CHAPTER I
THE APOCALYPTIC FRENZY
Two months after the
poisoning of Louis the Do-nothing in 987, Hugh the Capet, Count of
Paris and Anjou, Duke of Isle-de-France, and Abbot of St. Martin of
Tours and St. Germain-des-Pres, had himself proclaimed King by his bands
of warriors, and was promptly consecrated by the Church. By his
ascension to the throne, Hugh usurped the crown of Charles, Duke of
Lorraine, the uncle of Blanche's deceased husband. Hugh's usurpation led
to bloody civil strifes between the Duke of Lorraine and Hugh the
Capet. The latter died in 996 leaving as his successor his son Rothbert,
an imbecile and pious prince. Rothbert's long reign was disturbed by
the furious feuds among the seigneurs; counts, dukes, abbots and
bishops, entrenched in their fortified castles, desolated the country
with their brigandage. Rothbert, Hugh's son, died in 1031 and was
succeeded by his son Henry I. His advent to the throne was the signal
for fresh civil strife, caused by his own brother, who was incited
thereto by his mother. Another Rothbert, surnamed the Devil, Duke of
Normandy, a descendant of old Rolf the pirate, took a hand in these
strifes and made himself master of Gisors, Chaumont and Pontoise. It was
under the reign of Hugh the Capet's grandson, Henry I, that the year
1033 arrived, and with it unheard-of, even incredible events, a
spectacle without its equal until then, which was the culmination of the
prevalent myth regarding the end of the world with the year 1000.
The Church had fixed
the last day of the year 1000 as the final term for the world's
existence. Thanks to the deception, the clergy came into possession of
the property of a large number of seigneurs. During the last months of
that year an immense saturnalia was on foot. The wildest passions, the
most insensate, the drollest and the most atrocious acts seemed then
unchained.
"The end of the
world approaches!" exclaimed the clergy. "Did not St. John the Divine
prophesy it in the Apocalypse saying: 'When the thousand years are
expired, Satan will be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to
deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth; the
book of life will be opened; the sea will give up the dead which were in
it; death and hell will deliver up the dead which were in them; they
will be judged every man according to his works; they will be judged by
Him who is seated upon a brilliant throne, and there will be a new
heaven and a new earth.' - Tremble, ye peoples !" the clergy repeated
everywhere, "the one thousand years, announced by St. John, will run out
with the end of this year! Satan, the anti-Christ is to arrive!
Tremble! The trumpet of the day of judgment is about to sound; the dead
are about to arise from their tombs; in the midst of thunder and
lightning, and surrounded by archangels carrying flaming swords, the
Eternal is about to pass judgment upon us all! Tremble, ye mighty ones
of the earth: in order to conjure away the implacable anger of the
All-Mighty, give your goods to the Church! It is still time! It is still
time! Give your goods and your treasures to the priests of the Lord!
Give all you possess to the Church!"
The seigneurs,
themselves no less brutified than their serfs by ignorance and by the
fear of the devil, and hoping to be able to conjure away the vengeance
of the Eternal, assigned to the clergy by means of authentic documents,
executed in all the forms of terrestrial law, lands, houses, castles,
serfs, their harems, their herds of cattle, their valuable plate, their
rich armors, their pictures, their statues, their sumptuous robes.
Some of the shrewder
ones said: "We have barely a year, a month, a week to live! We are full
of youth, of desires, of ardor! Let us put the short period to profit!
Let us stave-in our wine casks, let us indulge ourselves freely in wine
and women!"
"The end of the
world is approaching!" exclaimed with delirious joy millions of serfs of
the domains of the King, of the lay and of the ecclesiastical
seigneurs. "Our poor bodies, broken with toil, will at last take rest in
the eternal night that is to emancipate us. A blessing on the end of
the world! It is the end of our miseries and our sufferings!"
And those poor
serfs, having nothing to spend and nothing to assign away, sought to
anticipate the expected eternal repose. The larger number dropped their
plows, their hoes and their spades so soon as autumn set in. "What is
the use," said they, "of cultivating a field that, long before harvest
time, will have been swallowed up in chaos?"
As a consequence of
this universal panic, the last days of the year 999 presented a
spectacle never before seen; it was even fabulous! Light-headed
indulgence and groans; peals of laughter and lamentations; maudlin songs
and death dirges. Here the shouts and the frantic dances of supposed
last and supreme orgies; yonder the lamentations of pious canticles. And
finally, floating above this vast mass of terror, rose the formidable
popular curiosity to see the spectacle of the destruction of the world.
It came at last, that day said to have been prophesied by St. John the
Divine! The last hour arrived, the last minute of that fated year of
999! "Tremble, ye sinners!" the warning redoubled; "tremble, ye peoples
of the earth! the terrible moment foretold in the holy books is here!"
One more second, one more instant, midnight sounds and the year 1000
begins.
In the expectation
of that fatal instant, the most hardened hearts, the souls most certain
of salvation, the dullest and also the most rebellious minds experienced
a sensation that never had and never will have a name in any language
Midnight sounded!... The solemn hour.... Midnight!
The year 1000 began !
