"Rise to your feet, my wife! Rise to your feet, my daughter! Go back into the house!"
Not daring to disobey the aged man, both Martha and Anne rose and returned sobbing into the house.
"Rothbert," resumed Eidiol, when his wife and daughter had re-entered the house, "you have no right to hold us prisoners. Thanks to God, we are not left to the utter mercy of our masters, like the serfs of the field. We enjoy certain franchises in the city. If we are guilty, we must, as skippers, be tried before the bourgeois Court of the water merchants."
"The officer whose duty it is to lop off the ears of bandits of your kind at the cross of Trahoir, will furnish you with a practical proof of my right to un-ear you," was the sententious answer made to Eidiol by the count as he remounted his horse. "Back into the saddle," the count ordered his men. "Two of you shall follow me; the others will take the two prisoners to the jail of the Chatelet; my provost will pass sentence upon them; and to-morrow—to the gallows! They shall both be hanged high and short."
"Seigneur count," broke in a man, who stepped forward out of the crowd that had in the meanwhile been gathering in the narrow thoroughfare, "Seigneur count, I am the sergeant of the Bishop of Paris."
"I see as much by your garb; what is it you want?"
"The jurisdiction of the left side of this street belongs to my seigneur, the bishop. I claim the prisoners. This crowd will lend me their physical assistance, if need be, to take the prisoners to the bishop's court, where they will be judged by our own provost, as is our right."
"If the left side of the street belongs to the jurisdiction of the bishop, the right is under my authority," cried the Count of Paris. "I shall keep the prisoners, and shall bring them before my own court."
"Seigneur, that would be your right if the crime had been committed on the side of the street that is subject to your fief—"
"The two scamps," Rothbert went on to say, interrupting the sergeant, "were on top of a wagon that obstructed the street in its whole breadth. There can be no question of right side or left."