At that moment the curtain over the farther door of the apartment was pushed aside, and the King of the Franks, Charles the Simple, stepped in. This descendant of Charles the great emperor, was then thirty-two years of age. His bulging eyes, his retreating chin, his hanging lower lip imparted to his physiognomy a look of such stupidity and dullness that anyone would p.r.o.nounce him a fool, at first sight. His long hair, the symbol of royalty, framed in a puffed face that was fringed with a spa.r.s.e beard. The King looked profoundly downcast, and brusquely said to Jeanike:
"Go out, nurse! Out of the room everybody!"
The King remained alone with Ghisele. The child embraced her father tenderly and looked to find in his presence the needed consolation for the painful thoughts that the recollection of her mother had awakened in her. Charles the Simple quietly submitted to the caresses of his daughter, and said:
"Good morning, child; good morning. But why do you weep?"
"For very little, good father. I was feeling sad. Your sight banishes my sadness. You are late this morning. My nurse tells me that last night the Count of Paris arrived at the castle together with the Archbishop of Rouen."
The King sighed, and nodded affirmatively with his head.
"They did not, I hope, bring you bad news, father?"
"Alas," answered Charles the Simple, sighing again and looking up at the ceiling, "the tidings that they bring would be disastrous, aye, they would, if I refuse to accept certain conditions!"
"And is it in your power to fulfil those conditions?" asked Ghisele, and the girl looked into her father"s face with so childlike and mild a countenance that Charles the Simple, but not wicked, seemed embarra.s.sed and touched. He dropped his eyes before his daughter and stammered:
"Those conditions! Oh, those conditions! They are hard! Oh, so very hard! But--what is to be done? Fain would I resist. But I am forced to.
What would you have me do if I should be forced to do what should give us pain?"
"You can not be commanded, you, the master, the sovereign, the King of the Franks!"
"I, King of the Franks!" cried Charles the Simple with bitterness and rage. "Is there, perchance, a King of the Franks in existence? The counts, the dukes, the marquises, the bishops, the abbots--they are the kings! Have not the seigneurs, for the last century, made themselves the sovereign and hereditary masters of the counties and duchies which they were simply put there to administer during their lives and in the name of the King? Who is it that reigns in Vermandois? Is it I? No, it is Count Herbert! Who reigns over the country of Melun? Is it I? No, it is Count Errenger!--and over the country of Rheims? Archbishop Foulque; and in Provence? Duke Louis the Blind; and in Lorraine? Duke Louis IV; and in Burgundy? Duke Rodulf; and in Brittany? Duke Allan--Those are the brigands, they and so many other thieves, small and large, who have plucked us of one province after another; bit by bit they have appropriated to themselves the royal heritage of our fathers. I tell you this, my child, in order that you may understand that, however hard the conditions may be that are imposed upon me, I must, alas! submit. The seigneurs command, I obey. Am I in a condition to resist them? Are they not intrenched in the fortified castles that they have made Gaul to bristle with all over the face of the land? I barely can muster up enough soldiers to defend the small domain that is left to me. Over what region can I say that I reign to-day--I, the descendant of Charles the Great, the redoubtable emperor who ruled over the world? I do not possess the hundredth part of Gaul! Figure it out, Ghisele, figure it out, and you will see that there is nothing now left to me but the Orleanois, Neustria, the country of Laon and my domains of Compiegne, Fontainebleau, Braine and Kersey. How would you expect me to resist the seigneurs, and that I say "No!" when they order me to say "Yes!" seeing my forces are so trifling?" And Charles the Simple, stamping the floor with rage, clenched his fists and cried out: "Oh, my poor Ghisele! If we only had our ancestor Charles the Great to defend us now, we would not now be dictated to as we are! The brave emperor would march forth at the head of his troops to crush the insolent seigneurs and archbishops in their own lairs!--Alack! Alack! I have neither the courage, nor the will, nor the power! They call me "the Simple"!--They are right," added the King overcome with sorrow and weeping profusely. "Yes, yes; I am a simpleton! But a poor simpleton who is greatly to be pitied--especially at this hour--my child!"
"Good father!" exclaimed Ghisele, throwing herself on the neck of the King whose face was bathed in tears. "Do not give way to grief so. Will there not always be enough land left to you in which to live in peace with your daughter who loves and your servants who are attached to you?"