Oh, wonder and
surprise!... The dead did not leave their tombs, the bowels of the earth
did not open, the waters of the ocean remained within their basins, the
stars of heaven were not hurled out of their orbits and were not
striking against one another in space. Aye, there was not even a tame
flash of lightning! No thunder rolled! No trace of the cloud of fire in
the midst of which the Eternal was to appear. Jehovah remained
invisible. Not one of the frightful prodigies foretold by St. John the
Divine for midnight of the year 1000 was verified. The night was calm
and serene; the moon and stars shone brilliantly in the azure sky, not a
breath of wind agitated the tops of the trees, and the people, in the
silence of their stupor, could hear the slightest ripple of the mountain
streams gliding under the grass. Dawn came ... and day ... and the sun
poured upon creation the torrents of its light! As to miracles, not a
trace of any !
Impossible to
describe the revulsion of feeling at the universal disappointment. It
was an explosion of regret, of remorse, of astonishment, of
recrimination and of rage. The devout people who believed themselves
cheated out of a Paradise that they had paid for to the Church in
advance with hard cash and other property; others, who had squandered
their treasures, contemplated their ruin with trembling. The millions of
serfs who had relied upon slumbering in the restfulness of an eternal
night saw rising anew before their eyes the ghastly dawn of that long
day of misery and sufferings, of which their birth was the morning and
only their death the evening. It now began to be realized that, left
uncultivated in the expectation of the end of the world, the land would
not furnish sustenance to the people, and the horrors of famine were
foreseen. A towering clamor rose against the clergy; the clergy,
however, knew how to bring public opinion back to its side. It did so by
a new and fraudulent set of prophecies.
"Oh, these wretched
people of little faith," thus now ran the amended prophecy and
invocation; "they dare to doubt the word of the All-powerful who spoke
to them through the voice of His prophet! Oh, these wretched blind
people, who close their eyes to divine light! The prophets have
announced the end of time; the Holy Writ foretold that the day of the
last judgment would come a thousand years after the Saviour of the
world!... But although Christ was born a thousand years before the year
1000, he did not reveal himself as God until his death, that is
thirty-two years after his birth. Accordingly it will be in the year
1032 that the end of time will come!"
Such was the general
state of besottedness that many of the faithful blissfully accepted the
new prediction. Several seigneurs, however, rushed at the "men of God"
to take back by force the property they had bequeathed to them. The "men
of God," however, well entrenched behind fortified walls, defended
themselves stoutly against the dispossessed claimants. Hence a series of
bloody wars between the scheming bishops, on the one hand, and the
despoiled seigneurs, on the other, to which disasters were now
superadded the religious massacres instigated by the clergy. The Church
had urged Clovis centuries ago to the extermination of the then Arian
heretics; now the Church preached the extermination of the Orleans
Manichaeans and the Jews. A conception of these abominable excesses may
be gathered from the following passages in the account left by Raoul
Glaber, a monk and eye-witness. He wrote:
"A short time after
the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in the year 1010, it was
learned from unquestionable sources that the calamity had to be charged
to the perverseness of Jews of all countries. When the secret leaked out
throughout the world, the Christians decided with a common accord that
they would expel all the Jews, down to the last, from their territories
and towns. The Jews thereby became the objects of universal execration.
Some were chased from the towns, others massacred with iron, or thrown
into the rivers, or put to death in some other manner. This drove many
to voluntary death. And thus, after the just vengeance wreaked upon
them, there were but very few of them left in the Roman Catholic world."
Accordingly, the
wretched Jews of Gaul were persecuted and slaughtered at the order of
the clergy because the Saracens of Judea destroyed the Temple of
Jerusalem! As to the Manichaeans of Orleans, another passage from the
same chronicle expresses itself in these words:
"In 1017, the King
and all his loyal subjects, seeing the folly of these miserable heretics
of Orleans, caused a large pyre to be lighted near the town, in the
hope that fear, produced by the sight, would overcome their
stubbornness; but seeing that they persisted, thirteen of them were cast
into the flames ... and all those that could not be convinced to
abandon their perverse ways met the same fate, whereupon the venerable
cult of the Catholic faith, having triumphed over the foolish
presumption of its enemies, shone with all the greater luster on earth."
What with the wars
that the ecclesiastical seigneurs plunged Gaul into in their efforts to
retain possession of the property of the lay seigneurs whom they had
despoiled by the jugglery of the "End of the World," and what with these
religious persecutions, Gaul continued to be desolated down to the year
1033, the new term that had been fixed for the last day of judgment.
The belief in the approaching dissolution of the world, which the clergy
now again zealously preached, although not so universally entertained
as that of the year 1000, was accompanied with results that were no less
horrible. In 999, the expectation of the end of the world had put a
stop to work; all the fields except those belonging to the
ecclesiastical seigneurs, lay fallow. The formidable famine of the year
1000 was then the immediate result, and that was followed by a
wide-spread mortality. Agriculture pined for laborers; every successive
scarcity engendered an increased mortality; Gaul was being rapidly
depopulated; famine set in almost in permanence during thirty years in
succession, the more disastrous periods being those of the years 1003,
1008, 1010, 1014, 1027, 1029 and 1031; finally the famine of 1033
surpassed all previous ones in its murderous effects. The serfs, the
villeins and the town plebs were almost alone the victims of the
scourge. The little that they produced met the needs of their masters,
the seigneurs, counts, dukes, bishops or abbots; the producers
themselves, however, expired under the tortures of starvation. The
corpses of the wretches who died of inanition strewed the fields, roads
and highways; the decomposing bodies poisoned the air, engendered
illnesses and even pestilential epidemics until then unknown; the
population was decimated. Within thirty-three years, Gaul lost more than
one-half its inhabitants, the new-born babies died vainly pressing
their mother's breasts for nourishment.
