"If you have only one foundered horse, how do you expect to cultivate your fields? How will you pay your back rent and the rent of next year?"
"Alack, seigneur! I am in a cruel fix. I have brought with me my wife and children. Here they are. They join me in beseeching you to remit what I owe. Perhaps in the future I shall not meet so many disasters one after another."
At a sign from the unhappy Gaul, his wife and children threw themselves at the feet of the intendant and with tears in their eyes implored him to remit the debt. Ricarik answered the colonist: "You have done wisely in bringing your wife and children with you; you have saved me the trouble of sending for them. I know of a certain Jew of Nantes called Mordecai, who loans money on bodily security. He will advance at least ten gold sous on your wife and two children, both of whom are old enough to work. You will be able to invest the money in the purchase of a horse to replace the one that was foundered. Later, after you shall have reimbursed the Jew his loan, he will return you your wife and children."
The colonist and his family heard with stupor the words of the intendant, and broke out into sobs and prayers. "Seigneur," said the Gaul, "sell me if you like as a slave; my condition will not be worse than it is now; but do not separate me from my wife and children.... I never shall be able to pay my back rent and reimburse the Jew; I prefer slavery to my present life as a colonist. Have pity upon us!"
"That will do!" said Ricarik. "You have too numerous a family to feed; that is what is ruining you.... When you will have only your own needs to attend to, you will be able to pay your rent, and with Mordecai's loan you will be enabled to continue to work." Turning thereupon to one of his men: "Take the wife and children of Sebastian to the Jew Mordecai, he happens to be here now."
Bonaik sought to mollify the Frank, but in vain, and Ricarik proceeded to call up by their names other colonists who were in arrears with their rent. The intendant was at this work when a lad of from seventeen to eighteen was dragged before him. The lad offered violent resistance to his captors and cried: "Let me go! I have brought three falcons and two goshawks for the abbess' perch as my father's rent.... I took them from their nests at the risk of breaking my bones.... What is it you want?"
"Ricarik," said one of the slaves of the abbey who was dragging the lad, "we were near the fence of the abbey's perch when we saw a sparrow-hawk, still hooded, that had escaped from the falconer's hand. The bird flew only a little distance. Being impeded by its hood, it fell down close to the fence. This lad immediately threw his cap upon the bird and put it into his bag. We caught the thief in the act. Here is the bag. The sparrow-hawk is inside with its hood still on."
"What have you to say?" asked Ricarik of the young lad who remained somber and silent. "Do you know how the law punishes the theft of a sparrow-hawk? It condemns the thief to pay three silver sous or to allow the bird to eat six ounces of flesh from his breast. I have a good mind to apply the law to you as a salutary example to other hawk thieves.... What have you to say?"
"If our abbess," the lad answered boldly, "gives our flesh for pasture to her hunting birds, as true as my name is Broute-Saule, sooner or later I shall have my revenge on her and you!"
"Seize him!" cried Ricarik. "Let him be tied down to a bench outside of the shed so that his punishment be public.... Let the flesh on his breast be offered to the sparrow-hawk for pasture!"