The King looked fixedly at Ghisele, and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand said in a voice broken with sobs: "Do you know what Count Rothbert--" but suddenly breaking off he proceeded with an explosion of idle rage: "I abhor this family of the Counts of Paris! It is they who robbed us of the duchy of France.--Those people are our most dangerous enemies! Some fine day, that Rothbert will dethrone me absolutely, as his brother Eudes dethroned Charles the Fat! Oh, felonious, impudent and thieving family! With what joy would I not exterminate you, if I only had the power of Charles the Great!--But I have no courage--I do not even dare to order them to be killed. They are well aware of this--and that is why they trample over me!" The King"s voice was smothered by his sobs. He could only add: "Shame and humiliation!"
"I conjure you, dear father; drive away these evil thoughts--But what did that wicked Count Rothbert say to you?"
"First of all, he said to me that the Northmans were before Paris, and in immense numbers."
"The Northmans!" cried Ghisele turning pale and shuddering from head to foot with fear. "The Northmans before Paris! Oh, woe, woe is us!" and the child hid her face in her hands, while tears inundated her countenance and her frame shook with convulsive sobs.
With his eyes fixed on the floor, not venturing to raise them lest they should encounter his daughter"s, Charles the Simple proceeded with a tremulous voice:
"The Count of Paris, as I was saying, informed me that the Northmans were before the city. "What would you have me do against it?" I asked him; "I have neither soldiers nor men; you, seigneurs, who are the masters of almost all Gaul, have nothing else to do but to defend your own possessions; that is your concern." Rothbert answered me: "The Northmans threaten to burn down Paris, ma.s.sacre the people, and to overrun Gaul ravaging and sacking the fields and towns. No resistance can be offered them. The majority of the villeins and serfs refuse to take the field against them. The soldiers at the disposal of us, the seigneurs, are too few in number to pretend to combat the pirates. We must treat with them." I then, my little Ghisele, said to the count: "Very well, treat; that is your affair, seeing those pagans are before your walls of Paris and in your duchy of France." "And so I did,"
Rothbert answered me; "I treated in your name with the envoys of Rolf, the Northman chief.""
"With Rolf," murmured Ghisele clasping her hands in horror. "With that pirate! That felon steeped in crime and sacrilege! That monster who was the cause of my mother"s death!"
"Alas! To the desolation of us both, dear daughter, this accursed Rothbert, aiming only at the protection of his city of Paris and of his duchy of France from the clutches of the old Northman brigand, promised in my name that I would relinquish Neustria to him--Neustria, the best of the provinces left to me--and besides--"
As Ghisele perceived that her father hesitated to finish the sentence, she wiped his tears and asked; "And besides, what else do they demand, father?"
Charles the Simple remained for a moment silent, and shuddered.
Presently, however, overcoming the imbecile weakness of his character, he broke out into fresh tears, crying: "No! No! I will not! However much of a simpleton I may be, that shall never be. No! For once, at least, in my life I shall act the King!" And closing his daughter in his arms, Charles the Simple covered her head with kisses and cried: "No! No! He shall not have my Ghisele! The insolence of that old brigand, to think of marrying--the grand-daughter of Charles the Great--and she a child of barely fourteen! Sooner than see you the wife of Rolf, I would kill you--I would kill you on the spot. Oh, Lord G.o.d, have mercy upon me!"
Ghisele heard her father"s words almost without understanding them. She was gazing upon him with mingled doubt and stupor when a new personage stepped into the hall. It was Francon, Archbishop of Rouen. The man"s impa.s.sive face, cold and hard, resembled a marble mask. He approached close to Ghisele and her father, who still clung together in a close embrace, and pointing with his hand to the curtain behind which he had kept himself concealed up to then, said in his sharp, short style:
"Charles, I have heard everything."
"You spied upon me!" cried the King. "You have dared to surprise the secrets of your master!"
"I mistrusted your weakness. After our interview with Rothbert, I followed you. I have overheard everything;" and addressing himself to the young girl who, trembling at every limb, had fallen back upon her seat, the Archbishop of Rouen proceeded in a solemn and threatening voice: "Ghisele, your father told you the truth. He is King only in name. The little territory that he still is master of is, like his crown, at the mercy of the Frankish seigneurs. They will dethrone him whenever it should please them, as they dethroned Charles the Fat and crowned in his stead Eudes, the Count of Paris, only twenty-five years ago."
"Yes! Yes! And there will be no lack for a bishop to consecrate the new usurper, just as there was found one to consecrate Count Eudes, not so, Francon?" cried Charles the Simple with bitterness. "Such is the grat.i.tude of the priests towards the descendants of the Frankish Kings that have made the Church so rich!"