CHAPTER II
YVON THE FORESTER'S HUT
Yvon - now no longer
the Calf, but the Forester, since his appointment over the canton of
the Fountain of the Hinds and his family did not escape the scourge.
About five years
before the famine of 1033, his beloved wife Marceline died. He still
inhabited his hut, now shared with him by his son Den-Brao and the
latter's wife Gervaise, together with their three children, of whom the
eldest, Nominoe, was nine, the second, Julyan, seven, and the youngest,
Jeannette, two years of age. Den-Brao, a serf like his father, was since
his youth employed in a neighboring stone quarry. A natural taste for
masonry developed itself in the lad. During his hours of leisure he
loved to carve in certain not over hard stones the outlines of houses
and cottages, the structure of which attracted the attention of the
master mason of Compiegne. Observing Den-Brao's aptitude, the artisan
taught him to hew stone, and soon confided to him the plans of buildings
and the overseership in the construction of several fortified donjons
that King Henry I ordered to be erected on the borders of his domains in
Compiegne. Den-Brao, being of a mild and industrious disposition and
resigned to servitude, had a passionate love for his trade. Often Yvon
would say to him:
"My child, these
redoubtable donjons, whose plans you are sketching and which you build
with so much care, either serve now or will serve some day to oppress
our people. The bones of our oppressed and martyrized brothers will rot
in these subterraneous cells reared above one another with such an
infernal art!"
"Alack! You are
right, father," Den-Brao would at such times answer, "but if not I, some
others will build them ... my refusal to obey my master's orders would
have no other consequence than to bring upon my head a beating, if not
mutilation and even death."
Gervaise, Den-Brao's
wife, an industrious housekeeper, adored her three children, all of
whom, in turn, clung affectionately to Yvon.
The hut occupied by
Yvon and his family lay in one of the most secluded parts of the forest.
Until the year 1033, they had suffered less than other serf families
from the devastations of the recurring famine. Occasionally Yvon brought
down a stag or doe. The meat was smoked, and the provision thus laid by
kept the family from want. With the beginning of the year 1033,
however, one of the epidemics that often afflict the beasts of the
fields attacked the wild animals of the forest of Compiegne. They grew
thin, lost their strength, and their flesh that speedily decomposed,
dropped from their bones. In default of venison, the family was reduced
towards the end of autumn to wild roots and dried berries. They also ate
up the snakes that they caught and that, fattened, crawled into their
holes for the winter. As hunger pressed, Yvon killed and ate his hunting
dog that he had named Deber-Trud in memory of the war-dog of his
ancestor Joel. Subsequently the family was thrown upon the juice of
barks, and then upon the broth of dried leaves. But the nourishment of
dead leaves soon became unbearable, and likewise did the sap-wood, or
second rind of young trees, such as elders and aspen trees, which they
beat to a pulp between stones, have to be given up. At the time of the
two previous famines, some wretched people were said to have supported
themselves with a kind of fattish clay. Not far from Yvon's hut was a
vein of such clay. Towards the end of December, Yvon went out for some
of it. It was a greenish earth of fine paste, soft but heavy, and of
insipid taste. The family thought themselves saved. All its members
devoured the first meal of the clay. But on the morrow their contracted
stomachs refused the nourishment that was as heavy as lead.
CHAPTER III
ON THE BUCK'S TRACK
Thirty-six hours of fast had followed upon the meal of clay in Yvon's hut. Hunger gnawed again at the family's entrails.
During these
thirty-six hours a heavy snow had fallen. Yvon went out. His family was
starving within. He had death on his soul. He went towards the nets that
he had spread in the hope of snaring some bird of passage during the
snow storm. His expectations were deceived. A little distance from the
nets lay the Fountain of the Hinds, now frozen hard. Snow covered its
borders. Yvon perceived the imprint of a buck's feet. The size of the
imprint on the snow announced the animal's bulk. Yvon estimated its
weight by the cracks in the ice on the stream that it had just crossed,
the ice being otherwise thick enough to support Yvon himself. This was
the first time in many months that the forester had run across a buck's
track. Could the animal, perhaps, have escaped the general mortality of
its kind? Did it come from some distant forest? Yvon knew not, but he
followed the fresh track with avidity. Yvon had with him his bow and
arrows. To reach the animal, kill it and smoke its flesh meant the
saving of the lives of his family, now on the verge of starvation. It
meant their life for at least a month. Hope revivified the forester's
energies; he pursued the buck; the regular impress of its steps showed
that the animal was quietly following one of the beaten paths of the
forest; moreover its track lay so clearly upon the snow that he could
not have crossed the stream more than an hour before, else the edges of
the imprint that he left behind him would have been less sharp and would
have been rounded by the temperature of the air. Following its tracks,
Yvon confidently expected to catch sight of the buck within an hour and
bring the animal down. In the ardor of the chase, the forester forgot
his hunger. He had been on the march about an hour when suddenly in the
midst of the profound silence that reigned in the forest, the wind
brought a confused noise to his ears. It sounded like the distant
bellowing of a stag. The circumstance was extraordinary. As a rule the
beasts of the woods do not cry out except at night. Thinking he might
have been mistaken, Yvon put his ear to the ground.... There was no more
room for doubt. The buck was bellowing at about a thousand yards from
where Yvon stood. Fortunately a turn of the path concealed the hunter
from the game. These wild animals frequently turn back to see behind
them and listen. Instead of following the path beyond the turning that
concealed him, Yvon entered the copse expecting to make a short cut,
head off the buck, whose gait was slow, hide behind the bushes that
bordered the path, and shoot the animal when it hove in sight.
