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“‘Get about your business each of you to his own country, without entering any fort that holds out against us; for if you do so, and I get hold of you, I will deliver you up to Jocelin, who will shave you without a razor.’ ‘My lord,’ answered Raymonet, ‘if we thus depart we must carry away what belongs to us, and what we have gained by arms and with great risk.’ The duke paused awhile, and then said, ‘I consent that you take with you whatever you can carry before you in trunks and on sumpter horses, but not otherwise; and if you have any prisoners, they must be given up to us.’ ‘I agree,’ said Raymonet. Such was the treaty, as you hear me relate it; and all who were in the castle departed, after surrendering it to the Duke of Anjou, and carrying all they could with them. They returned to their own country, or elsewhere, in search of adventures.”
These good folk who wished to keep the fruits of their labor, had spent their time “in fleecing the merchants” of Catalonia, as well as of France, “and in making war on and harrying them of Bagnères and Bigorre.” Bagnères was then “a good, big, closed city.” People fortified everywhere, because there was fighting everywhere. They went out only with a safe-conduct and an escort: instead of gendarmes they met plunderers; instead of umbrellas they carried off lances. A secure house was a fine house; when a man had immured himself in a thick tower built like a well, he breathed freely, he felt at his ease. Those were the good old times, as every one knows.
III.
Encausse is very near here, at the turn of the road. Chapelle and Bachaumont came there to restore their stomachs, which needed and deserved it well, for they used them more than some do. They wrote their travels, and their style flows as easily as their life.
