I
Julian’s father and mother lived in a castle in the midst of woods on the slope of a hill.
Its four corner-towers had pointed roofs covered with scales of lead, and the base of the walls rested on masses of rock which went down abruptly right to the bottom of the moat.
The pavements of the court were as clean as the flagged floor of a church. Long gutters, shaped like dragons with down-drooped jaws, vomited the rain-water into the cistern; and on the window-ledges at every storey, in a pot of painted earthenware, a plant of basil or heliotrope opened to the sun.
A second line of defence, formed of stakes, enclosed first an orchard of fruit-trees, then a parterre, where the combinations of the flowers formed patterns, and next a trellis with bowers in which to take the air, and a mall which served to amuse the pages. On the other side were the kennel, the stables, the bakery, the wine-press and the barns. A meadow of green grass extended all around, itself enclosed by a strong hedge of thorns.
They had lived in peace so long that the portcullis was never let down; the moats were full of water; the swallows made their nests in the openings of the battlements; and the archer who walked up and down upon the walls all day long retired into his turret as soon as the sun shone too strongly, and slept there like a monk.
Indoors, the ironwork shone everywhere; tapestries in the rooms gave protection from the cold; and the presses were crammed with linen; the wine-tuns were piled up in the cellars, the oaken coffers groaned with the weight of bags of silver.
In the great hall arms of every age and every nation were to be seen among banners and heads of wild beasts, from the slings of the Amalekites and the javelins of the Garamantes to the scimitars of the Saracens and the chain-coats of the Normans.
The great spit in the kitchen could turn an ox; the chapel was as sumptuous as the oratory of a king. There was even, in a retired corner, a vapour-bath in the Roman fashion; but the good lord of the castle abstained from it, deeming that it was an idolatrous custom.
Always wrapped in a fox pelisse, he walked about his house, did justice among his vassals, and appeased the quarrels of his neighbours. In winter he watched the snow-flakes fall, or had histories read to him. As soon as the good weather came, he went out on his mule along the lanes, amongst the green cornfields, and talked with the rustics, to whom he gave advice. After many adventures, he had taken to wife a damsel of high degree.
She was very fair, somewhat proud and serious. The horns of her head-dress brushed against the lintel of the doors; the train of her cloth gown trailed three paces behind her. Her household was ruled like the interior of a monastery; every morning she gave out their work to her servants, saw to the comfits and unguents, span on her distaff, or embroidered altar-cloths. In answer to her prayers God granted her a son.
Then there were great rejoicings, and a feast which lasted three days and four nights, amid the illumination of torches, to the sound of harps, on floors strawed with leafage. At it they ate the rarest spices, with fowls as big as sheep; as a diversion, a dwarf came out of a pasty; and when the bowls gave out, for the crowd was ever increasing, they were obliged to drink from the horns and helmets.
The young mother was not present at those festivities. She stayed in her bed and kept quiet. One evening she woke and saw, by a moonbeam that shone in at the window, something like a shadow that moved. It was an ancient in a frock of coarse stuff, with a chaplet at his side, a wallet on his shoulder, with all the appearance of a hermit. He came up to her pillow and said without opening his lips:
“Rejoice, O mother! Thy son will be a saint!”
She was about to cry out; but gliding upon the moon-ray he rose gently into the air, then disappeared. The songs of the banquet sounded more loudly than ever. She heard the voices of angels; and her head sank back upon the pillow, which was surmounted by the bone of a martyr in a frame of carbuncles.
Next day all the servants, when questioned, declared that they had not seen any hermit. Dream or reality, this must have been a communication from Heaven; but she was careful to say nothing about it, lest she should be charged with pride.
The revellers departed at break of day; and Julian’s father was outside the postern, where he had been seeing the last of them off, when all at once a mendicant rose up before him in the mist. He was a gipsy with plaited beard, silver rings on both his arms, and sparkling eyeballs. With an inspired air he stammered these inconsequent words:
“Ah! ah! your son!... much blood!... much glory!... always fortunate! An Emperor’s family.”
And, stooping to pick up his alms, he disappeared in the grass and vanished.
The good castellan looked right and left and called his loudest. Not a soul! The wind blew, the morning mists cleared away.
He attributed this vision to lightheadedness from want of sleep. “If I talk about it,” he said to himself, “they will laugh at me.” However, the splendours destined for his son dazzled him, although the promise of them was by no means clear, and he even doubted whether he had heard it.
The spouses kept their secrets from each other. But both cherished the child with equal love; and, respecting him as one marked out by God, they bestowed an infinity of care upon his person. His cradle was stuffed with the finest down; a lamp in the shape of a dove burned over it continually; three nurses lulled him to rest; and, well wrapped in his swaddling-bands, his face rosy, and his eyes blue, with his brocade cloak and his cap trimmed with pearls, he looked like a little Jesus. His teeth came without his uttering a single moan.