The sky was
overcast; the wind was rising; with deep concern Yvon noticed several
snow flakes floating down. Should the snow fall heavily before the buck
was shot, the animal's tracks would be covered, and if opportunity
failed to dart an arrow at it from the forester's ambuscade, he could
not then expect to be able to trace the buck any further. Yvon's fears
proved correct. The wind soon changed into a howling storm surcharged
with thick snow. The forester quitted the thicket and struck for the
path beyond the turning and at about a hundred paces from the clearing.
The buck was nowhere to be seen. The animal had probably caught wind of
its pursuer and jumped for safety into the thicket that bordered the
path. It was impossible to determine the direction that it had taken.
Its tracks vanished under the falling snow, that lay in ever thicker
layers.
A prey to insane
rage, Yvon threw himself upon the ground and rolled in the snow uttering
furious cries. His hunger, recently forgotten in the ardor of the hunt,
tore at his entrails. He bit one of his arms and the pain thus felt
recalled him to his senses. Almost delirious, he rose with the fixed
intent of retracing the buck, killing the animal, spreading himself
beside its carcass, devouring it raw, and not rising again so long as a
shred of meat remained on its bones. At that moment, Yvon would have
defended his prey with his knife against even his own son. Possessed by
the fixed and delirious idea of retracing the buck, Yvon went hither and
thither at hap-hazard, not knowing in what direction he walked. He beat
about a long time, and night began to approach, when a strange incident
came to his aid and dissipated his mental aberration.
CHAPTER IV
GREGORY THE HOLLOW-BELLIED
Driven by the gale,
the snow continued to fall, when suddenly Yvon's nostrils were struck by
the exhalations emitted by frying meat. The odor chimed in with the
devouring appetite that was troubling his senses, and at least bestowed
back upon him the instinct of seeking to satisfy his hunger. He stood
still, whiffed the air hither and thither like a wolf that from afar
scents carrion, and looked about in order to ascertain by the last
glimmerings of the daylight where he was. Yvon was at the crossing of a
path in the forest that led from the little village of Ormesson. The
road ran before a tavern where travelers usually put up for the night.
It was kept by a serf of the abbey of St. Maximim named Gregory, and
surnamed the Hollow-bellied, because, according to him, nothing could
satisfy his insatiable appetite. An otherwise kind-hearted and cheerful
man, the serf often, before these distressful times, and when Yvon
carried his tithe of game to the castle, had accommodatedly offered him a
pot of hydromel. A prey now to the lashings of hunger and exasperated
by the odor of fried meat which escaped from the tavern, Yvon carefully
approached the closed door. In order to allow the smoke to escape,
Gregory had thrown the window half open without fear of being seen. By
the light of a large fire that burned in the hearth, Yvon saw Gregory
seated on a stool placidly surveying the broiling of a large piece of
meat whose odor had so violently assailed the nostrils of the famishing
forester.
To Yvon's great
surprise, the tavern-keeper's appearance had greatly changed. He was no
longer the lean and wiry fellow of before. Now his girth was broad, his
cheeks were full, wore a thick black beard and tinkled with the warm
color of life and health. Within reach of the tavern-keeper lay a
cutlass, a pike and an ax, all red with blood. At his feet an enormous
mastiff picked a bone well covered with meat. The spectacle angered the
forester. He and his family could have lived a whole day upon the
remnants left by the dog; moreover, how did the tavern-keeper manage to
procure so large a loin? Cattle had become so dear that only the
seigneurs and the ecclesiastics could afford to purchase any; beef cost a
hundred gold sous, sheep a hundred silver sous! A sense of hate rose in
Yvon's breast against Gregory whom he had until then looked upon very
much as a friend. The forester could not take his eyes from the meat,
thinking of the joy of his family if he were to return home loaded with
such a booty. For a moment Yvon was tempted to knock at the door of the
serf and demand a share, at least the chunks thrown at the dog. But
judging the tavern-keeper by himself, and noticing, moreover, that the
former was well armed, he reflected that in days like those bread and
meat were more precious than gold and silver; to request Gregory the
Hollow-bellied to yield a part of his supper was folly; he would surely
refuse, and if force was attempted he would kill the intruder. These
thoughts rapidly succeeded one another in Yvon's troubled brain. To add
to his dilemma, his presence was scented by the mastiff who, at first,
growled angrily without, however, dropping his bone, and then began to
bark.
At that moment
Gregory was removing the meat from the spit. "What's the matter, Fillot?
Be brave, old boy! We shall defend our supper. You are furnished with
good strong jaws and fangs, I with weapons. Fear not. No one will
venture to enter. So be still, Fillot! Lie down and keep quiet!" But so
far from lying down and keeping quiet, the mastiff dropped his bone,
stood up, and approaching the window where Yvon stood, barked louder
still. "Oh, oh!" remarked the tavern-keeper depositing the meat in a
large wooden platter on the table. "Fillot drops a bone to bark ...
there must be someone outside." Yvon stepped quickly back, and from the
dark that concealed him he saw Gregory seize his pike, throw the window
wide open and leaning out call with a threatening voice: "Who is there?
