs, and the bishops, plundered Gaul, divided her territory among them, and reduced her people to slavery. But after a period, be it short or long, learn this, Oh, great Emperor, the people will rise in their strength, glorious, terrible, and they will know how to reconquer their patrimony and their independence!"
"Let us drop the future and the past. What think you of Charles?"
"I think that you are mistakenly proud of having almost reconstructed the administrative edifice of the Roman emperors, and of causing, like them, your will to weigh upon the whole domain, from one end to the other. Of all that, nothing will be left after you are gone! All the peoples that have been conquered and subjugated by your arms will rise in revolt. Your boundless empire, composed of kingdoms that no common bond of origin, of customs, or of language holds together, will fall to pieces; it will crumble together and will bury your descendants under its ruins."
"Do you mean to imply that Charles the Great will have passed over the world like a shadow without leaving behind him any lasting monument of his glory?"
"No, your life will not have been worthless. By ceaselessly warring against the Frisians, the Saxons and other peoples who wished to invade Gaul, you have checked, if not forever, at least for a long time, the maraudings of those hordes that ravaged the north and east of our unhappy country. But if you have barred the entrance of the barbarians into Gaul over land, the sea remains open to them. The Northman pirates almost every day make descents upon the coasts of your Empire, and their boldness increases to the point that ascending in their vessels the Meuse, the Gironde and the Loire, they threaten the very heart of your dominion."
"Oh, old man! This time, I fear me, your misgivings do not lead you astray. The Northmans are the only source of disquiet to my sleep! The bare thought of the invasions of those pagans causes me to be overcome with involuntary and unexplainable apprehensions. One day, during my sojourn at Narbonne, several vessels of those accursed people extended their piratical incursion into the very port. A sinister presentiment seized me; despite all I could do to restrain them, the tears rolled out of my eyes. One of my officers asked me the reason for my sudden fit of sadness. 'Do you wish to know, my faithful followers,' I answered, 'do you wish to know why I weep so bitterly? Certes, I do not fear that these Northmans may injure me with their piracies; but I feel profoundly afflicted at the thought that, in my very lifetime, they have the audacity of touching upon the borders of my Empire; and great is my grief because I have a presentiment of the sufferings that these Northmans will inflict upon my descendants and my peoples;'" and the Emperor remained for several minutes as if overpowered by the sinister premonition that he now recalled.
"Charles," Amael resumed with a grave voice, "all royalty that issues from conquest, or from violence, carries within itself the germ of death, for the reason that its principle is iniquitous. Perchance those Northman pirates may some day cause your stock to expiate the original iniquity of the royal sway that you hold from conquest."
Whether, absorbed in his own thoughts, the Emperor failed to hear the last words of the Gaul, or whether he could make no answer to them, he suddenly cried out:
"Let us forget the accursed Northmans. Speak to me of the good that I have done. Your words of praise are rare; I like them all the more for that."
"You are not cruel out of wilfulness, although you might be reproached for the massacre of more than four thousand Saxon prisoners."
"I remember the event perfectly," Charles said with emphasis. "I had to terrify those barbarians by a signal example. It was a fatal necessity!"
"Your heart is accessible to certain promptings of justice and humanity. In your capitularies you made an effort to improve the condition of the slaves and the colonists."
"It was my duty as a Christian, as a Catholic. All men are brothers."
"You are no more Christian than your friends, the bishops. You have simply yielded to an instinct of humanity, natural to man, whatever his religion may be. But still you are not a Christian."
"By the King of the Heavens! Perhaps I am a Jew?"
"Christ said, according to St. Luke the Evangelist: The Lord hath sent me to preach deliverance to the captives – to set at liberty them that are bruised. Now, then, your dominions are full of prisoners carried by conquest from their own homes; the estates of your bishops and your abbots are stocked with slaves. Accordingly, neither you nor your priests are Christians. A Christian, according to the words of the Christ, must never hold his fellowman in bondage. All men are equal."
"Custom so wills it; I merely conform myself thereto."