When he was seven, his mother taught him to sing. To make him brave, his father hoisted him on to a great horse. The child smiled with satisfaction, and was not long in learning everything about chargers.
A very learned old monk instructed him in the Holy Scriptures, Arabic cyphering, Latin letters, and the art of drawing dainty pictures on vellum. They worked together away up at the top of a tower, out of the noise.
The lesson finished, they went down to the garden, where, walking about side by side, they studied the flowers.
Sometimes they would see a string of pack-animals making their way along the bottom of the vale conducted by a man on foot in Oriental garb. The castellan, who had recognized him for a merchant, would send a servant to him. The stranger, taking confidence, turned out of his way, and, taken into the parlour, he brought out of his coffers pieces of velvet and silk, jewellery, aromatics, strange things of which the use was unknown; in the end the honest man went away with great gain, without having suffered any violence. At other times a group of pilgrims would knock at the door. Their wet garments smoked before the fire; and when they were fed they told their travels: the wanderings of barks on the foaming sea, marches on foot through the burning sands, the ferocity of the Paynims, the caverns of Syria, the Cradle and the Sepulchre. Then they gave the young lord cockle-shells from their mantles.
Often the castellan feasted his old companions-in-arms. As they drank, they recalled their wars, the assaults on fortresses with battering of engines and prodigious wounds. Julian, who was listening, uttered shouts at what he heard; thereupon his father had no doubt that he would some day be a conqueror. But in the evening, when the angelus sounded, as he passed between the bowing poor, he put his hand in his purse with such modesty and such a noble air that his mother was certain he would be an archbishop in course of time.
His place in chapel was beside his parents; and however long the offices might be he remained on his knees at his faldstool, his bonnet on the ground and his hands clasped.
One day during Mass, on raising his head, he noticed a little white mouse which came out of a hole in the wall. It ran on to the first step of the altar, and, after two or three turns to right and left, made off the same way. Next Sunday the thought that he might see it again troubled him. It came back; and each Sunday he waited for it, was annoyed by it, and was seized by hatred of it, and resolved to make away with it.
So, having shut the door and scattered some crumbs of cake on the steps, he stationed himself before the hole with a switch in his hand.
After a very long time a pink muzzle appeared, then all the mouse. He struck a light blow and remained stupefied before the tiny body that no longer moved. A drop of blood stained the pavement. He wiped it off hastily with his sleeve, threw the mouse outside, and said nothing about it to any one.
All sorts of small birds picked at the seeds in the garden. He took it into his head to put peas into a hollow reed. When he heard a twittering in the garden, he approached softly, then raised his tube, puffed his cheeks, and the little creatures rained upon his shoulders so abundantly that he could not keep from laughing, overjoyed at his mischief.
One morning, as he was returning along the wall, he caught sight of a big pigeon on top of the rampart, pouting in the sun. Julian stopped to look at it; there was a gap in the wall just there, a splinter of stone came to his hand. He bent his arm, and the stone knocked down the bird, which fell in a heap into the moat.
He hurried down, tearing himself on the bushes, searching everywhere, more active than a young dog.
The pigeon was quivering with broken wings, hanging in the branches of a privet-bush.
Its persistence in life irritated the child. He set about wringing its neck, and the bird’s convulsions made his heart beat, and filled it with a savage and tumultuous pleasure. When it at last stiffened, he felt himself fainting.
That evening, at supper, his father declared that a boy of his age ought to learn venery; and he went to look for an old manuscript containing all the pastime of the chase in question and answer. In it a master showed his pupil the art of entering dogs and manning hawks, of setting snares, how to recognize the stag by his fumets, the fox by his footprints, the wolf by his pads; the best way to discover their tracks, how they are started, and where their refuges usually are; what are the most favourable winds, with an enumeration of the calls and rules of the quarry.
When Julian could repeat all those things by heart, his father made up a pack of hounds for him.
First were to be seen four and twenty Barbary greyhounds, faster than gazelles, but apt to get out of hand; then seventeen couples of Breton dogs, spotted with white on a red ground, unfaltering in their obedience to command, strong-chested and deep-throated. For the attack of the wild boar and perilous lairs, there were forty griffons, hairy as bears. Mastiffs from Tartary, almost as tall as asses, flame-coloured, broad-backed and straight-legged, were meant to pursue the aurochs. The black coat of the spaniels gleamed like satin; the yelping of the talbots rivalled the music of the beagles. In a separate yard, rattling their chains and rolling their eyes, growled eight Alan bulldogs, formidable brutes, which would spring at a horseman’s belly and were not afraid of lions.