If any one is in search of death, he can find it here." The deed almost
running ahead of the thought, Yvon raised his bow, adjusted an arrow
and, invisible to Gregory, thanks to the darkness without, took straight
aim at the tavern-keeper's breast. The arrow whizzed; Gregory emitted a
cry followed by a prolonged groan; his head and bust fell over the
window-sill, and his pike dropped on the snow-covered ground. Yvon
quickly seized the weapon. It was done none too soon. The furious
mastiff leaped out of the window over his dead master's shoulders and
made a bound at the forester. A thrust of the pike nailed the faithful
brute to the ground. Yvon had committed the murder with the ferocity of a
famished wolf. He appeased his hunger. The dizziness that had assailed
his head vanished, his reason returned, and he found himself alone in
the tavern with a still large piece of meat beside him, more than half
of the original chunk.
Feeling as if he
just woke from a dream, Yvon looked around and felt frozen to the
marrow. The light emitted by the hearth enabled him to see distinctly
among the bloody remnants near where the mastiff had been gnawing his
bone, a human hand and the trunk of a human arm. Horrified as he was,
Yvon approached the bleeding members.
There was no doubt.
Before him lay the remains of a human body. The surprising girth that
Gregory the Hollow-bellied had suddenly developed came to his mind. The
mystery was explained. Nourished by human flesh, the monster had been
feeding on the travelers who stopped at his place. The roast that had
just been hungrily swallowed by Yvon proceeded from a recent murder. The
forester's hair stood on end; he dare not look towards the table where
still lay the remains of his cannibal supper. He wondered how his mouth
did not reject the food. But that first and cultivated sense of horror
being over, the forester could not but admit to himself that the meat he
had just gulped down differed little from beef. The thought started a
poignant reflection: "My son, his wife and children are at this very
hour undergoing the tortures of hunger; mine has been satisfied by this
food; however abominable it may be, I shall carry off the rest; the same
as I was at first ignorant of what it was that I ate, my family shall
not know the nature of the dish.... I shall at least have saved them for
a day!" The reasoning matured into resolution.
As Yvon was about to
quit the tavern with his load of human flesh, the gale that had been
howling without and now found entrance through the window, violently
threw open the door of a closet connecting with the room he was in. The
odor of a charnel house immediately assailed the forester's nostrils. He
ran to the hearth, picked up a flaming brand, and looked into the
closet. Its naked walls were bespattered with blood; in a corner lay a
heap of dried twigs and leaves used for kindling a fire and from beneath
them protruded a foot and part of a leg. Yvon scattered the heap of
kindling material with his feet ... they hid a recently mutilated
corpse. The penetrating smell obviously escaped from a lower vault. Yvon
noticed a trap door. Raising it, there rose so putrid an odor that he
staggered back; but driven despite himself to carry his investigation to
the end, he approached the flaming brand to the opening and discovered
below a cavern that was almost filled with bones, heads and other human
members, the bloody remnants of the travelers whom Gregory the
Hollow-bellied had lived upon. In order to put an end to the horrible
spectacle, Yvon hurled his flaming brand into the mortuary cellar; it
was immediately extinguished; for a moment the forester remained in the
dark; he then stepped back into the main room; and overcoming a fresh
assault of human scruple, darted out with the remains of the roast in
his bag, thinking only of his famishing family.
Without, the gale
blew violently; its rage seemed to increase. The moon, then at its
fullest, cast enough light, despite the whirls of snow, to guide Yvon's
steps. He struck the road to the Fountain of the Hinds in haste, moving
with firm though rapid strides. The infernal food he had just partaken
of returned to him his pristine strength. About two leagues from his
hut, he stopped, struck with a sudden thought. The mastiff he had killed
was enormous, fleshy and fat. It could furnish his family with food for
at least three or four days. Why had he forgotten to bring it along?
Yvon turned back to the tavern, long though the road was. As he
approached the house of Gregory he noticed a great brilliancy from afar
and across the falling snow. The light proceeded from the door and
window of the tavern. Only two hours before when he left, the hearth was
extinct and the place dark. Could someone have gone in afterwards and
rekindled the fire ? Yvon crept near the house hoping to carry off the
dog without attracting notice, but voices reached him saying:
"Friends, let us wait till the dog is well roasted."
"I'm hungry! Devilish hungry!"
"So am I ... but I
have more patience than you, who would have eaten the dainty raw....
Pheu! What a smell comes from that charnel room! And yet the door and
window are open!"
"Never mind the smell!... I'm hungry!"
"So, then, Master
Gregory the Hollow-bellied slaughtered the travelers to rob them, I
suppose.... One of them must have been beforehand with him and killed
him.... But the devil take the tavern-keeper! His dog is now roasted.
Let's eat!"
"Let's eat!"
CHAPTER V
THE DELIRIUM OF STARVATION
Too old a man to
think of contesting the spoils for which he had returned to Gregory's
tavern, Yvon hurried back home and reached his hut towards midnight.
On entering, a torch
of resinous wood, fastened near the wall by an iron ring, lighted a
heart-rending spectacle. Stretched out near the hearth lay Den-Brao, his
face covered by his mason's jacket; himself expiring of inanition, he
wished to escape the sight of the agony of his family. His wife,
Gervaise, so thin that the bones of her face could be counted, was on
her knees near a straw pallet where Julyan lay in convulsions. Almost
fainting, Gervaise struggled with her son who was alternately crying
with fury and with pain and in the frenzy of starvation sought to apply
its teeth to his own arms. Nominoe, the elder, lay flat on his face, on
the pallet with his brother. He would have been taken for dead but for
the tremor that from time to time ran over his frame still more
emaciated than his brother's. Finally Jeannette, about three years old,
murmured in her cradle with a dying voice: "Mother ... I am hungry.... I
am hungry!"
