Reinold and his Brothers.
Countess Aya mourned him as dead, and expended all her love on her four sons, whom she educated with the greatest care, and who rewarded her for her pains by growing up into wise and stately men. Reinold, the youngest, and his father’s image, was taller and stronger than his brothers, and a better swordsman than any one about Pierlepont. He had inherited much of his father’s quick temper; but to his mother he was always gentle and bidable.
The four lads, Richard, Adelhart, Wichart, and Reinold had already shown their prowess in the field, when a messenger came to Pierlepont to say that Count Haymon was lying sick at an inn at the foot of the Pyrenean hills, and near a place where hot mineral springs were to be found. He wanted his wife to come and nurse him. Aya prepared to obey her husband without a moment’s delay, and set out accompanied by her sons.
On her arrival at the inn, she hastened to embrace her husband, and present her sons to him. The three elder lads embraced their sick father tenderly, but Reinold hung back.
“Who is this broken-down old man?” he cried. “It cannot be my father, for he is a great hero, and that man does not look much of a warrior. I wonder if he will try a bout with me.”
“Boy,” said Haymon, standing up straight, “do you not know me for your father? Look at this ring which your mother gave me years ago, and at these scars which I gained in battle.”
“And,” continued the countess, “does not my love for him bear witness that he is your father?”
“Yes, mother,” cried Reinold, “I recognise him now;” and, so saying, he clasped his father in his arms, and squeezed nearly all the breath out of his body.
“Ah, this one is my son, and no mistake,” said Haymon. “He was cut out of the same quarry.”
Aya and her sons were anxious to hear all that the count had done and seen since they had met last, so Haymon told them all that had befallen him, and ended by saying that he had brought home great wealth. This wealth he intended his three elder sons to divide equally amongst them, whilst his youngest son was to have his good sword Flammberg and the horse Bayard, if he could manage to ride it.