They all were fed on wheaten bread, drank from stone troughs, and bore sonorous names.
The falconry, perhaps, even excelled the kennel. The good lord, by dint of money, had procured tercels from the Caucasus, sakers from Babylon, gerfalcons from Germany, and peregrine falcons captured on the cliffs by the shores of frozen seas in distant lands. They were lodged in a shed covered with thatch, and, fastened in order of their size on the perch, had a sod of turf before them, on which they were set from time to time to keep them limber.
Purse-nets, hooks, spring-traps, all sorts of gins, were constructed.
Often they took out to the fields spaniels, which very soon stood. Then the huntsmen, advancing step by step, cautiously spread an immense net over their motionless bodies. A word made them bark; quails started up; and the ladies of the neighbourhood, who had been invited with their husbands, the children and the waiting-women, all threw themselves upon them and caught them easily.
At other times, a drum was beaten to start the hares; foxes fell into trenches, or else a spring opened and caught a wolf by the foot.
But Julian despised those easy artifices; he preferred to hunt far away from other people, with his horse and his hawk. It was almost always a great tartaret from Scythia, white as snow. Its leather hood was surmounted by a plume, golden bells trembled on its blue feet; and it sat fast on its master’s wrist while his horse galloped and the plains unrolled beneath them. Julian, unfastening its leashes, loosed it all at once; the brave bird mounted straight into the air like an arrow; and two unequal specks could be seen twisting, meeting, then disappearing in the heights of the azure. The falcon was not long in descending, tearing some bird in pieces, and came to resume its place on its master’s gauntlet, its two wings trembling.
In this fashion Julian flew the heron, the kite, the crow, and the vulture.
He loved, sounding his horn, to follow his dogs as they ran along the hill-sides, leapt the brooks, climbed up to the woods; and when the stag began to sigh under their bites he struck it down swiftly, then took pleasure in the fury of the mastiffs as they devoured it, cut in pieces upon its reeking hide.
On misty days, he hid himself in a marsh to watch for geese, otters and wild duck.
Three squires waited for him at break of day at the foot of the porch, and the old monk, leaning out of his attic window, made signs to him in vain. Julian did not turn back, he went his way in the heat of the sun, in the rain, in storm, drank water from the springs in his hand, ate wild apples as he trotted; if he was tired, he rested beneath an oak; and he came home at midnight covered with blood and mire, with thorns in his hair and smelling of wild beasts. He became like them. When his mother embraced him, he submitted coldly to her clasp, and appeared to be dreaming of something deep.
He slew bears with blows of his hunting-knife, bulls with the axe, wild boars with the spear; and once, even, without so much as a stick, he defended himself against wolves which were gnawing some corpses beneath a gallows.
One winter morning, he set out before daylight, well equipped, a cross-bow on his shoulder and a quiverful of bolts at his saddle-bow.
His Danish jennet, followed by two basset-hounds, made the ground ring as it walked with even pace. Drops of sleet clung to his mantle, a strong breeze was blowing. One side of the horizon cleared; and in the paleness of the twilight he saw some rabbits running about at the mouth of their burrows. The two basset-hounds suddenly dashed upon them, and with a quick shake to this side and that broke their necks.
Soon he entered a wood. On the end of a branch a capercaillie benumbed with cold was sleeping with its head under its wing. Julian sliced off both its feet with a backhanded stroke of his sword, and went on his way without picking it up.
Three hours later he found himself on the peak of a mountain so high that the sky seemed almost black. Before him a rock like a long wall sloped down and overhung a precipice; and at its end two wild goats looked down into the abyss. As he had not his bolts, for he had left his horse behind, he determined to climb down to them; crouching, bare-footed, he at last reached the first of the goats and plunged a poniard between its ribs. The second, seized with terror, leapt into space. Julian darted forward to strike it, and, his right foot slipping, he fell across the carcase of the other, his face over the abyss and his arms out-stretched.
Having got down to the plain again, he followed the willows that fringed a stream. Cranes, flying very low, passed over his head from time to time. Julian felled them with his whip and never missed one.
Meanwhile the warmer air had melted the rime, great mists floated about and the sun appeared. He saw shining far away a frozen lake, which looked like lead. In the middle of the lake was a beast which Julian did not know, a beaver with its black muzzle. In spite of the distance, a bolt brought it down; and he was vexed not to be able to carry away its skin.