At the sound of
Yvon's steps, Gervaise turned her head: "Father!" said she in despair,
"if you bring nothing with you, I shall kill my children to shorten
their agony ... and then myself!"
Yvon threw down his
bow and took his bag from his shoulders. Gervaise judged from its size
and obvious weight that it was full. She wrenched it from Yvon's hands
with savage impatience, thrust her hand in it, pulled out the chunk of
roasted meat and raising it over her head to show it to the whole family
cried out in a quivering voice: "Meat!... Oh, we shall not yet die!
Den-Brao.... Children!... Meat!... Meat!" At these words Den-Brao sat up
precipitately; Nominoe, too feeble to rise, turned on his pallet and
stretched out his eager hands to his mother; little Jeannette eagerly
looked up from her cradle; while Julyan, whom his mother was not now
holding, neither heard nor saw aught but was biting into his arms in the
delirium of starvation, unnoticed by either Yvon or any other member of
the family. All eyes were fixed upon Gervaise, who running to a table
and taking a knife sliced off the meat crying: "Meat!... Meat!"
"Give me!... Give
me!" cried Den-Brao, stretching out his emaciated arms, and he devoured
in an instant the piece that he received.
"You next,
Jeannette!" said Gervaise, throwing a slice to the little girl who
uttered a cry of joy, while her mother herself, yielding to the cravings
of starvation bit off mouthfuls from the slice that she reached out to
her oldest son, Nominoe, who, like the rest, pounced upon the prey, and
fell to eating in silent voracity. "And now, you, Julyan," continued
Gervaise. The lad made no answer. His mother stooped down over him:
"Julyan, do not bite your arm! Here is meat, dear boy!" But his elder
brother, Nominoe, having swallowed up his own slice, brusquely seized
that which his mother was tendering to Julyan. Seeing that the latter
continued motionless, Gervaise insisted: "My child, take your arm from
your teeth!" But hardly had she pronounced these words than, turning
towards Yvon, she cried: "Come here, father.... His arm is icy and rigid
... so rigid that I cannot withdraw it from his jaws."
Yvon rushed to the
pallet where Julyan lay. The little boy had expired in the convulsion of
hunger, although less unfeebled than his brother and sister. "Step
aside," Yvon said to Gervaise; "step aside!" She realized that Julyan
was dead, obeyed Yvon's orders and went on to eat. But her hunger being
appeased, she approached her son's corpse and sobbed aloud:
"My poor little
Julyan!" she lamented. "Oh, my dear child! You died of hunger!... A few
minutes longer and you would have had something to eat like the others
... at least for today!"
"Where did you get this roast, father?" asked Den-Brao.
"I found the tracks
of a buck," answered Yvon dropping his eyes; "I followed the animal but
failed to come up to it. In that way I went as far as the tavern of
Gregory the Hollow-bellied. He was at supper.... I shared his repast,
and he gave me what you have just eaten."
"Such a gift! and in days of famine, father! in such days when only seigneurs and the clergy do not suffer of hunger!"
"I made the
tavern-keeper sympathize with our distress," Yvon answered brusquely,
and, in order to put an end to the subject he added: "I am worn out with
fatigue; I must rest," saying which he walked into the contiguous room
to stretch himself out on his couch, while his son and daughter remained
on their knees near the body of little Julyan. The other two children
fell asleep, still saying they were hungry. After a long and troubled
sleep, Yvon woke up. It was day. Gervaise and her husband still knelt
near Julyan. His brother and sister were saying: "Mother, give us
something to eat; we are hungry!"
"Later, dear little ones," answered the unhappy woman to console them; "later you shall have something to eat."
Den-Brao raised his head and asked: "Where are you going, father?"
"I am going to dig the grave of my little grandson.... I wish to save you the sad task."
"Dig ours also,
father," Den-Brao replied with a dejected mien. "We shall all die
to-night. For a moment allayed, our hunger will rise more violent than
last night ... dig a wide grave for us all."
"Despair not, my children. It has stopped snowing. I may be able to find again the traces of the buck."
Yvon picked up a
spade with which to dig Julyan's grave near where the boy's
great-grandfather, Leduecq, lay buried. Near the place was a heap of
dead branches that had been gathered shortly before by the woodsmen
serfs to turn into coal. After the grave was dug, Yvon left his spade
near it and as the snow had ceased falling he started anew in pursuit of
the buck. It was in vain. Nowhere were the animal's tracks to be seen.
It grew night with the prospect of a long darkness, seeing the moon
would not rise until late. Yvon was reminded by the pangs of hunger,
that began to assail him, that in his hut the sufferings must have
returned. A spectacle, even more distressing than that of the previous
night now awaited him, the convulsive cries of starving children, the
moaning of their mother, the woe-begone looks and dejectment of his son
who lay on the floor awaiting death, and reproaching Yvon for having
prolonged his own and the sufferings of his family with their lives.
Such was the prostration of these wretched beings that, without turning
their heads to Yvon, or even addressing a single word to him, they let
him carry out the corpse of the deceased child.
An hour later Yvon
re-entered his hut. It was pitch dark; the hearth was cold. None had
even the spirit to light a resin torch. Hollow and spasmodic rattlings
were heard from the throats of those within. Suddenly Gervaise jumped up
and groped her way in the dark towards Yvon crying: "I smell roast meat
... just as last night ... we shall not die!... Den-Brao, your father
has brought some more meat!... Come, children, come for your share.... A
light quick!"
