“Have you never, sire, envied the lot of these peasants?” asked the Count of Mans.
Charles looked at his nephew in wonderment, thinking he was gone mad.
“When once their work is over,” continued Roland, “they return to their homes to find a wife waiting on the threshold to embrace them, and a bevy of children who storm them for kisses; while we——”
“I understand you, nephew mine. This is a new way of putting it that you are trying, and if I let you have your talk out, it would infallibly end in the old question, ‘When is the marriage to be?’ I am not more hard-hearted than most people; and, by the mass! on my return—-”
The Emperor paused. He had just caught sight of a whirlwind of dust a long way off. By degrees the whirlwind lessened to a cloud—the cloud turned into a horseman—the horseman proved to be Hugo of Cotentin.
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The Count Palatine had spurred fast to tell Charles that the Saxons were again in revolt, and were ravaging the banks of the Rhine.