The Iron Trevet; or, Jocelyn the Champion: A Tale of the Jacquerie. Эжен Сю

a comely lassie, I cared little for that peasant's wife; but it was necessary to prove to the vile rustic plebs that we own it body and soul; therefore, gentlemen, let us never forget the proverb: 'Smite a villein and he'll bless you; bless a villein and he'll smite you.'3 Now, let us hear the sacred mass; you will tell me whether Gloriande de Chivry, my betrothed, whom you will see in my seigniorial pew, is not a superb beauty."

      "Happy Conrad!" said Gerard of Chaumontel, the robber knight, "for bride, a handsome and radiant beauty, who, besides, is the richest heiress of this region, seeing that after the death of the Count of Chivry, his seigniory, in default of male heirs, will fall from the lance to the distaff! Oh, Conrad! What beautiful days of gold and silk will you not spin, thanks to the opulent distaff of Gloriande of Chivry!"

      At the moment when thus chatting the noblemen entered the church, Mazurec, who was still kept a prisoner, vanished under the vault, and a man of the suite of the Sire of Nointel led out Aveline. She was not quite eighteen. Despite the pallor of her face and her deeply disturbed features, the girl preserved her surpassing beauty. She moved with faltering steps, still clad in her humble bride's apparel, of coarse white cloth. Her loose hair fell upon and half covered her shoulders. Her lacerated arms still bore the traces of tight hands, seeing that, in order to triumph over the desperate resistance of his victim, the Sire of Nointel had her bound fast. Crushed with shame at the thought of being thus exposed to the gaze of the crowd, the moment she stepped upon the parvise Aveline closed her eyes with an involuntary movement, and did not at first see Mazurec who was being taken back to prison. However, at the heart-rending cry that he uttered, a shudder went over her frame, she trembled at every limb, and her eyes met the gaze of her husband, a gaze of desolation, in which passionate love and yet painful repulsion mixed with ferocious jealousy, raised within his breast by the thought of the outrage that his wife had been subject to, were all depicted at once. The last of these feelings was betrayed by an involuntary movement, made by the wretched young man, who, avoiding the beseeching looks of Aveline, made a gesture of horror, covered his face with his hands, and rushed under the vault like one demented, followed by the men-at-arms who had him in charge.

      "He despises me," murmured the girl with fainting voice and following her husband with haggard eyes. "He now no longer loves me." Saying this, Aveline became livid, her knees yielded under her, she lost consciousness and would have rolled upon the ground without Caillet, who, hastening to meet her, received her in his arms, saying: "Your father remains to you." Then, helped by Adam the Devil, he raised her up, and both, carrying the swooning young bride in their arms, disappeared in the crowd.

      Jocelyn the Champion, a witness to this distressing scene, rushed into the vault that opened upon the parvise, overtook the keepers of Mazurec and said to one of them:

      "The serf they are taking away yonder has been summoned to a judicial combat, is it so comrade?"

      "Yes," answered the man-at-arms, "he is to combat with the knight Gerard of Chaumontel. Such is the sentence."

      "I must speak to that serf."

      "He is to communicate with nobody."

      "I am his judicial second in this combat, will you venture to keep me from seeing and speaking with my client? By Satan! I know the law. If you refuse – "

      "There is no need of bawling so loud. If you are Jacques Bonhomme's judicial second, come … you have a sorry principal!"

      CHAPTER III.

      THE TOURNAMENT

      The tourney, a ruinous spectacle offered to the nobility of the neighborhood by the Sire of Nointel in celebration of his betrothal, was held on a large meadow that stretched before the gates of the town. The lists were according to the royal ordinance of the year 1306, twenty-four paces long by forty wide, and surrounded by a double row of fences four feet apart. In this latter space the horn and clarion blowers were posted; likewise the valets of the combatting knights were allowed in this latter enclosure, ready to carry their masters from the mêlée, or to run to their assistance when unhorsed, seeing that these valiant jousters were covered with such heavy and thick armor that they could move only with difficulty. Within these barriers were also seen the heralds and sergeants-at-arms, charged with preserving order at the tourney, and passing upon foul blows.