"No, no! We want no
light!" Yvon cried in a tremulous voice. "Take!" said he to Gervaise,
who was tugging at the bag on his shoulders. "Take!... Divide this
venison among yourselves, and eat in the dark!"
The wretched family
devoured the meat in the dark; their hunger and feebleness did not allow
them to ask what kind of meat it was. But Yvon fled from the hut almost
crazed with horror. Abomination! His family was again feeding upon
human flesh!
CHAPTER VI
THE FLIGHT TO ANJOU
Long, aimless,
distracted, Yvon wandered about the forest. A severe frost had succeeded
the fall of snow that covered every inch of the ground. The moon shone
brilliantly in the crisp air. The forester felt chilled; in despair he
threw himself down at the foot of a tree, determined there to await
death.
The torpor of death
by freezing was creeping upon the mind of the heart-broken serf when,
suddenly, the crackling of branches that announce the passage of game
fell upon his ears and revived him with the promise of life. The animal
could not be more than fifty paces away. Unfortunately Yvon had left his
bow and arrows in his hut. "It is the buck! Oh, this time I shall kill
him!" he murmured to himself. His revived will-power now dominated the
exhaustion of his forces, and it was strong enough to cause him to lose
no time in vain regrets at not having his hunting arms with him, now
when the prey would be certain. The crackling of the branches drew
nearer. Yvon found himself under a clump of large and old oaks, a little
distance away was the thick copse through which the animal was then
passing. He rose up and planted himself motionless close to and along
the trunk of the tree at the foot of which he had thrown himself down.
Covered by the tree's thickness and the shadow that it threw, with his
neck extended, his eyes and ears on the alert, the serf took his long
forester's knife between his teeth and waited. After several minutes of
mortal suspense, the buck might get the wind of him or come from cover
beyond his reach, Yvon heard the animal approach, then stop an instant
close behind the tree against which he had glued his back. The tree
concealed Yvon from the eyes of the animal, but it also prevented him
from seeing the prey that he breathlessly lay in wait for. Presently,
six feet from Yvon and to the right, he saw plainly sketched upon the
snow, that the light of the moon rendered brilliant, the shape of the
buck and the wide antlers that crowned his head. Yvon stopped breathing
and remained motionless so long as the shadow stood still. A moment
later the shadow began to steal towards him, and with a prodigious bound
Yvon rushed at and seized the animal by the horns. The buck was large
and struggled vigorously; but clambering himself around the horns with
his left arm, Yvon plunged his knife with his right hand into the
animal's throat. The buck rolled over him and expired, while Yvon, with
his mouth fastened to the wound, pumped up and swallowed the blood that
flowed in a thick stream.
The warm and healthy blood strengthened and revivified the serf.... He had not eaten since the previous night.
Yvon rested a few
moments; he then bound the hind legs of the buck with a flexible twig
and dragging his booty, not without considerable effort by reason of its
weight, he arrived with it at his hut near the Fountain of the Hinds.
His family was now for a long time protected from hunger. The buck could
not yield less than three hundred pounds of meat, which carefully
prepared and smoked after the fashion of foresters, could be preserved
for many months.
Two days after these
two fateful nights, Yvon learned from a woodsman serf, that one of his
fellows, a forester of the woods of Compiegne like himself, having
discovered the next morning the body of Gregory the Hollow-bellied
pierced with an arrow that remained in the wound, and having identified
the weapon as Yvon's by the peculiar manner in which it was feathered,
had denounced him as the murderer. The bailiff of the domain of
Compiegne detested Yvon. Although the latter's crime delivered the
neighborhood of a monster who slaughtered the travelers in order to
gorge himself upon them, the bailiff ordered his arrest. Thus notified
in time, Yvon the Forester resolved to flee, leaving his son and family
behind. But Den-Brao as well as his wife insisted upon accompanying him
with their children.
The whole family
decided to take the road and place their fate in the hands of
Providence. The smoked buck's meat would suffice to sustain them through
a long journey. They knew that whichever way they took, serfdom awaited
them. It was a change of serfdom for serfdom; but they found
consolation in the knowledge that the change from the horrors they had
undergone could not but improve their misery. The famine, although
general, was not, according to reports, equally severe everywhere.
The hut near the
Fountain of the Hinds was, accordingly, abandoned. Den-Brao and his wife
carried the little Jeannette by turns on their backs. The other child,
Nominoe, being older, marched besides his grandfather. They reached and
crossed the borders of the royal domain, and Yvon felt safe. A few days
later the travelers learned from some pilgrims that Anjou suffered less
of the famine than did any other region. Thither they directed their
steps, induced thereto by the further consideration that Anjou bordered
on Britanny, the cradle of the family. Yvon wished eventually to return
thither in the hope of finding some of his relatives in Armorica.
The journey to Anjou
was made during the first months of the year 1034 and across a thousand
vicissitudes, almost always accompanied by some pilgrims, or by beggars
and vagabonds. Everywhere on their passage the traces were met of the
horrible famine and not much less horrible ravages caused by the private
feuds of the seigneurs. Little Jeannette perished on the road.