"What is there to hinder you, and the bishops as well as you, all-mighty Emperor that you are, from abolishing the abominable custom? What is there to hinder you from emancipating the slaves? What is there to hinder you from restoring to them, along with their liberty, the possession of the land that they themselves render fruitful with the sweat of their brow?"
"Old man, from time immemorial there have been slaves, and there ever will be slaves. What would it avail to be of the conquering race if not to keep the fruits of conquest? By the King of the Heavens! Do you take me for a barbarian? Have I not promulgated laws, founded schools, encouraged letters, arts and sciences? Is there in the whole world a city comparable with Aix-la-Chapelle?"
"Your gorgeous capital of Aix-la-Chapelle, the capital of your Germanic possessions, is not Gaul. Gaul has remained to you a strange country. You love forests that lend themselves to your autumn hunting parties, and the rich domains, whence every year the revenues are carted to your residences on the other side of the Rhine. But you do not love Gaul, seeing that you exhaust her resources in men and money in order to carry on your wars. Frightful misery desolates our provinces. Millions of God's creatures, deprived almost of bread, shelter and clothes, toil from dawn to dusk, and die in slavery – all in order to sustain the opulence of their masters. If you cause instruction to be given to some pupils in your Palatine school, you allow, on the other hand, millions of God's creatures to live like brutes! Such is the condition of Gaul under your reign, Charles the Great!"
"Old man," rejoined the Emperor, with a somber face and rising anger, "after treating you as a friend this whole day, I looked for different language. You are more than severe, you are unjust."
"I have been sincere towards you, the same as I was towards your grandfather."
"Mindful of the service that you rendered my grandfather at the battle of Poitiers, I meant to be generous towards you. I meant to do the right thing by myself, by your people, and by you. I hoped to see you, after this day spent in close intimacy with me, drop your prejudices, and to be able to say to you: I have vanquished the Bretons by force of arms; I desire to affirm my conquest by persuasion. Return to your country; report to your countrymen the day that you spent with Charles; they will trust your words, seeing that they place implicit confidence in you. You were the soul of the last two wars that they sustained against me. Be now the soul of our pacification. A conquest founded on force is often ephemeral; a conquest cemented in mutual affection and esteem is imperishable. I trust in your loyalty to gain the hearts of the Bretons to me. Such was my hope. The bitter injustice of your words dashes it. Let us think of it no more. You shall remain here as a hostage. I shall treat you as a brave soldier, who saved my grandfather's life. Perhaps in time you will judge me more justly. When that day shall have come, you will be allowed to return to your own country, and I feel sure you will then tell them what is right, as to-day you would only tell them what is wrong. All things will come in due season."
"Although your hopes can not realize the object that you proposed, they, nevertheless, are an evidence of a generous soul."
"By the cap of St. Martin! You Bretons are a strange people. What! If you should believe that I deserve esteem and affection, and if your countrymen should share your opinion, would neither you nor they accept with joy the authority that you now submit to by force?"
"With us it is no question of having a more or less worthy master. We want no master."
"And yet I am your master, ye pagans!"
"Until the day when we shall have reconquered our independence by a successful insurrection."
"You will be crushed to dust, exterminated! I swear it by the beard of the eternal Father."
"Exterminate the last of the Breton Gauls, strangle all the children, and you will then be able to reign over the desert of Armorica. But so long as there lives a single man of our race in our country, you may be able to vanquish, but never to subjugate it."
"But tell me, old man, is it that my rule is so terrible, and my laws so hard?"
"We want no foreign domination. To live according to the laws of our fathers, freely and as becomes free men, to choose our chiefs, to pay no tribute, to lock ourselves up within our own frontiers and to defend them – these are our aspirations. Accept them and you will have nothing to fear from us."
"To dictate conditions to me! to me, who reign as sovereign master over all Europe! To have a miserable population of shepherds and husbandmen impose conditions to me! to me, whose arms have conquered the world! Impudence can reach no further!"
