Collected Works of Eugène Sue

by Eugène Sue

  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.

  * *

  To-day 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

  The Pilgrim’s Shell

  OR, FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN: A TALE FROM THE FEUDAL TIMES

  Translated by Daniel de Leon

  For this story, we remain in the eleventh century, beginning in 1094. Joel’s descendant, Fergan the Quarryman, is a serf of the Manor of Plouernel, ruled by Neroweg VI. Unlike many of his fellow serfs, Fergan is only too painfully aware of the lowly status he lives with and deeply resents his lack of independence. He learns that Neroweg has kidnapped his son, Colombaik; naturally, the boy’s parents are distraught: ‘they’ll strangle him and use his blood for some infernal philter.’ Fergan hatches a plan to rescue his little boy using a secret tunnel into the castle, built by Neroweg’s father. To rescue his son, he must not only brave the huge fortress and also the sorceress, Aazenar, who is reputed to also live at the castle.

  Following this adventure, Fergan and his family flee under the cover of a crusader’s army and experience many hardships, told through Fergan’s eyes. Can the family ever return to their homeland in safety and if they do, what changes will have happened in their absence to society and the economy?

  CONTENTS

  TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

  PART I. THE FEUDAL CASTLE.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  PART II. THE CRUSADE.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  PART III. THE COMMUNE OF LAON.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  EPILOGUE.

  TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.

  In my introduction to “The Silver Cross; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth,” I said:

  “Eugène Sue wrote in French a monumental work — the Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family. It is a ‘work of fiction’; yet it is the best universal history extant. Better than any work, avowedly on history, it graphically traces the special features of the several systems of class-rule as they succeeded each other from epoch to epoch, together with the nature of the struggle between the contending classes. The ‘Law,’ ‘Order,’ ‘Patriotism,’ ‘Religion,’ etc., etc., that each successive tyrant class, despite its change of form, hysterically has sought refuge in in order to justify its criminal existence whenever threatened; the varying economic causes of the oppression of the toilers; the mistakes incurred by these in their struggles for redress; the varying fortunes of the conflict; — all these social dramas are therein reproduced in a majestic series of ‘historic novels,’ that cover leading and successive episodes in the history of the race.”

  The present story — The Pilgrim’s Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman — is one of that majestic series, among the most majestic of the set, and, with regard to the social period that it describes — its institutions, its classes, its manners, its virtues and its crimes, and the characters that it builds — the most instructive treatise on feudalism, at the very time when the bourgeo
is or capitalist class was struggling for a foot-hold, and beginning to break through the thick feudal incrustation above. More fully than Molière’s plays, and strangely supplemental of the best passages on the subject in the novels of George Eliot, The Pilgrim’s Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman chisels the struggling bourgeois on the feudal groundwork and background, in lines so sharp and true that both the present fully developed and ruling capitalist, inheritor of the feudal attribute of plundering, is seen in the historic ancestor of his class, and his class’ refuse, the modern middle class man, is foreshadowed, now also struggling like his prototype of feudal days, to keep his head above water, but, differently from his prototype, who had his future before him, now with his future behind. This double development, inestimable in the comprehension of the tactical laws that the Labor or Socialist Movement demands, stands out clear with the aid of this work.

  Eugène Sue has been termed a colorist, the Titian of French literature. It does not detract from his merits, it rather adds thereto, that his brush was also photographic. The leading characters in the story — Fergan, the type of the physically and mentally clean workingman; Bezenecq the Rich, the type of the embryonic bourgeois, visionary, craven and grasping; Martin the Prudent, the type of the “conservative workingman”; the Bishop of Laon, the type of usurping power in the mantle of religion; the seigneur of Plouernel, the type of the ingrain stupidity and prejudices that characterize the class grounded on might; a dazzling procession of women — Joan the Hunchback and Azenor the Pale, Perrette the Ribald and the dame of Haut-Pourcin, Yolande and Simonne, etc. — types of the variations in the form of woman’s crucifixion under social systems grounded on class rule; Walter the Pennyless, the type of dispositions too indolent to oppose the wrongs they perceive, and crafty enough to dupe both dupers and duped; Garin, the type of the master’s human sleuth — are figures, clad in historic garb, that either hurry or stalk imposingly over the boards, followed by mobs of their respective classes, and presenting a picture that thrills the heart from stage to stage, and leaves upon the mind rich deposits of solid information and crystalline thought.