EPILOGUE
The narrative of my
father, Yvon the Forester, breaks off here. He could not finish it. He
was soon after taken sick and died. Before expiring he made to me the
following confession which he desired inserted in the family's annals:
"I have a horrible
confession to make. Near by the grave to which I took the body of
Julyan, lay a large heap of wood that was to be reduced to coal by the
woodsmen. My family was starving in the hut. I saw no way of prolonging
their existence. The thought then occurred to me: 'Last night the
abominable food that I carried to my family from Gregory's human charnel
house kept them from dying in the agonies of starvation. My grandson is
dead. What should I do? Bury the body of little Julyan or have it serve
to prolong the life of those who gave him life?'
"After long
hesitating before such frightful alternatives, the thought of the
agonies that my family were enduring decided me. I lighted the heap of
dried wood. I laid upon it the flesh of my grandson, and by the light
cast from the pyre I buried his bones, except a fragment of his skull,
which I preserved as a sad and solemn relic of those accursed days, and
on which I engraved these fateful words in the Gallic tongue:
Fin-al-bred - The End of the World. I then took the broiled pieces of
meat to my expiring family!... You all ate in the dark.... You knew not
what you ate.... The ghastly meal saved your lives!"
My father then
delivered to me the parchment that contained his narrative, accompanied
with the lettered bone from the skull of my poor little Julyan, and also
the iron arrow-head which accompanied the narrative left by our
ancestor Eidiol, the skipper of Paris. Some day, perhaps, these two
narratives may be joined to the chronicle of our family, no doubt held
by those of our relatives who must still be living in Britanny.
My father Yvon died on the 9th of September, 1034.
This is how our
journey ended: Following my father's wishes and also with the purpose of
drawing near Britanny, we marched towards Anjou, where we arrived on
the territory of the seigneur Guiscard, Count of the region and castle
of Mont-Ferrier. All travelers who passed over his territory had to pay
tribute to his toll-gatherers. Poor people, unable to pay, were,
according to the whim of the seigneur's men, put through some
disagreeable, or humiliating, or ridiculous performance: they were
either whipped, or made to walk on their hands, or to turn somersaults,
or kiss the bolts of the toll-gatherer's gate. As to the women, they
were subjected to revolting obscenities. Many other people as penniless
as ourselves were thus subjected to indignity and brutality. Desirous of
sparing my father and my wife the disgrace, I said to the bailiff of
the seigniory who happened to be there: "The castle I see yonder looks
to me weak in many ways. I am a skillful mason; I have built a large
number of fortified donjons; employ me and I shall work to the
satisfaction of your seigneur. All I ask of you is not to allow my
father, wife and children to be maltreated, and to furnish us with
shelter and bread while the work lasts." The bailiff accepted my offer
gladly, seeing that the mason, who was killed during the last war
against the castle of Mont-Ferrier, had not yet been replaced, and
besides I furnished ample evidence of knowing how to build. The bailiff
assigned us to a hut where we were to receive a serf's pittance. My
father was to cultivate a little garden attached to our hovel, while
Nominoe, then old enough to be of assistance, was to help me at my work
which would last until winter. We contemplated a journey to Britanny
after that. We had lived here five months when, three days ago, I lost
my father.
***
Today the eleventh
day of the month of June, of the year 1035, I, Den-Brao add this
post-script to the above lines that I appended to my father's narrative.
I have to record a sad event. The work on the castle of Mont-Ferrier
not being concluded before the winter of 1034, the bailiff of the
seigneur, shortly after my father's death proposed to me to resume work
in the spring. I accepted. I love my trade. Moreover, my family felt
less wretched here than in Compiegne, and I was not as anxious as my
father to return to Britanny where, after all, there may be no member of
our family left. I accepted the bailiff's offer, and continued to work
upon the buildings, that are now completed. The last piece of work I did
was to finish up a secret issue that leads outside of the castle.
Yesterday the bailiff came to me and said: "One of the allies of the
seigneur of Mont-Ferrier, who is just now on a visit at the castle,
expressed great admiration for the work that you did, and as he is
thinking of improving the fortifications of his own manor, he offered
the count our master to exchange you for a serf who is a skillful
armorer, and whom we need. The matter was settled between them."
"But I am not a serf of the seigneur of Mont-Ferrier," I interposed; "I agreed to work here of my own free will."
The bailiff shrugged
his shoulders and replied: "The law says - every man who is not a
Frank, and who lives a year and a day upon the land of a seigneur,
becomes a serf and the property of the said seigneur, and as such is
subject to taille at will and mercy. You have lived here since the tenth
day of June of the year 1034; we are now at the eleventh day of June of
the year 1035; you have lived a year and a day on the land of the
seigneur of Mont-Ferrier; you are now his serf; you belong to him, and
he has the right to exchange you for a serf of the seigneur of
Plouernel. Drop all thought of resisting our master's will. Should you
kick up your heels, Neroweg IV, seigneur and count of Plouernel, will
order you tied to the tail of his horse, and drag you in that way as far
as his castle."
I would have
resigned myself to my new condition without much grief, but for one
circumstance. For forty years I lived a serf on the domain of Compiegne,
and it mattered little to me whether I exercised my trade of masonry in
one seigniory or another. But I remember that my father told me that he
had it from his grandfather Guyrion how an old family of the name of
Neroweg, established in Gaul since the conquest of Clovis, had ever been
fatal to our own. I felt a sort of terror at the thought of finding
myself the serf of a descendant of the Terrible Eagle - that first of
the Nerowegs that crossed our path.
May heaven ordain it
so that my forebodings prove unfounded! May heaven ordain, my dear son
Nominoe, that you shall not have to register on this parchment aught but
the date of my death and these few words:
"My father Den-Brao ended peaceably his industrious life of a mason serf."
(THE END)
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