"And the procession of our artisans' guilds will be no less superb! Would you believe it, neighbor, that I, who during all my life of a carpenter have not, as you may imagine, ever held a needle in my hands, helped my wife to sew together the stripes of our new banner?"
"Thank God, the weather will be beautiful for the ceremony. Look how clear and brilliant the dawn is!"
"Couldn't be otherwise! Such a feast could not lack good weather. I expect that when I shall hear for the first time the peals from our communal belfry every clank will make my heart bound!"
These dialogues and many others, naive testimony of the joy of the inhabitants of Laon, took place along the length of all the streets from house to house, from the humblest to the richest. Almost all the windows, opened since the break of day, exposed to view the laughing faces of men, women and children, all actively engaged with preparations for the festivities.
The gladsome stir in almost all the quarters of the city, rendered all the more striking the gloomy and sombre and, so to say, sullen aspect of a certain number of dwellings of ancient architecture, and whose gates were, as a rule, flanked by two turrets with pointed roofs, surmounted with a weather-vane. Not a chink of these dwellings, blackish with age, was open on this morning. They belonged to the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the metropolitan church, or to noble knights, who, not owning estates large enough to live in the country, inhabited the cities, and ever sided against the bourgeois and with the lay or ecclesiastical seigneur. Accordingly, in Laon, these clergymen and knights were designated as the episcopals, while the inhabitants, who, according to the language of the day, "took the oath of the Commune," were called the communiers. The antique turrets of the dwellings of the episcopals were at once a species of fortification and a symbol of the nobility of their origin. On that morning, these dwellings, silent and shut up, seemed to denote the displeasure given to the noble episcopals by the rejoicings of the Laonese laboring classes.
CHAPTER II.
THE CHARTER OF LAON.
But there were other dwellings, also flanked with turrets, besides those of the nobles. These others were gaily decorated, and the whiteness of their masonry, contrasting with the aspect of the ancient architecture of the nobles, to which they seemed to be annexes, bespoke a more recent date.
One of these establishments, thus fortified only a short time since, lay at the corner of Exchange street, the leading mercantile thoroughfare of the city. The old door, whose threshold and lintels were of stone, and at either side of which rose two white and high turrets recently built, had been thrown open at the very first break of day, and several townsmen were seen going in and out. They came for certain instructions on the ceremonies. In one of the chambers of this dwelling sat Fergan and Joan the Hunchback. It was about twelve years since they had left the Holy Land. The hair and beard of Fergan, now over forty years of age, began to betray streaks of gray. He was no longer the serf of olden days—restless, savage, tattered. His features breathed happiness and serenity. Equipped almost wholly as a soldier, he wore a jacket of iron mail and a corselet of steel. He was seated near a table at which he wrote. Joan, clad in a robe of brown wool, and wearing on her head a sober bonnet, from under which a long white veil fell upon her shoulders, looked no less blissful than her husband. On the sweet face of this brave mother, once so severely tried, the expression of profound felicity was depicted. At the request of Fergan she had just drawn from an old oaken cabinet a little iron casket, which she placed upon the table where Fergan was writing. The casket, an inheritance from Gildas the Tanner, contained several parchment scrolls, yellow with the age of centuries, besides the several relics so dear to the family of the Gallic chief Joel, and among which was the silver cross of Genevieve, together with the pilgrim's shell that Fergan had taken from Neroweg VI in the desert of Syria. Fergan had just finished transcribing on a parchment a copy of the communal charter, under which, for the last three years, the city of Laon was free and led a peaceful and flourishing existence. The quarryman wished to join the copy of that charter to the archives of the family of Joel, as a witness of the awakening spirit of freedom of his own days, and of the inexorable resolution of the people to battle against the kings, the clergymen and the seigneurs, descendants or heritors of the Frankish conquest. For the last fifteen or twenty years back, other cities besides Laon, driven to extremities by the horrors of feudalism, had, some through insurrection, others through great sacrifices of money, obtained similar charters, under shelter of which they governed themselves like republics, similar to the heroic and brilliant days of Gaul's independence, centuries before the invasions of the Romans. The copy of the communal charter of Laon, the original of which, deposited in the Mayor's office, bore the name and signature of Gaudry, bishop of the diocese of Laon, and of Louis the Lusty, King of the French, ran as follows:
CHARTER OF THE COMMUNE OF LAON.
I.