But at that moment remembering that the event which Suger recounted must have taken place full fifty years before, and therefore that none of the actors therein could be a fit object for the vengeance which he had thought of inflicting with his own hand, he sat down again, and read out the tale, running rapidly through the murderer's first triumphant contemplation of the property he had obtained by the death of his son-in-law, and even of his own daughter, but pausing with an angry sort of gladness over the detail of the signal punishment inflicted on him and his accomplices. Nor did he find the barbarous aggravation of tearing his heart from his bosom, and casting his body, attached to a plank, into the river Seine, to float to his native place, in any degree too horrible an award for so horrible a villain. On the contrary, starting from his chair, with all the circumstances of his own fate forgotten, he was striding up and down the hall, wishing that this same bloodthirsty Guillaume had been alive then to meet him in fight; when suddenly, just as the old seneschal was bustling in to lay out the table for his young lord's supper, the long, loud blast of a horn sounded at the outer gates.
"Throw open the gates, and see who is there!" cried De Coucy. "By the blessed rood! I have visiters early!"
"In the holy Virgin's name! beau sire, open not the gates to-night!" cried the old seneschal. "You do not know what you do. All the neighbouring barons have driven the cotereaux off their own lands on to yours, because it is here a terre libre; and there are at least two thousand in the woods round about. Be ruled. Sir Guy!--be ruled!"
"Ha, say you?" cried De Coucy. "But how is it, good Onfroy, that you can then drive out the swine you speak of, to feed in the forest?"
"Because--because--because, beau sire," replied the old man, hesitating as if he feared the effect of his answer,--"because I agreed with their chief, that if he and his would never show themselves within half a league of the castle, I would pay him a tribute of two fat hogs monthly.
"A tribute!" thundered De Coucy, striking his clenched fist upon the table--"a tribute!" Then suddenly lowering his voice, he added: "Oh, my good Onfroy! what are the means of a De Coucy shrunk to, that his castle, in his absence even, should pay a tribute to thieves and pick-purses! How many able serfs have you within the walls? I know your power was small. How many?"
"But nine good men, and three old ones," replied the seneschal, shaking his head sadly; "and they are but serfs, you know, my lord--I am but weakling, now-a-day; and Calord, though a freeman, has known no service."
"And how many vassals bound to furnish a man?" demanded De Coucy.--"Throw open the gates, I say!" he continued, turning fiercely upon Calord, while the horn sounded again. "I would fain see the coterel who should dare to take two steps in this hall with Guy de Coucy standing by his own hearth. How many vassals, Onfroy?"
"But seven, beau sire," replied the old man, looking from time to time towards the door of the hall, which led out into the court, and which Calord had left open behind him,--"but seven, Sir Guy; and they are only bound to a forty days' riding in the time of war."
"And now tell me, Onfroy," continued De Coucy, standing as calmly with his back towards the door as if he had been surrounded by a host of his friends. "If you have paid this tribute, why are you now afraid of these thieves?"