"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 Ghisèle, and the girl looked into her father's face with so childlike and mild a countenance that Charles the Simple, but not wicked, seemed embarrassed 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, Ghisèle, 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 Ghisèle! 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 Ghisèle, 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 Ghisèle, 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!"