"Eh? Then speak civilly, varlet! Do you know who I am? D—— me, I allow thy tongue too much licence. I'll not have such impudence from a scurvy trooper as I've taken lately. I'll teach you I'm a gentleman. Now mark me, Pierre. Keep a civil distance. I'll not have it," and he began fumbling for the hilt of his sword.
"Pshaw!" said Pierre, assuming both a look and a tone of disgust.
"Eh, churl, what now?" roared Vigneau, in a towering rage, with great effort staggering to his feet, and after prolonged exertion getting out his sword, and lunging furiously at Pierre. But the act was too much for him. Lurching head foremost, the sword's point came ignominiously to the ground with his weight upon it, to prevent his falling flat. The result was, his great weight forced it a foot into the ground, from which his utmost efforts failed to extricate it, Pierre, meanwhile, vanishing from the tent with a horse-laugh. Vigneau dropped into his seat and stared vacantly at the point where Pierre had vanished, then at the sword standing upright in the ground. But his efforts to recall what it was all about were a total failure. Slowly his bleared eyes closed, and soon after he slid from his seat to the ground, to sleep off the effects of the night's debauch.
"The Baron is drunk and quarrelsome as usual to-night," said Pierre to his comrades, as he issued from the tent. "Nothing can be done with him till morning, and if he be not in a pleasanter humour in the morning, and come down handsome for us, you will have to be led by another, I trow. Well, we'll finish the business we have begun. Let us take victuals and a few other things down yonder. It will be a little more like a habitation, and not so like a sty."
CHAPTER X.
A FRUITLESS EMBASSY.
"A bold, bad man."—Spenser.
To return to myself. I paced to and fro in the abbey grounds in anguish and suspense, waiting for Badger's return, yet almost dreading it, lest he should bring ill news. But midnight passed, and the small hours of the morning came on, with no tidings of Ethel. I feared for her personal safety, and I feared also the effects upon her mind. For I must state here, for the benefit of the reader, that Ethel's surroundings had been such as to strongly imbue her mind with the heathenish beliefs of her ancestors. Her father came of an old viking stock, and rigidly adhered to the superstitions of his forefathers. He had likewise given to Ethel a large measure of his stern and aggressive temperament, and had striven to instil into her mind his own religious beliefs. I had seen also at times the strange flashing of the fierce fire within her, when deeply stirred. Yet I saw there were elements of gentleness and delicacy in her composition, inherited in all probability from her mother, who was Saxon, and a devout Christian. With my whole energy I had striven, at the request of her dying mother, to train her in the Christian faith: but my opportunities had been of a most desultory nature. Then when I began to hope that my work would be accomplished, this terrible invasion occurred. Thus efforts to show her how the fierce passions and reckless bloodshedding of the Norsemen—her father's ancestors—were cruel and heathenish, and their religion a gross superstition, were frustrated by this war of usurpation inflicted upon us by a Christian nation, with the approbation and blessing of the Pope, whilst at the head of their army they carried sacred banners and holy relics of saints. Thus the Christian religion was made to sanction bloodshed and massacre, unsparing and fiendish in its extent and in its mercilessness. In the train of these professedly Christian soldiery also, there followed nameless horrors and offences, which outdid the excesses of Norseman and Dane tenfold. But, worse than all, her father and her two brothers had been massacred—their home levelled—and she, having to fly to the shelter of the sanctuary, only found that the sanctuary was no sanctuary to her, and no protection against violence and brutality. It is utterly impossible to imagine any one more completely shorn of every prop and stay than she was; and I feared much also for her faith. I knew that there was that in her which would not permit her to tamely submit to indignities. But where would her revolt end?