"Run quick for the clerk! He shall pray at my side during the night—he shall not leave me. The spectre of Wisigarde will not dare to approach me with a priest at my side."
The count's terror increased amain while Morise ran out for the clerk, and Godegisele, more dead than alive with fear, clung on her knees to the beam as she felt her strength wholly leaving her. The count noticed not her distress, but also dropping on his knees smote his chest and cried:
"Lord, God! Have mercy upon a miserable sinner! I paid for my brother's death, I paid for the death of my wife Wisigarde, I shall pay still more to keep Wisigarde from haunting me! I shall to-morrow start the building of the chapel in the fastness of Allange; I shall have the villa of Bishop Cautin rebuilt! Lord! Good Lord God! Have mercy upon a miserable sinner! Deliver me from the devil and from the spectre of Wisigarde!"
And the fervent and devout believer, besotted with terror and intoxication, furiously smote his chest as, filled with frightful anxiety, he awaited the arrival of the clerk.
Such was the humanity, generousness, enlightenment of the race of the conquerors of old Gaul! What a tender attachment to their wives! What a respect for the sweet bonds of the family and for the sanctity of the domestic hearth! Oh, our mothers! Virile matrons, so venerated by our ancestors! Proud Gallic women of yore, who sat beside your husbands at the solemn councils of the state, where peace and war were decided upon! Wives beloved, valiant and strong in arms! Holy virgins! Women emperors! O, Margarid, Hena, Meroë, Loyse, Genevieve, Ellen, Sampso, Victoria the Great—rejoice! Rejoice that you have quitted this world for the mysterious worlds where we shall live forever! Rejoice at the strongness of your hearts! What indignation, what shame, what a grief to your souls at the sight of your sisters—although of a different race from your own and hostile—at the sight of women—the wives of kings, seigneurs and warriors—treated, the wicked and the good alike, with such contempt and ferocity by their barbarous husbands!
Such are those Franks whom the bishops invited to the quarry of Gaul! Such are the conquerors whom the priests of Christ fondle, caress, flatter and bless!
CHAPTER IV.
THE LION OF POITIERS.
Seigneur count! Seigneur count Neroweg! Wake up! Instead of having spent the night, as you expected, in the arms of one of your female slaves, out of fear for the devil you spent it on your knees, close to your clerk, and repeating in a maudlin and besotted voice the prayers that the holy man mumbled, half asleep, into your ears. After having eaten and drunk his fill he would have by far preferred his own bed to your company. Finally reassured by the first peep of day—a time that bars out the demons—you fell asleep on your couch, furnished with bear-skins, the trophies of the chase. Seigneur count Neroweg, awake! One of the five sons of your good King Clotaire, to-day the sole master of Gaul—all the other sons and grandsons of the pious Clovis, who rests in consecrated ground in the basilica of the venerated apostles at Paris, having died—one of the five sons of that King Clotaire, Chram by name, a bastard son—but what does that matter!—and governor of Auvergne in his father's name, Chram is approaching! He comes, a signal favor, with his three favorites, a goodly number of leudes in the train of his antrustions, as the royal favorites proudly style themselves. Awake, Neroweg! Awake, seigneur count! There is Chram, coming to pay you a visit. Brilliant and numerous is the cavalcade of his suite. The three dear friends of Chram, still dearer friends of pillage, of murder and of rape, accompany the royal personage, do you not hear? Their names are Imnachair, Spatachair, and the "Lion of Poitiers," the renegade Gaul, who, like so many others of his stripe, rallied to the conquering Franks. The "Lion of Poitiers" earned his name by reason of his carnivorous taste for rapine and flesh dripping blood.
Seigneur count! Seigneur count Neroweg! Will you not wake up? Wake up also your wife Godegisele, who spent the night dreaming of strangled wives. Be up and doing. Let Godegisele array herself in the most resplendent jewels of your fourth wife Wisigarde! Hurry, hurry, seigneur count! Let Godegisele don her most attractive raiment! She may be to the taste of Chram or of his favorites. He is a gracious king, an accommodating king. There is none more so. Is a woman, whether free or slave, pleasing to the eye of any friend of his, he forthwith equips his favorite with a royal diploma, by virtue of which he takes the woman that he covets.