"I conjure you, dear father; drive away these evil thoughts—But what did that wicked Count Rothbert say to you?"
"First of all, he said to me that the Northmans were before Paris, and in immense numbers."
"The Northmans!" cried Ghisèle turning pale and shuddering from head to foot with fear. "The Northmans before Paris! Oh, woe, woe is us!" and the child hid her face in her hands, while tears inundated her countenance and her frame shook with convulsive sobs.
With his eyes fixed on the floor, not venturing to raise them lest they should encounter his daughter's, Charles the Simple proceeded with a tremulous voice:
"The Count of Paris, as I was saying, informed me that the Northmans were before the city. 'What would you have me do against it?' I asked him; 'I have neither soldiers nor men; you, seigneurs, who are the masters of almost all Gaul, have nothing else to do but to defend your own possessions; that is your concern.' Rothbert answered me: 'The Northmans threaten to burn down Paris, massacre the people, and to overrun Gaul ravaging and sacking the fields and towns. No resistance can be offered them. The majority of the villeins and serfs refuse to take the field against them. The soldiers at the disposal of us, the seigneurs, are too few in number to pretend to combat the pirates. We must treat with them.' I then, my little Ghisèle, said to the count: 'Very well, treat; that is your affair, seeing those pagans are before your walls of Paris and in your duchy of France.' 'And so I did,' Rothbert answered me; 'I treated in your name with the envoys of Rolf, the Northman chief.'"
"With Rolf," murmured Ghisèle clasping her hands in horror. "With that pirate! That felon steeped in crime and sacrilege! That monster who was the cause of my mother's death!"
"Alas! To the desolation of us both, dear daughter, this accursed Rothbert, aiming only at the protection of his city of Paris and of his duchy of France from the clutches of the old Northman brigand, promised in my name that I would relinquish Neustria to him—Neustria, the best of the provinces left to me—and besides—"
As Ghisèle perceived that her father hesitated to finish the sentence, she wiped his tears and asked; "And besides, what else do they demand, father?"
Charles the Simple remained for a moment silent, and shuddered. Presently, however, overcoming the imbecile weakness of his character, he broke out into fresh tears, crying: "No! No! I will not! However much of a simpleton I may be, that shall never be. No! For once, at least, in my life I shall act the King!" And closing his daughter in his arms, Charles the Simple covered her head with kisses and cried: "No! No! He shall not have my Ghisèle! The insolence of that old brigand, to think of marrying—the grand-daughter of Charles the Great—and she a child of barely fourteen! Sooner than see you the wife of Rolf, I would kill you—I would kill you on the spot. Oh, Lord God, have mercy upon me!"
Ghisèle heard her father's words almost without understanding them. She was gazing upon him with mingled doubt and stupor when a new personage stepped into the hall. It was Francon, Archbishop of Rouen. The man's impassive face, cold and hard, resembled a marble mask. He approached close to Ghisèle and her father, who still clung together in a close embrace, and pointing with his hand to the curtain behind which he had kept himself concealed up to then, said in his sharp, short style: