In the great hall arms of every age and every nation were to be seen among banners and heads of wild beasts, from the slings of the Amalekites and the javelins of the Garamantes to the scimitars of the Saracens and the chain-coats of the Normans.
The great spit in the kitchen could turn an ox; the chapel was as sumptuous as the oratory of a king. There was even, in a retired corner, a vapour-bath in the Roman fashion; but the good lord of the castle abstained from it, deeming that it was an idolatrous custom.
Always wrapped in a fox pelisse, he walked about his house, did justice among his vassals, and appeased the quarrels of his neighbours. In winter he watched the snow-flakes fall, or had histories read to him. As soon as the good weather came, he went out on his mule along the lanes, amongst the green cornfields, and talked with the rustics, to whom he gave advice. After many adventures, he had taken to wife a damsel of high degree.
She was very fair, somewhat proud and serious. The horns of her head-dress brushed against the lintel of the doors; the train of her cloth gown trailed three paces behind her. Her household was ruled like the interior of a monastery; every morning she gave out their work to her servants, saw to the comfits and unguents, span on her distaff, or embroidered altar-cloths. In answer to her prayers God granted her a son.
Then there were great rejoicings, and a feast which lasted three days and four nights, amid the illumination of torches, to the sound of harps, on floors strawed with leafage. At it they ate the rarest spices, with fowls as big as sheep; as a diversion, a dwarf came out of a pasty; and when the bowls gave out, for the crowd was ever increasing, they were obliged to drink from the horns and helmets.
The young mother was not present at those festivities. She stayed in her bed and kept quiet. One evening she woke and saw, by a moonbeam that shone in at the window, something like a shadow that moved. It was an ancient in a frock of coarse stuff, with a chaplet at his side, a wallet on his shoulder, with all the appearance of a hermit. He came up to her pillow and said without opening his lips:
“Rejoice, O mother! Thy son will be a saint!”
She was about to cry out; but gliding upon the moon-ray he rose gently into the air, then disappeared. The songs of the banquet sounded more loudly than ever. She heard the voices of angels; and her head sank back upon the pillow, which was surmounted by the bone of a martyr in a frame of carbuncles.
Next day all the servants, when questioned, declared that they had not seen any hermit. Dream or reality, this must have been a communication from Heaven; but she was careful to say nothing about it, lest she should be charged with pride.
The revellers departed at break of day; and Julian’s father was outside the postern, where he had been seeing the last of them off, when all at once a mendicant rose up before him in the mist. He was a gipsy with plaited beard, silver rings on both his arms, and sparkling eyeballs. With an inspired air he stammered these inconsequent words: