The Story of Viteau

by Frank R. Stockton

Raymond, the elder, was about fourteen years old, and his brother Louis was some eighteen months younger. In form and feature, and in general disposition and character, they were not unlike many of the boys of our day, and yet these two young fellows lived more than six hundred years ago. They were dressed in simple tunics, one green, one brown, and wore short breeches, dark-colored stockings, and rather clumsy shoes.

The two brothers were very busily engaged in conversation, for they had a great deal to say to each other, and not much time to say it in. On the next day Louis was going away from home, to be gone a long, long time.

Raymond and Louis were the sons of the Countess of Viteau, whose chateau stood on a little eminence about half a mile away. Their father, the Count of Viteau, had been one of the most steadfast adherents and supporters of the Duke of Burgundy, in his endeavors to maintain the independence of his dukedom against the claims of the French crown, and had fallen in one of the battles between the Duke's followers and the army of the Regent, Queen Blanche, who, in those days, ruled France in the name of her son, the young King, Louis IX., afterward known as Louis the Just, or St. Louis.

The Duke's forces had been defeated, Burgundy had been compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of the French crown, and peace reigned in the kingdom.

The widowed Countess of Viteau now found herself the sole protector and guardian of her two boys. Fortunately, she had a large estate, but even this added to her cares and responsibilities, and rendered her less able to attend to what she had intended should be the aim and business of her life—the education of her sons.

Education, in those days, did not mean what it does now. The majority of the people, even of the upper classes, were not educated at all, some of the lords and barons being unable to write their names. Printing had not been invented; all books were in manuscript, and were scarce and valuable. Most of the learning, such as it was, had been, for a long time, confined to the monks and priests; but, in the era in which our two boys lived, people had begun to give more attention to general education, and there were schools in some of the large cities which were well attended, and where the students of that day were taught grammar, logic, rhetoric, music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, although their studies in most of these branches were not carried very far. The school of Paris was one of the most celebrated of these institutions.

The Countess of Viteau was among the few ladies of the time who really cared for an education beyond that which included the small number of accomplishments then considered necessary to persons of high position. When quite a young woman, she had learned all that the priests, one or more of whom generally lived in her father's house, could teach her, and afterward, when her sons were old enough, she made it her personal business to attend to their studies. Some things she taught them herself, and, for other branches, she employed such men of knowledge—almost always members of some order of the clergy—as could be obtained.

But now the time had arrived when the customs of the day demanded that one of her sons, at least, should leave her to receive an education of another sort, and her younger boy was to be sent away to the castle of the Count de Barran, an old friend and fellow-soldier of her husband, to be taught, as most of the boys of his station were taught, the arts and usages of knighthood and chivalry. Raymond would also be a knight, but his mother wished him to be more than that. He would succeed to the rank and estate of his father, and she hoped that he would not only be a nobleman and a soldier, but a scholar. When he should leave her to go to the school at Paris,—and it was for this school that she was now endeavoring to prepare him,—he would live with one of his relatives, by whom he would be instructed in the noble duties of chivalry. His mother felt sure that his studies at the school and his knightly exercises would not interfere with each other.

"Only one more day," said Raymond, "and then it will seem so strange here without you, Louis."

"But it will be ever so much stranger for me," said Louis, "for I shall be without everybody. I have never seen a single soul of the castle people, excepting the Count de Barran, and it is so long since he was here that I have almost forgotten him. He was a big, stout man, and that's all I know about him."