The Infant's Skull; Or, The End of the World. A Tale of the Millennium
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CHAPTER II.
YVON THE FORESTER'S HUT.
Yvon--now no longer the Calf, but the Forester, since his appointmentover the canton of the Fountain of the Hinds--and his family did notescape the scourge.
About five years before the famine of 1033, his beloved wife Marcelinedied. He still inhabited his hut, now shared with him by his sonDen-Brao and the latter's wife Gervaise, together with their threechildren, of whom the eldest, Nominoe, was nine, the second, Julyan,seven, and the youngest, Jeannette, two years of age. Den-Brao, a serflike his father, was since his youth employed in a neighboring stonequarry. A natural taste for masonry developed itself in the lad. Duringhis hours of leisure he loved to carve in certain not over hard stonesthe outlines of houses and cottages, the structure of which attractedthe attention of the master mason of Compiegne. Observing Den-Brao'saptitude, the artisan taught him to hew stone, and soon confided to himthe plans of buildings and the overseership in the construction ofseveral fortified donjons that King Henry I ordered to be erected on theborders of his domains in Compiegne. Den-Brao, being of a mild andindustrious disposition and resigned to servitude, had a passionate lovefor his trade. Often Yvon would say to him:
"My child, these redoubtable donjons, whose plans you are sketching andwhich you build with so much care, either serve now or will serve someday to oppress our people. The bones of our oppressed and martyrizedbrothers will rot in these subterraneous cells reared above one anotherwith 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 mymaster's orders would have no other consequence than to bring upon myhead a beating, if not mutilation and even death."
Gervaise, Den-Brao's wife, an industrious housekeeper, adored her threechildren, all of whom, in turn, clung affectionately to Yvon.
The hut occupied by Yvon and his family lay in one of the most secludedparts of the forest. Until the year 1033, they had suffered less thanother serf families from the devastations of the recurring famine.Occasionally Yvon brought down a stag or doe. The meat was smoked, andthe provision thus laid by kept the family from want. With the beginningof the year 1033, however, one of the epidemics that often afflict thebeasts of the fields attacked the wild animals of the forest ofCompiegne. They grew thin, lost their strength, and their flesh thatspeedily decomposed, dropped from their bones. In default of venison,the family was reduced towards the end of autumn to wild roots and driedberries. 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 inmemory of the war-dog of his ancestor Joel. Subsequently the family wasthrown upon the juice of barks, and then upon the broth of dried leaves.But the nourishment of dead leaves soon became unbearable, and likewisedid the sap-wood, or second rind of young trees, such as elders andaspen trees, which they beat to a pulp between stones, have to be givenup. At the time of the two previous famines, some wretched people weresaid to have supported themselves with a kind of fattish clay. Not farfrom 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 themselvessaved. All its members devoured the first meal of the clay. But on themorrow their contracted stomachs refused the nourishment that was asheavy as lead.