      The plebs of the town and neighboring fields, having hastened to witness the spectacle at the close of the mass, crowded on the outside. A more ragged, wan, miserable and worn-out mass could hardly be imagined than that presented by the crowd whose crushing labors supplied the prodigalities of their seigneurs. The only satisfaction enjoyed by these cowed and brutified people was that of being allowed to assist from a distance, as on this day, at the sumptuous displays that they paid for with their sweat and their marrow. The vassals, leaving their mud-huts, where, exhausted with hunger and broken by toil – at night they huddled pell-mell on the marshy ground like animals in their pens – contemplated with an astonishment that was sometimes mixed with savage hatred, the brilliant assemblage covered with silks and velvets, embroideries and precious stones, seated on a spacious amphitheater, that, decked with tapestries and rich hangings, rose along one of the sides of the lists, and was reserved for the noble dames, the seigneurs and the prelates of the vicinage. On either side of the amphitheater, which was sheltered by tent-cloths from the rays of the sun and from the rain, were two tents intended for the knights who participated in the jousts. There they don their heavy armors before the combat, and thither are they transported when hurt or unhorsed. Numerous banners emblazoned with the arms of the Sire of Nointel floated from the top of poles that surround the lists. The queen of the tournament is Gloriande, a noble young lady, the daughter of Raoul, count and seigneur of Chivry, and betrothed since the previous month to Conrad of Nointel. Magnificently bedizened in a scarlet robe embroidered with gold, her black hair braided with pearls, tall and of remarkable beauty but of a haughty and bold type, with disdainful lips and imperious mien, Gloriande was throned superbly under a species of canopy contrived in the center of the platform, whence she could command a view of the arena. Her father, proud of his daughter's beauty, stood behind her. The noblemen and ladies of all ages, were seated on benches flanking either side of the canopy where the young queen of the tournament paraded her wealth and her charms. Suddenly the clarions sound the opening of the passage of arms; and a herald, clad in red and yellow, the colors of Nointel, advances to the center of the arena and cries the formula:

      "Hear ye, hear ye, seigneurs and knights, and people of all estates: – our sovereign seigneur and master, by the grace of God, John, King of the French, forbids under penalty of life and of forfeiture of goods, all speaking, crying out, coughing, expectorating or uttering and giving of any signs during the combat."

      The profoundest silence ensues. One of the bars is lowered, and the Sire of Nointel, cased in a brilliant steel armor tipped with gold ornaments, rides into the arena. Mounted on a richly caparisoned charger that he causes to prance and caracole with ease, he reins in before the canopy of Gloriande, and the damosel, taking from her own neck the necklace of gold strands, ties it to the iron of the lance that her betrothed lowers before her. By that act he is accepted by the lady as her knight of honor, a quality by which he is to exercise sovereign surveillance over the combatants, and if the point of the weapon from which hangs the necklace touch any of the jousters, he must immediately withdraw from the combat. In giving her necklace to her knight, Gloriande's shoulders and bosom remain naked, and she receives without blushing the testimonies of admiration showered upon her by the knights in her vicinity, whose libertine praises savor strongly of the obscene crudities peculiar to the language of those days. After having made the tour of the field, during which he displays anew his skill in horsemanship, the Sire of Nointel returns to the foot of the platform where the queen of the tournament is seated, and raises his lance. The clarions forthwith resound, the bars are let down at the opposite sides of the arena, and each gives passage to a troop of knights armed cap-a-pie, visors down, recognizable only by their emblems or the color of their shields and the banners of their lances. The two sets, mounted on horses covered with iron, remain for an instant motionless like equestrian statues, at the extremities of the arena. The lances of these gallants, six feet long and stripped of their iron, are, in the parlance of tourneys, "courteous"; their thrust, no wise dangerous, can have for its only effect to roll the ill-mounted combatant off his horse. The Sire of Nointel consults

3

"Poignez villain, il vous oindra; oignez villain, il vous poindra."