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

  CHAPTER VII.

  VAGRES AT FEAST.

  What delightful feasts are those held in Vagrery! Does, stags,wild-boars, killed by the Vagres the day before in the thickets of theforest that shade the fastness of Allange--all, together with the oxenfrom 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 God has dug for the good Vagres anumber of large pits in the secluded fastnesses of Allange. They arespacious craters, now extinct like other volcanic apertures in Auvergne.Is not one of these deep semi-circular grottoes, in which a man canstand 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 uphigh and becomes a brasier: the bottom, the walls, the lava vault--allare soon red hot, and into the chasm, ablaze like the mouth of hell,stags, does, whole wild-boars and oxen are rolled in to broil. Thatdone, the opening of the grotto is closed with lava rocks, a huge ovenof glowing embers. Four or five hours later, oxen and game, grilled tothe point, are served steaming and toothsome upon the table. What!Tables also in Vagrery! Certes, and covered with the finest of greencarpet. What table? What carpet? The lawn of a forest clearing. And forseats? Again that lawn. For tent the lofty oaks; for ornaments the armssuspended from the branches. For dome the starry sky. For chandelier themoon at her fullest. For perfumery the night odor of wild flowers. Formusicians the nightingales and all the other songsters of the woods.

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

  Despite his ire, Bishop Cautin excelled himself as a cook. Long beforehad a certain sauce known to be a favorite with the bishop been thesubject of talk in Vagrery. The holy man was ordered to produce it. Hedid. He filled with it a large caldron into which each one dipped hisroast, whether of game or beef--it was a toothsome sauce, made of oldwine and oil, aromated with wild thyme. It was pronounced delectable.Biting into her Vagre's roast with her white teeth the bishopessremarked:

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

  Only two of the guests did not join in the spirit of the feast--thehermit-laborer and the young female slave who sat near Ronan. As toRonan, he did ample justice to the repast; but the monk seemed to beabsorbed in contemplation as he looked up at the starry vault overhead,and little Odille also dreamed--as she contemplated Ronan. The gold andsilver vases, whatever their previous destination, circulated from handto hand; the wine pouches collapsed in even measure as the stomachs ofthe drinkers became inflated; merry jokes, loud outbursts of laughter,kisses stolen and given from and by Vagres and Vagresses;--it was amirthful and giddy festivity. Ever and anon, nevertheless, and generallyon the subject of some pretty face, a dispute would break out betweentwo Vagres, just as used to happen during the ancient banquets of theGauls. Then swords would be taken down from the trees and crossed by thecombatants, 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 livethe feasts of the Vagrery! And the exchange of repartees continued--somewere mirthful, others strange, and not a few sad. The reparteesreflected the state of affairs in Gaul, her people, and the miseries ofthe nation as she lay debased and demoralized at the feet of theconquerors; the repartees produced a picture better than chroniclers orhistorians could ever reproduce it, even if ever this country of ironshould find its historian.

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

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

  "Oh, great bishop! Oh, great St. Remi! Blessings upon you, who, at thebasilica of Reims, in the midst of incense and flowers, now over fiftyyears 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 thedays of the Chief of the Hundred Valleys, of the Sacrovirs, theVindexes, 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 thestruggle against the barbarians!"

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

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

  "And yet they call us robbers!"

  "And murderers!"

  "And sacrilegious wretches!"

  "Brothers, we but follow the example of our glorious new masters--theFrankish kings, dukes and counts; they kill, we massacre; 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 sheunloosened her long black tresses to the wind. "These are days ofsanguinary fury! days of unbridled debauchery! days of vertigo, in whichone rushes into evil paths with wild ecstasy. Oh, holy virtue of ourmothers! tender chastity! noble and undefiled love! Where shall we lookfor you in these days? Shall we look for you in the hut of the femaleslave whom her masters outrage? Shall we look for you in the house ofthe free woman, whose very hearth is turned under her own eyes into abrothel? Oh! Let us shut our eyes, and die young! Will you die, myVagre? To-morrow, at the first rays of the sun; to-morrow, at the hourwhen the birds awake; to-morrow put your hand in mine, and let us departtogether for those unknown worlds, whither our ancestors bravely andwillingly took their departure in order to live together!"

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

  The Master of the Hounds received the kiss, while his neighbor, gravelike 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 verybottom."

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

  "To the devil with your Roman tongue!"

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

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

  "Such is frequently the effect of rhetoric. It carries one across theplains of imagination. But let me return to what I wanted to prove toyou _logice_--it is this: We need not worry ourselves over the leudesnor any other armed bands that might be in pursuit of us, because,_logice_-
-the Lord God will perform a miracle in our favor to disengageus of our enemies."

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

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

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