“You think then, cut-cloth, that a person amuses himself by looking at a bull’s tail and eyes, when he is charging on him?”
“That is true, that is true,” replied several assistants. “Certain it is,” continued the consul, wishing to move the crowd to pity the recorder, and irritate it against the baron, “certain it is that this officer of justice and of the king narrowly escaped being a victim to the diabolical wickedness of Raimond V.”
“Raimond V. destroyed two litters of wolves’ whelps that ravaged our farm, to say nothing of the present he made us of the heads of the wolf and the whelps, which are nailed to our door,” said a peasant, shaking his head.
“Raimond V. is not a bad master. If the harvest fails, he comes to your aid; he replaced two draught-oxen that I lost through witchcraft.”
“That is true, when one holds out a hand to the lord of Anbiez, he never draws it back empty,” said an artisan.
“And at the time of the last descent of the pirates in this place, he and his people bravely fought the miscreants; but for him, I, my wife, and my daughter, would have been carried off by these demons,” said a citizen.
“And the two sons of the good man Jacbuin were redeemed and brought back from Barbary by good Father Elzear, the brother of Raimond V. But for him they would still have been in chains galling enough to damn their souls,” replied another.
“And the other brother, the commander, who looks as sombre as his black galley,” said a patron of a merchant vessel, “did he not keep those pagans in awe for more than two months while his galley lay soaked in the gulf? Come, a good and noble family is that of Anbiez. After all, this man of law is not one of us,” and pointed to the recorder. “What does it matter to us if he is or is not run through by a bull’s horn?”
“That is true, that is true; he is not one of us,” repeated several voices.
“Raimond V. is a good old gentleman who never refuses a pound of powder and a pound of lead to a sailor, to defend his boat,” said a sailor.