"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."