Then he went on through an avenue of great trees which formed a sort of triumphal arch with their crowns at the edge of a forest. A roe-deer sprang out of a thicket, a fallow-deer appeared in a cross-way, a badger came out of a hole, a peacock on the grass displayed its tail;—and, when he had killed them all, more roe-deer presented themselves, more fallow-deer, more badgers, more peacocks, and blackbirds, jays, polecats, foxes, hedgehogs, lynxes, an infinity of beasts, more numerous at every step. They played about him, trembling, with sweet and supplicating looks. But Julian never grew tired of killing them, now winding his cross-bow, now unsheathing his sword, now thrusting with his cutlass, without a thought in his mind, without recollection of anything whatsoever. He was hunting in some country somewhere, from a time unknown, simply because he was there, everything done with the ease experienced in dreams. An extraordinary spectacle arrested him. Stags filled a valley shaped like a circus; and huddled one against the other they warmed themselves with their breaths, which could be seen reeking in the mist.
The prospect of such carnage choked him with delight for some minutes. Then he dismounted, turned up his sleeves, and began to shoot.
At the whistling of the first bolt, all the stags turned round their heads at once. Gaps showed in their mass; plaintive voices sounded, and a great commotion agitated the herd.
The sides of the valley were too high for them to clear. They sprang about in the enclosure, seeking to escape. Julian aimed, let go, and his arrows fell like the rainstreaks in a storm-shower. The maddened stags fought, reared, climbed upon one another; and their bodies locked by their antlers made a great hillock which crumbled away as it moved.
At last they were dead, lying on the sand, the foam at their nostrils, their entrails protruding, the heaving of their flanks subsiding by degrees. Then all was still.
Night was about to fall; and behind the wood, between the branches, the sky was like a lake of blood.
Julian leant his back against a tree. With listless eye he contemplated the enormity of the massacre, not understanding how he had been able to do it.
On the other side of the valley, at the edge of the forest, he saw a stag, a hind and her fawn.
The stag, which was black and of monstrous size, had sixteen points and a white beard. The hind, light as withered leaves in colour, was browsing on the grass; and the dappled fawn sucked at her dug without hindering her progress.
The cross-bow snored once again. The fawn, that same instant, was killed. Then its dam, looking to the sky, brayed in a voice deep, heart-rending, human. With a shot full in the breast the exasperated Julian stretched her on the earth.
The great stag had seen him, and gave a spring. Julian discharged his last bolt at him. It struck his forehead and remained fixed there.
The great stag did not seem to feel it; striding over the dead he kept advancing, was about to charge down upon him and disembowel him; and Julian drew back in unspeakable terror. The prodigious animal halted; and with flaming eyes, solemn as a patriarch or a justiciary, while a bell tolled in the distance, it thrice repeated:
“Accursed! Accursed! Accursed! Some day, ferocious heart, thou wilt murder thy father and mother!”
It bent its knees, closed its eyelids gently, and died.
Julian was stupefied, then overcome by sudden fatigue; and an immense disgust, an immense sadness, took possession of him. With his head in both his hands, he wept a long time.
His horse was lost; his dogs had left him; the solitude which enfolded him seemed all menacing with vague perils. Then, seized with fright, he took a way across country, chose a path at hazard, and found himself almost immediately at the castle-gate.
That night he did not sleep. Under the swaying of the hanging lamp he continually saw the great black stag. Its prediction obsessed him; he fought against it. “No, no, no! I cannot kill them!” Then he thought, “But what if I wished it?” And he was in dread lest the Devil should inspire him with the desire.
For three long months, his mother prayed in anguish at his pillow, and his father walked continually up and down the corridors in anguish, groaning. He summoned the most famous master-leeches, who ordered quantities of drugs. Julian’s malady, they said, was caused by some noxious wind or some amorous desire. But to all questions the young man shook his head.
His strength came back to him; and they walked him out in the courtyard, the old monk and the good lord each supporting him by an arm.
When he was completely restored, he refrained obstinately from the chase.
His father, wishing to cheer him, made him a present of a great Saracen sword.
It was at the top of a pillar, in a trophy. To reach it a ladder was required. Julian climbed it. The heavy sword slipped through his fingers, and grazed the good lord so closely, as it fell, that his gown was cut by it; Julian thought he had killed his father, and fainted.
Thenceforth he had a dread of weapons. The sight of a naked blade made him blench. This weakness caused great distress to his family.
At length the old monk commanded him in the name of God and for the honour of his ancestors to resume the exercises of a gentleman.
The squires amused themselves every day with throwing the javelin. In this Julian very soon excelled. He sent his into bottle-mouths, broke the teeth of the weather-vanes, hit the nails-studs of the doors at a hundred paces.
One summer evening, at the hour when the mist renders things indistinct, he was under the trellis in the garden and saw down at the end two white wings that fluttered at the height of the fence. He never doubted but it was a stork; and he darted his javelin.
A piercing cry resounded.
It was his mother, whose head-dress with its long lappets remained pinned to the wall.
Julian fled from the castle, and was never seen there again.