The Infant's Skull; Or, The End of the World. A Tale of the Millennium
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CHAPTER VII.
THE STOCK OF JOEL.
Yvon's calculations proved right. He had told Marceline that no moreopportune time could be chosen to obtain a favor from the Queen, sohappy was she at the death of Louis the Do-nothing and the expectationof marrying Hugh the Capet. Thanks to the good-will of Adelaide, whoconsented to the marriage of her maid, the bailiff of the domain alsogranted his consent to Yvon after the latter, agreeable to the promisehe had made Marceline, returned _with his sanity_ from the chapel of thehermitage of St. Eusebius. The serf's story was, that entering thechapel in the evening, he saw by the light of the lamp in the sanctuarya monstrous black snake coiled around the feet of the saint; thatsuddenly enlightened by a ray from on high, he stoned and killed thehorrible dragon, which was nothing else than a demon, seeing that notrace of the monster was left; and that, in recompense for his timelyassistance, St. Eusebius miraculously returned his reason to him. Inglorification of the miracle that was thus performed by St. Eusebius infavor of the Calf, Yvon was at his own request appointed forester serfover the canton of the Fountain of the Hinds, and the very morning afterhis marriage to the golden-haired Marceline, he settled down with her inone of the profound solitudes of the forest of Compiegne, where theylived happily for many years.
As was to be expected, Marceline's curiosity, pricked on the doublescore of the reasons that led Yvon to simulate idiocy for so many years,and that took the Queen to the Fountain of the Hinds at the early hoursof the morning of May 2nd, instead of dying out, grew intenser. Yvon hadpromised after marriage to satisfy her on both subjects. She was notslow to remind him of the promise, nor he to satisfy her.
"My dear wife," said Yvon to Marceline the first morning that they awokein their new forest home, "What were the motives of my pretendedidiocy?--I was brought up by my father in the hatred of kings. Mygrandfather Guyrion, slaughtered in a popular uprising, had taught myfather to read and write, so that he might continue the chronicle of ourfamily. He preserved the account left by his grandfather Eidiol, thedean of the skippers of Paris, together with an iron arrow-head, theemblem attached to the account. We do not know whatever became of thebranch of our family that lived in Britanny near the sacred stones ofKarnak. It has the previous chronicles and relics that our ancestorsrecorded and gathered from generation to generation since the days ofJoel, at the time of the Roman invasion of Gaul by Julius Caesar. Mygrandfather and my father wrote nothing on their obscure lives. But inthe profound solitude where we lived, of an evening, after a day spenthunting or in the field, my father would narrate to me what mygrandfather Guyrion had told him concerning the adventures of thedescendants of Joel. Guyrion received these traditions from Eidiol, whoreceived them from his grandfather, a resident of Britanny, before theseparation of the grandchildren of Vortigern. I was barely eighteenyears old when my father died. He made me promise him to record theexperience of my life should I witness any important event. To that endhe handed me the scroll of parchment written by Eidiol and the ironarrow-head taken from the wound of Paelo, the pirate. I carefully putthese cherished mementos of the past in the pocket of my hose. Thatevening I closed my father's eyes. Early next morning I dug his gravenear his hut and buried him. His bow, his arrows, a few articles ofdress, his pallet, his trunk, his porridge-pot--everything was a fixtureof and belonged to the royal domain. The serf can own nothing.Nevertheless I cogitated how to take possession of the bow, arrows and abag of chestnuts that was left, determined to roam over the woods infreedom, when a singular accident upturned my projects. I had lain downupon the grass in the thick of a copse near our hut, when suddenly Iheard the steps of two riders and saw that they were men ofdistinguished appearance. They were promenading in the forest. Theyalighted from their richly caparisoned horses, held them by the bridle,and walked slowly. One of them said to the other:
'King Lothaire was poisoned last year by his wife Imma and her lover,the archbishop of Laon ... but there is Louis left, Lothaire's son ...Louis the Do-nothing.'
'And if this Louis were to die, would his uncle, the Duke of Lorraine,to whom the crown would then revert by right, venture to dispute thecrown of France from me ... from me, Hugh, the Count of Paris?'
'No, seigneur; he would not. But it is barely six months sinceLothaire's death. It would require a singular chain of accidents for hisson to follow him so closely to the tomb.'
'The ways of Providence are impenetrable.... Next spring, Louis willcome with the Queen to Compiegne, and--'
"I could not hear the end of the conversation, the cavaliers werewalking away from me as they spoke. The words that I caught gave mematter for reflection. I recalled some of the stories that my fathertold me, that of Amael among others, one of our ancestors, who declinedthe office of jailor of the last scion of Clovis. I said to myself thatperhaps I, a descendant of Joel, might now witness the death of the lastof the kings of the house of Charles the Great. The thought so took holdof me that it caused me to give up my first plan. Instead of roamingover the woods, I went the next morning to my grandmother. I had neverbefore stepped out of the forest where I lived in complete seclusionwith my father. I was taciturn by nature, and wild. Upon arriving at thecastle in quest of my grandmother, I met by accident a company ofFrankish soldiers who had been exercising. For pastime they began tomake sport of me. My hatred of their race, coupled with my astonishmentat finding myself for the first time in my life among such a big crowd,made me dumb. The soldiers took my savage silence for stupidity, andthey cried in chorus: 'He is a calf!' Thus they carried me along withthem amidst wild yells and jeers, and not a few blows bestowed upon me!I cared little whether I was taken for an idiot or not, and consideringthat nobody minds an idiot, I began in all earnest to play the role,hoping that, thanks to my seeming stupidity, I might succeed inpenetrating into the castle without arousing suspicion. My poorgrandmother believed me devoid of reason, the retainers at the castle,the courtiers, and later the King himself amused themselves with theimbecility of Yvon the Calf. And so one day, after having been an unseenwitness to the interview of Hugh the Capet with Blanche near theFountain of the Hinds, I saw the degenerate descendant of Charles theGreat expire under my very eyes; I saw extinguished in Louis theDo-nothing the second royal dynasty of France."
Marceline followed Yvon closely with her hands in his, and kissed him,thinking the recital over.
"But I have a confession to make to you," Yvon resumed. "Profiting bythe facility I enjoyed in entering the castle, I committed a theft.... Ione day snatched away a roll of skins that had been prepared to writeupon. Never having owned one denier, it would have been impossible forme to purchase so expensive an article as parchment. As to pens andfluid, the feathers that I pluck from eagles and crows, and the blackjuice of the trivet-berry will serve me to record the events of my life,the past and recent part of which is monumental, and whose next andapproaching part promises to be no less so."
PART II.
THE END OF THE WORLD.