Part 12 (1/2)
At that moment the curtain over the farther door of the apartment was pushed aside, and the King of the Franks, Charles the Simple, stepped in. This descendant of Charles the great emperor, was then thirty-two years of age. His bulging eyes, his retreating chin, his hanging lower lip imparted to his physiognomy a look of such stupidity and dullness that anyone would p.r.o.nounce him a fool, at first sight. His long hair, the symbol of royalty, framed in a puffed face that was fringed with a spa.r.s.e beard. The King looked profoundly downcast, and brusquely said to Jeanike:
”Go out, nurse! Out of the room everybody!”
The King remained alone with Ghisele. The child embraced her father tenderly and looked to find in his presence the needed consolation for the painful thoughts that the recollection of her mother had awakened in her. Charles the Simple quietly submitted to the caresses of his daughter, and said:
”Good morning, child; good morning. But why do you weep?”
”For very little, good father. I was feeling sad. Your sight banishes my sadness. You are late this morning. My nurse tells me that last night the Count of Paris arrived at the castle together with the Archbishop of Rouen.”
The King sighed, and nodded affirmatively with his head.
”They did not, I hope, bring you bad news, father?”
”Alas,” answered Charles the Simple, sighing again and looking up at the ceiling, ”the tidings that they bring would be disastrous, aye, they would, if I refuse to accept certain conditions!”
”And is it in your power to fulfil those conditions?” asked Ghisele, and the girl looked into her father's face with so childlike and mild a countenance that Charles the Simple, but not wicked, seemed embarra.s.sed and touched. He dropped his eyes before his daughter and stammered:
”Those conditions! Oh, those conditions! They are hard! Oh, so very hard! But--what is to be done? Fain would I resist. But I am forced to.
What would you have me do if I should be forced to do what should give us pain?”
”You can not be commanded, you, the master, the sovereign, the King of the Franks!”
”I, King of the Franks!” cried Charles the Simple with bitterness and rage. ”Is there, perchance, a King of the Franks in existence? The counts, the dukes, the marquises, the bishops, the abbots--they are the kings! Have not the seigneurs, for the last century, made themselves the sovereign and hereditary masters of the counties and duchies which they were simply put there to administer during their lives and in the name of the King? Who is it that reigns in Vermandois? Is it I? No, it is Count Herbert! Who reigns over the country of Melun? Is it I? No, it is Count Errenger!--and over the country of Rheims? Archbishop Foulque; and in Provence? Duke Louis the Blind; and in Lorraine? Duke Louis IV; and in Burgundy? Duke Rodulf; and in Brittany? Duke Allan--Those are the brigands, they and so many other thieves, small and large, who have plucked us of one province after another; bit by bit they have appropriated to themselves the royal heritage of our fathers. I tell you this, my child, in order that you may understand that, however hard the conditions may be that are imposed upon me, I must, alas! submit. The seigneurs command, I obey. Am I in a condition to resist them? Are they not intrenched in the fortified castles that they have made Gaul to bristle with all over the face of the land? I barely can muster up enough soldiers to defend the small domain that is left to me. Over what region can I say that I reign to-day--I, the descendant of Charles the Great, the redoubtable emperor who ruled over the world? I do not possess the hundredth part of Gaul! Figure it out, Ghisele, figure it out, and you will see that there is nothing now left to me but the Orleanois, Neustria, the country of Laon and my domains of Compiegne, Fontainebleau, Braine and Kersey. How would you expect me to resist the seigneurs, and that I say 'No!' when they order me to say 'Yes!' seeing my forces are so trifling?” And Charles the Simple, stamping the floor with rage, clenched his fists and cried out: ”Oh, my poor Ghisele! If we only had our ancestor Charles the Great to defend us now, we would not now be dictated to as we are! The brave emperor would march forth at the head of his troops to crush the insolent seigneurs and archbishops in their own lairs!--Alack! Alack! I have neither the courage, nor the will, nor the power! They call me 'the Simple'!--They are right,” added the King overcome with sorrow and weeping profusely. ”Yes, yes; I am a simpleton! But a poor simpleton who is greatly to be pitied--especially at this hour--my child!”