"I might answer you that, in order to vanquish that miserable population of shepherds, of woodmen and husbandmen entrenched in their mountain fastnesses, behind their rocks, their marshes and their forests, your veteran bands had to be requisitioned for Gaul – "
"Yes," cried the Emperor in a vexed voice, "in order to keep your accursed country in obedience, I am forced to leave there my choicest troops, troops that I may need at any moment here in Germany, where I have hard battles to fight."
"That must be an unpleasant thing to you, Charles, I admit. Without mentioning the maritime invasions of the Northmans, there are the Bohemians, the Hungarians, the Bavarians, the Lombards and so many other people whom your arms have overcome, the same as they overcame us, the Bretons – all vanquished, but none subjugated. From one moment to the other they may rise anew, and, what is graver still, menace the very heart of your Empire. As to us, on the contrary, all that we demand is to live free; we never think of going beyond our frontiers."
"Who guarantees to me that, once my troops, are out of your infernal country, you will not forthwith resume your armed excursions and attacks against the Frankish forces that are bivouacked on this side of your borders?"
"The other provinces are Gallic like ourselves. Our duty bids us to provoke them, and to aid them to break the yoke of the Frankish kings. But the thoughtful people among us are of the opinion that the hour for revolt has not yet come. For the last four centuries the Catholic priests have moulded the minds of the people to slavery. Alas, centuries will pass before they re-awaken from their present stupor. You admit that it is dangerous for you to be compelled to keep a portion of your best troops tied up in Brittany. Recall your army. I give you my word as a Breton, and I am, moreover, authorized to make the pledge in the name of our tribes, that, so long as you live, we shall not go out of our frontiers."
"By the King of the Heavens! The joke is rather too harsh. Do you take me for a fool? Do I not know that, if I grant you a truce by withdrawing my troops, you will take advantage of it to prepare anew for war after my death? But we shall always know how to suppress your uprisings."
"Yes, we shall certainly take up arms if your sons fail to respect our liberties."
"And you really expect me – me, the vanquisher, to consent to a shameful truce? To consent to withdraw my forces from a country that it has cost me so much trouble to overcome?"
"Very well; leave, then, your army in Brittany, but depend upon it that, within a year or two, new insurrections will break out."
"Insane old man! How dare you hold such language to me when you, your grandson, and four other Breton chiefs are my hostages! Oh! I swear by the everlasting God, your head will drop at the first sign of an insurrection. Do not lean too heavily upon the good nature of the old Charles. The terrible example I made of the four thousand prisoners whom I took from the revolted Saxons should be proof enough to you that I recoil before no act of necessity. Only the dead are not to be feared."
"The Breton chiefs who remained on the way by reason of their wounds, and who will speedily join me and my grandson at Aix-la-Chapelle, would, no more than my grandson and myself, have accepted the post of hostages had the same been without danger. Whatever the fate may be that awaits us, we shall not falter in our duty. We are here in the very center of your Empire, and well in condition to judge of the opportuneness for an uprising. From this very place we will give the signal for a fresh war, the moment we think the time is favorable."
"By the King of the Heavens! This audacity has gone far enough!" cried the Emperor, pale with rage. "To dare tell me that these traitors, according to what they may see and spy near my court, will themselves send to Brittany the order to revolt! Oh, I swear by God, from to-morrow, from this very evening, both you and your grandson will be cast into a dungeon so dark that you will need lynx's eyes to find out what goes on around here. By the cap of St. Martin! Such insolence is enough to turn one into a ferocious beast. Not another word, old man! Here we are at the pavilion. I shall now join my daughters. The sight of them will console me for your ingratitude!"
Uttering these last words with mingled rage and sorrow, the Emperor put his horse to the gallop in order to reach all the quicker the hunting pavilion, where he expected to meet his daughters, and satisfy his growing hunger. The seigneurs in Charles' suite were about to follow their master's example and quicken the steps of their mounts, when the Emperor, suddenly turning around, cried out to them, with an imperious voice:
"No one shall follow me. I want to be alone with my daughters! You shall await my orders near the pavilion."