  As a novel, The Pilgrim’s Shell; or, Fergan the Quarryman pleases, entertains and elevates; as an imparter of historic information and knowledge, it incites to thought and intelligent action. Whether as literature of pleasure or of study, the work deserves the broader field of the Socialist or Labor Movements of the English-speaking world, hereby afforded to it; and inversely, the Socialist or Labor Movements of the English-speaking world, entitled to the best, and none too good, that the Movements in other languages produce, can not but profit by the work, hereby rendered accessible to them.

  DANIEL DE LEON.

  New York, January 1, 1904.

  PART I. THE FEUDAL CASTLE.

  CHAPTER I.

  THE SERFS OF PLOUERNEL.

  THE DAY TOUCHED its close. The autumn sun cast its last rays upon one of the villages of the seigniory of Plouernel. A large number of partly demolished houses bore testimony to having been recently set on fire during one of the wars, frequent during the eleventh century, between the feudal lords of France. The walls of the huts of the village, built in pisé, or of stones held together with clayish earth, were cracked or blackened by the flames. There were still in sight, half burnt out, the rafters of the roofings, replaced by a few poles wrapped in bundles of furze or reed-grass.

  The aspect of the serfs, just returned from the fields, was no less wretched than that of their hovels. Wan, emaciated, barely dressed in rags, they huddled together, trembling and uneasy. The bailiff, justiciary of the seigniory, had just arrived at the village, accompanied with five or six armed men. Presently, to the number of about three hundred, the serfs gathered around him, a fellow so ill disposed towards the poor, that, to his name of Garin, the nick-name “Serf-eater” had been attached. This dreaded man wore a leather casque furnished with ribs of iron, and a coat of goatskin like his shoes. A long sword hung by his side. He was astride a reddish-brown horse, that looked as savage as its master. Men on foot, variously armed, who made up the escort of Garin the Serf-eater, kept watch over several serfs, bound hands and feet, who were brought in prisoners from other localities. Not far from them lay stretched on the ground a wretched fellow, fearfully mutilated, hideous and horrible to behold. His eyes were knocked in, his feet and hands cut off — a common punishment for rebels. This unfortunate being, hardly covered in rags, the stumps of his arms and legs wrapped in dirty bandages, was waiting for some of his companions in misery, back from the fields, to find time to transport him upon the litter which he shared with the beasts of burden. Blind, and without hands or feet, he found himself thrown upon the charity of his fellows, who now ten years helped him to eat and drink. Other serfs of Normandy and Brittany, had, at the time of the revolt against their lords, been blinded, mutilated like this wretched fellow, and left upon the spot of their punishment to perish in the tortures of hunger.

  When the people of the village were gathered on the place, Garin the Serf-eater pulled a parchment out of his pocket and read as follows:

  “Witness the order of the very high and very mighty Neroweg VI, lord of the county of Plouernel, by the grace of god. All his serfs and bondsmen, subject to mortmain and taille at his pleasure and mercy, are taxed by the will of the said lord count to pay into his treasury four copper sous per head before the last day of this month at the latest.” The serfs, threatened with this fresh exaction, could not restrain their lamentations. Garin the Serf-eater rolled over the assemblage a wrathful eye and proceeded: “If the said sum of four copper pieces per head is not paid before the expiration of the time fixed, it will please the said high and mighty lord Neroweg VI, Count of Plouernel, to cause certain serfs to be seized, and they will be punished, or hanged by his prevost from his seigniorial gibbets. Neither the annual tax, nor the regular dues, is to be lowered in the least by this extraordinary levy of four sous of copper, which is intended to indemnify our said lord for the losses caused by the recent war which his neighbor, the Sire of Castel-Redon, declared against him.”

