Al let you mé coutsi Cinq antsels y trobi: Doux al capt, trés as pès, Et la mayré de Diou al met. [6]
[ [6] Equivalent to our "Four corners to my bed; two angels at my head; two to bottom; two to pray; two to bear my soul away."
Then he threw up his feet on the board that was given him for bed, and in five minutes slept and snored.
It was otherwise with Le Gros Guillem. He would tolerate no one near him but his wife and daughter, and they came in for explosions of wrath. The fever caused by pain had inflamed his head: he talked, swore, raged against everyone and all things, and boasted of the example he would make on the morrow of the man who was in his power. Noémi knew that some expedition had been undertaken, and that it had failed, but she knew no particulars, certainly had no idea that it had resulted in the capture of Jean del' Peyra's father.
She bathed and bound up her father's feet, and applied cold water as often as they began to burn. This gradually eased him, especially as he lay with his feet raised. The wounds he had received were of no great depth, but they were painful, because the soles of the feet are especially sensitive; and as all the grit and thorns had been removed by the surgeon before he left Domme, there was no fear but that with rest he would be well again in a week or ten days; well enough at least to walk a little.
The wife of Gros Guillem was a dreamy, desponding woman, who paid no attention to what he said, interested herself in no way in his affairs; neither stirring him to deeds of violence nor interfering to mitigate the miseries wrought by him. She accepted her position placidly. She was fond of Guillem in her fashion without being demonstrative, and it was a marvel to everyone how it was that he was so attached to her, and that she had maintained her hold on him through so many years.
It was reported, and the report was true, that the lady had been carried off by Guillem from the Castle of Fénelon. Guillem had retained her, in defiance of the excommunication launched at him by the Bishop of Cahors, and in defiance of the more trenchant and material weapons wielded against him by the Fénelon family, which was powerful in Quercy, and had a fortress on the Dordogne above Domme, and a house and rock castle above La Roque Gageac, side by side with that belonging to the Bishop of Sarlat. In an affray with Guillem's company the husband had been killed; the widow accepted this fact as she had accepted the fact that she had been carried off by violence. She sighed, lamented, pitied herself as a veritable martyr, and acquiesced in being the wife of the man who, though he had not killed her husband with his own hand, had caused his death.
With morning Guillem was easier and his head cooler, but there was no alteration in his resolve with regard to Del' Peyra. He would deal with him in such a signal manner as would from henceforth deter any man from lifting a finger against himself.
In his fever he had racked his brain to consider in what manner he would treat him.
He sent for his lieutenant and ordered that he should himself be carried into the keep.