"Your son tried to violate me. Of course I had to appeal to your intervention for protection against fresh outrages."
"Had not my equerry Eberhard the Tricky thrown himself between me and Gonthram, I would have killed my son on his return from the hunt. He has insisted that you offered to yield yourself to him if he consented to stab me to death."
"That was a dastardly calumny!"
"Perhaps I should have plunged my dagger in your heart and be done with you."
"And why did you not?"
"Because you read in the stars that our lives were bound together, and that your death would precede mine by only three days. But if I am to die of the distemper that oppresses me, a curse upon you, sorceress! You shall not survive me. Garin the Serf-eater is charged with my vengeance. Oh, you will not leave this castle alive!" Neroweg pressed his forehead with both hands and proceeded in a spirit more and more dejected as he spoke: "The philter—Will it heal me? Since you cast your diabolical spell upon me, the days seem endless. I am indifferent to everything. After I make the rounds of my domains, shut in among the seigniories of my neighbors, all of them my enemies; after I have ravaged their lands, burned their houses, killed their serfs; after I have levied ransom on the travelers, had justice executed by my bailiff, my provost and my hangman; after all that I feel sadder, wearier, more than ever tired of life. I have even surprised myself wishing for death!"
"You wage war, you eat, you drink, you hunt, you sleep and you take your female serfs to your bed when they marry. What is it you lack?"
"I am tired, cloyed with gross enjoyments. Wine tastes sour to me. I feel uneasy when I hunt in my forests, fearful of some ambush prepared by my neighbors. I find my donjon sepulchral like a tomb. I choke under its stone vaults. If I leave the manor, I have ever under my eyes the same saddening landscape."
"Leave the country, you stupid and savage wolf!"
"Whither shall I go and be happier? Here I am master. What would my fate be elsewhere? During my absence, my neighbors would descend upon my domains like a flock of vultures. The devil! I am bound to my seigniory like my serfs to the glebe!"