  The bailiff descended from his horse to speak to one of the men in his escort. Several serfs muttered to one another: “Where is Fergan? He alone would have the courage to humbly remonstrate with the bailiff that we are wretched, that the taxes, the services, the regular and the extraordinary dues are crushing us, and that it will be impossible for us to pay this tax.”

  “Fergan must have remained behind in the quarry where he cuts stone,” remarked another serf.

  Presently, the bailiff continued to read as follows: “Lord Gonthram, eldest son of the very noble, very high and very mighty Neroweg VI, Count of Plouernel, having attained his eighteenth year, and being of knight’s age, there shall be paid to him, according to the custom of Plouernel, one denier by each serf and villein of the domain, in honor and to the glory of the knighthood of the said Lord Gonthram. Payment to be made this month.”

  “Still more!” murmured several of the serfs with bitterness; “it is fortunate that our lord has no daughter, we would some day have to pay taxes in honor of her marriage, as we shall have to pay them in honor of the knighthood of the sons of Neroweg VI. May God have mercy upon us.”

  “Pay, my God! but wherewith?” interjected another serf in a low voice. “Oh, it is a great pity that Fergan is not around to speak for us.”

  The bailiff having finished his reading, beckoned to a serf named Peter the Lame. Peter was not lame; but his father, by reason of that infirmity had received the nick-name which his son preserved. He advanced trembling before Garin the Serf-eater. “This is the third Sunday that you have not brought your bread to be baked at the seigniorial oven,” said the bailiff; “nevertheless you have eaten bread these three weeks, seeing you are alive.”

  “Master Garin ... my misery is such....”

  “You have had the impudence to have your bread baked under the ashes, you scurvy beggar!”

  “Oh, good Master Garin, our village was
set on fire and sacked by the men of the Sire of Castel-Redon; the little clothing that we had has been burnt or pillaged; our cattle stolen or driven off; our crops devastated during the war. Have mercy upon us!”

  “I am talking to you about oven and not about war! You owe three deniers oven-dues; you shall pay three more as a fine.”

  “Six deniers! Poor me! Six deniers! And where do you expect me to find so much money?”

  “I know your tricks, knaves that you are! You have hiding places, where you bury your deniers. Will you pay, yes or no, you earth-worm? Answer immediately!”

  “We have not one obole ... the people of the Sire of Castel-Redon have left us only our eyes to weep over our disaster!”

  Garin raised his shoulders and made a sign to one of the men in his suite. This one then took from his belt a coil of rope, and approached Peter the Lame. The serf stretched out his hands to the man-at-arms: “Take me prisoner, if it pleases you to, I do not own a single denier. It will be impossible for me to satisfy you.”

  “That’s just what we are about to ascertain,” replied the bailiff; and, while one of his men bound the hands of Peter the Lame without his offering the slightest resistance, another took from a pouch suspended from his belt some touch-wood, a tinderbox and a sulphurated wick, which he lighted. Garin the Serf-eater, turning to Peter the Lame, who, at the sight of these preparations began to grow pale, said: “They will place this lighted wick between your two thumbs; if you have a hiding place where you bury your deniers, your pain will make you speak. Go ahead.”

  The serf answered not a word. His teeth chattered with fear. He fell upon his knees before the bailiff, stretching out to him his two bound hands in supplication. Suddenly a young girl jumped out of the group of the villagers. Her feet were bare, and for only cover she had a coarse skirt on. She was called Pierrine the Goat because, like her sheep, she was savage and fond of rugged solitudes. Her thick black hair half hid her savage face, burnt by the sun. Approaching the bailiff without lowering her eyes, she said bluntly to him: “I am the daughter of Peter the Lame; if you want to torture someone, leave my father and take me.”