"The Church owes nothing to Kings; the Kings owe to the Church the remission of their sins!" was the disdainful reply of the archbishop.
"The Kings have bestowed wealth upon the Church here below, on earth; they have been rewarded a hundredfold in heaven and all eternity. Now, Ghisele, listen to what I have to say to you. If, by reason of your refusal, or the refusal of your father, the Northman pagans should, as they threaten to do, renew against Gaul the frightful and sacrilegious warfare that we are all familiar with, but which they promise to put an end to in the event of your father"s consenting to grant your hand to their chieftain Rolf and to relinquish Neustria to him, then you and your father will be alone responsible for the frightful ills that will anew desolate the land."
"Francon," put in Charles the Simple imploringly, "the seigneurs also have provinces and daughters. Why could not they give to Rolf one of their provinces and one of their daughters?"
"Rolf wants Neustria, and Neustria belongs to you; Rolf wants Ghisele, and Ghisele is your daughter. The two sacrifices impose themselves upon the King!"
"I to marry that monster who caused my mother"s death!" cried Ghisele.
"No! Never! Never! Rather would I die!"
"A curse, then, upon you in this world and the next!" shouted the archbishop in a thundering voice. "Let the blood that is to flow in this impious war fall upon your head and your father"s! You will both have to answer before G.o.d for all the acts of sacrilege that you can prevent!
You will both expiate these sins here on earth by the excommunication that I shall hurl upon you, and after death in everlasting flames!
Charles, excommunicated and d.a.m.ned in this world shall be an object of horror to all his subjects. The Church that consecrated him King, will p.r.o.nounce him d.a.m.ned and forfeit of his throne! His life will be ended in a dungeon!"
The terror that took hold of Charles the Simple as the Archbishop of Rouen spoke, now reached its height. He fell upon his knees at the priest"s feet and clasping his hands implored:
"Mercy! Mercy, holy father! I shall give Neustria to Rolf--but not my daughter! She is barely fourteen years of age! Fourteen years! It is in itself almost a crime to marry a child at that age! And, then, she is so timid! Alas, to place her in that monster"s bed would be to consign her to death!" And the wretched sovereign sobbed convulsively, and still implored: "Mercy! Mercy! Can you threaten me with eternal punishment because I refuse to deliver my child to a bandit whom the Church has excommunicated for his unspeakable crimes?"
"Rolf will be baptized!" answered the prelate solemnly. "The l.u.s.tral waters will wash away his soilure, and he will enter the nuptial couch clad in the white robes of a catechumen, the symbol of innocence!"
"Help! Nurse, help! My daughter is dying!" cried Charles the Simple leaping from the floor and convulsively straining in his arms the inert body of Ghisele, who pale and cold as a corpse, had swooned away in her seat.
The prelate triumphed.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WEDDING OF ROLF.
The city of Rouen was in gala. Large crowds of people filled the streets and pressed eagerly towards the basilica whose bells were pealing at their loudest. Among those who were wending their way towards the church were Eidiol, his daughter Anne the Sweet, Guyrion the Plunger and Rustic the Gay. They had left Paris two days before; they descended the Seine as far as Rouen in the vessel of the dean of the guild of the skippers of Paris. It was a trip of pleasure and profit. Eidiol sailed to Rouen in order to convey thither a cargo of merchandise and to witness the wedding of the daughter of Charles the Simple, King of the Franks, with Rolf, the chieftain of the Northman pirates, but now elevated to the rank of sovereign Duke of Neustria, which a.s.sumed the name of Northmandy.
Such was the indifference of that wretched population of serfs and villeins to the form of the yoke that oppressed them, that the people of Rouen, the capital of Neustria, now named Northmandy, actually delighted to see the great province in the hand of the pirates.
Eidiol and his family walked towards the square of the basilica, intending to watch the nuptial procession at close quarters. Anne rested on the arms of her father and brother. Rustic preceded them in order to clear a pa.s.sage for them across the crowd that became denser and more compact as they drew nearer to the cathedral. Finally, after much struggling, the family of Eidiol succeeded in securing a post at the corner of a street that ran out into the square.
"Master Eidiol," said Rustic, "there is a milestone here. Let Anne stand on it. She will be better able to see the procession, and she will be free from the crush."
"No, Rustic," answered the young girl, "I would not dare to take that place."