"Sir, in the name of the nobility of Beauvoisis, I now answer you that we have our hands so full on our own domains, that it would be disastrous for us to take the field in distant regions. For the rest, the request of the King will be considered when the deputies of the nobility and the clergy shall be assembled in the States General of the Kingdom. Until then we shall remain at home."
A sudden outburst of hisses from the crowd of peasants and bourgeois answered the words of the seigneur of Chivry; and Adam the Devil, leaving Jocelyn the Champion for a moment alone with Mazurec, who, having regained consciousness, was resignedly expecting the hour of his death, thrust himself among several groups of serfs saying:
"Do you hear them? Fine seigneurs they are!... What are they good for?... Only to combat in tourneys with pointless lances and edgeless swords, or to indulge in bravados in combats, where they are fully armed, against Jacques Bonhomme, armed only with a stick!"
"That's so!" answered several angry voices. "To the devil with the nobility!"
"Poor Mazurec the Lambkin! It is enough to make one's heart ache to see his face bleeding under the iron gauntlet of the Knight."
"And now they are to put him in a bag and throw him into the water!... I declare.... That's what they call justice...."
"Ah! When, thanks to the cowardice of our seigneurs, the English will have penetrated to this region," resumed Adam the Devil, "what with our masters on one side and the English on the other, we shall be like iron beaten on the anvil by the hammer. Oppressed by these, pillaged and sacked by the others, our lot will be twice as hard. Woe is us!"
"That's what happens now when bands of marauders descend upon our villages. We flee for safety to the woods, and when we return, we find our homes in flames or in ashes!"
"O, God! What a lot is ours!"
"And yet our vicar says that secures our salvation ... in heaven! Another fraud upon us!"