"You think not?" replied Gaëlo. "And who is the present Count of Chartres and master of the country if not a pirate who one time was a swine-herd at Trancout, a poor village located near Troyes?"[2]

"Oh! Oh! Chief," put in Robin Jaws, "you have Hastain in mind, the old bandit who fought in the ranks of the Northman pirates! We know the song:

"When he had sacked the Franks,
Saw all his ships full rigged,
Hastain of Rome heard tell,
Vowed he would go there.
Vowed he would take the place,
Plunder and pillage it,
And make of Rome the King
His friend Boern Iron Sides."

"Simon," said Gaëlo, interrupting Robin's song, "listen well with both your large ears to the end of the song! Proceed my champion!"

"The song ends well," answered Robin, resuming the thread of the ballad:

"Down Into Italy,
Plundering, the pirates went,
Laded their ships with rich
Spoils of the Churches.
Then Hastain gave the word,
For the return to France,
And to the Frankish shores
Steered they their way back.
"But the old Frankish King,
Dreading the pirates' band,
Quoth unto Hastain then:
'Strike not the abbeys;
Touch not nor plunder them,
Nor the seigniorial burgs,—
I shall establish you
Count of the Chartres.'
"Hastain the pirate Chief,
Well with the offer pleased,
Answered agreeably,
'Lo, I am willing!'
Thus was the bargain struck,
Thus he became the Count
Of the vast Chartres land,
He, once a swine-herd!"

"By the devil and his horns! Long live Hastain! All is possible!" cried Simon Large-Ears, saying which he joined his piercing voice to the deep voices of the pirates, who, striking with their oars upon the row of bucklers that hung from the sides of the holker, sang fit to rend the welkin:

"Thus was the bargain struck,
Thus he became the Count
Of the vast Chartres land,
He, once a swine-herd!"

"And now," Gaëlo resumed after his champions had finished the martial refrain, "if a swine-herd serf could become the master of a province, do you hold it impossible for fifteen resolute champions to take possession of the abbey of St. Denis, the richest abbey of all Gaul?"

"No! No!" cried the pirates fired with the prospect of pillage, and again smiting with their oars the bucklers that hung from the sides of the holker. "To St. Denis! To St. Denis! Death to its tonsured masters! Pillage! Pillage! Fire and blood!"