"Explain yourself. What is the matter?"
"In this country of Nointel, when a female serf or bourgeois marries, the seigneur, if it please him, is entitled to ... the first night of his female vassal. They call it the 'right of first fruits.' ... At least do not laugh!"
"Laugh! Not by the devil!" answered Jocelyn, whose face suddenly overspread with somberness. "Oh, you recall to my mind a melancholy affair. A short while ago I had to plead a case on the arena near Amiens. Crossing a village, I saw a gathering of serfs. Upon inquiry I learned that one of the peasants of the group, a butcher attached to the fief of the bishopric, had married that very morning a handsome girl of the parish. The bishop, in the exercise of his right, sent for the bride to take her to his bed. The serf answered the episcopal bailiff, charged with the mission: 'My wife is in my hut, I shall bring her out to you'; and coming back a few instants later said to him: 'My wife is a little bashful, she does not like to come out, go in and bring her out yourself.' The bailiff went into the hut, and what does he find? The unhappy girl lying in a pool of blood; she was dead."
"Good God! What a shocking story!"
"In order to ransom her from dishonor, her husband had killed her with a blow of his axe."
At these words, William Caillet, who until then had remained indifferent to the conversation between Alison and Jocelyn, shook convulsively, raised his savage face and listened, while, tears streaming from her eyes, Alison cried: "Oh, poor woman! To be thus killed! What a terrible resolution must not have seized her husband to resort to such a frightful extreme!"
"Resolute men are rare."
"Alas, Sir champion. Those who, degraded by serfdom, remain indifferent to such ignominy are perhaps less to be pitied than those who resent it."
"But most of them do resent it," cried Jocelyn. "In vain do the seigneurs seek to reduce these ill-starred beings to the state of brutes. Are not even among wild beasts the males seen to defend their females unto death? Does not man, however coarse, however brutified, however craven he may be, fire up with jealousy the moment he loves? Is not love the only possession left to the serfs, the only solace in their misery? Blood and death! I grow savage at the mere thought of the rage and despair of a serf at the sight of the humble companion of his cheerless days sullied forever by a seigneur! By the navel of Satan, by the horns of Moses, the thought of it exasperates me!"
"Oh, Sir," said Alison with tears in her eyes, "your words tell the story of that poor Mazurec, the young man I was about to tell you of."