”Good father!” exclaimed Ghisele, throwing herself on the neck of the King whose face was bathed in tears. ”Do not give way to grief so. Will there not always be enough land left to you in which to live in peace with your daughter who loves and your servants who are attached to you?”
The King looked fixedly at Ghisele, and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand said in a voice broken with sobs: ”Do you know what Count Rothbert--” but suddenly breaking off he proceeded with an explosion of idle rage: ”I abhor this family of the Counts of Paris! It is they who robbed us of the duchy of France.--Those people are our most dangerous enemies! Some fine day, that Rothbert will dethrone me absolutely, as his brother Eudes dethroned Charles the Fat! Oh, felonious, impudent and thieving family! With what joy would I not exterminate you, if I only had the power of Charles the Great!--But I have no courage--I do not even dare to order them to be killed. They are well aware of this--and that is why they trample over me!” The King's voice was smothered by his sobs. He could only add: ”Shame and humiliation!”
”I conjure you, dear father; drive away these evil thoughts--But what did that wicked Count Rothbert say to you?”
”First of all, he said to me that the Northmans were before Paris, and in immense numbers.”
”The Northmans!” cried Ghisele turning pale and shuddering from head to foot with fear. ”The Northmans before Paris! Oh, woe, woe is us!” and the child hid her face in her hands, while tears inundated her countenance and her frame shook with convulsive sobs.
With his eyes fixed on the floor, not venturing to raise them lest they should encounter his daughter's, Charles the Simple proceeded with a tremulous voice:
”The Count of Paris, as I was saying, informed me that the Northmans were before the city. 'What would you have me do against it?' I asked him; 'I have neither soldiers nor men; you, seigneurs, who are the masters of almost all Gaul, have nothing else to do but to defend your own possessions; that is your concern.' Rothbert answered me: 'The Northmans threaten to burn down Paris, ma.s.sacre the people, and to overrun Gaul ravaging and sacking the fields and towns. No resistance can be offered them. The majority of the villeins and serfs refuse to take the field against them. The soldiers at the disposal of us, the seigneurs, are too few in number to pretend to combat the pirates. We must treat with them.' I then, my little Ghisele, said to the count: 'Very well, treat; that is your affair, seeing those pagans are before your walls of Paris and in your duchy of France.' 'And so I did,'
Rothbert answered me; 'I treated in your name with the envoys of Rolf, the Northman chief.'”
”With Rolf,” murmured Ghisele clasping her hands in horror. ”With that pirate! That felon steeped in crime and sacrilege! That monster who was the cause of my mother's death!”
”Alas! To the desolation of us both, dear daughter, this accursed Rothbert, aiming only at the protection of his city of Paris and of his duchy of France from the clutches of the old Northman brigand, promised in my name that I would relinquish Neustria to him--Neustria, the best of the provinces left to me--and besides--”
As Ghisele perceived that her father hesitated to finish the sentence, she wiped his tears and asked; ”And besides, what else do they demand, father?”
Charles the Simple remained for a moment silent, and shuddered.
Presently, however, overcoming the imbecile weakness of his character, he broke out into fresh tears, crying: ”No! No! I will not! However much of a simpleton I may be, that shall never be. No! For once, at least, in my life I shall act the King!” And closing his daughter in his arms, Charles the Simple covered her head with kisses and cried: ”No! No! He shall not have my Ghisele! The insolence of that old brigand, to think of marrying--the grand-daughter of Charles the Great--and she a child of barely fourteen! Sooner than see you the wife of Rolf, I would kill you--I would kill you on the spot. Oh, Lord G.o.d, have mercy upon me!”
Ghisele heard her father's words almost without understanding them. She was gazing upon him with mingled doubt and stupor when a new personage stepped into the hall. It was Francon, Archbishop of Rouen. The man's impa.s.sive face, cold and hard, resembled a marble mask. He approached close to Ghisele and her father, who still clung together in a close embrace, and pointing with his hand to the curtain behind which he had kept himself concealed up to then, said in his sharp, short style: