"Ho! Ho! Ho!" broke in the knight of Chaumontel, laughing out aloud. "You surely are not troubled with the fear that during your absence Jacques Bonhomme will violate your wife?"
"These villeins, an unheard of thing, have dared to insult, to menace and to throw themselves upon us like the wild beasts that they are."
"And you saw that rag-tag flee before our horses like a set of hares. The executions of this evening will complete the lesson, and Jacques Bonhomme will remain the Jacques Bonhomme of ever. Come! Make your mind easy! While I prefer a hundred times the hunt, the tourneys, wine, game and love to the stupid and dangerous feats of war, I shall accompany you to the army, so as to bring you back soon to the beautiful Gloriande. As to the English prisoners that you are to lead in chains to her feet as a pledge of your valor, we shall scrape together a few leagues from our lady's manor the first varlets that we can lay our hands on. We shall bind them and threaten them with hanging if they utter a single word; and they will do well enough for the ten English prisoners. Is not the idea a jolly one? But, Conrad, what are you brooding over?"
"Perhaps I was wrong in exercising my right over that vassal's wife," replied the Sire of Nointel with a somber and pensive mien. "It was a mere libertine caprice, because I love Gloriande. But the resistance of the scamp, who, besides, charged you with theft, irritated me." And resuming after a moment of silence, the Sire of Nointel addressed his friend: "Tell me the truth; here among ourselves; did you really rob the villein? It would have been an amusing trick.... I only would like to know if you really did it?"
"Conrad, the suspicion is insulting—"
"Oh, it is not in the interest of the dead serf that I put the question, but it is in my own."
"How? Explain yourself more clearly."
"If that vassal has been unjustly drowned ... his prophecy would have more weight."
"By heavens! Are you quite losing your wits, Conrad? Do you see me saddened because Jacques Bonhomme has predicted to me that I was to be drowned?... The devil! It is I who mean to drown your sadness in a cup of good Burgundy wine.... Come, Conrad, to horse ... to horse!... Supper waits, and after the feast pretty female serfs! Long live joy and love! Let's reach the manor in a canter—"
"Perhaps I did wrong in forcing the serf's wife," the Sire of Nointel repeated to himself. "I know not why, but a tradition, handed down from the elder branch of my family, located at Auvergne, comes back to me at this moment. The tradition has it that the hatred of the serfs has often been fatal to the Nerowegs!"