by Eugène Sue
“The wick!” impatiently called out Garin the Serf-eater to his men, without either looking at or listening to Pierrine the Goat. “The wick! And hurry up! Night approaches.” Peter the Lame, despite his cries, despite the heart-rending entreaties of his daughter, was thrown upon the ground and held down by the men of the bailiff. The torture of the serf was conducted in sight of his companions in misery, who were brutified with terror, and by the habit of serfdom. Peter uttered fearful imprecations; Pierrine the Goat no longer screamed, no longer implored the tormentors of her father. Motionless, pale, sombre, her eyes fixed and drowned with tears, she alternately bit her fists in mute rage, and murmured: “If I only knew where his hiding-place was, I would tell it.”
At last, Peter the Lame, vanquished by pain, said to his daughter in a broken voice: “Take the hoe, run to our field; rake up the earth at the foot of the large elm; you will there find nine deniers in a piece of hollow wood.” Then, casting upon the bailiff a look of despair, the serf added: “That’s my whole treasure, Sire Garin; I’m now ruined!”
“Oh, I was certain that you had a hiding place”; and turning to his men: “Stop the torture; one of you follow this girl and bring back the money. Let her not be lost sight of.”
Pierrine the Goat went off quickly, followed by one of the men-at-arms, after having cast upon Garin a furtive and ferocious look. The serfs, terrified, silent, hardly dared to look at one another, while Peter, uttering plaintive moans, despite his punishment having ceased, murmured while he wept hot tears: “Oh, how shall I be able to till the ground with my poor hands wounded and sore!”
Accidentally the bailiff caught sight of the blind serf, mutilated of his four limbs. Pointing at the unhappy being, he cried out in a threatening voice:
“Profit by that example, ye people of the glebe! Behold how they are treated who dare rebel against their lords. Are you, or are you not subject to taille at the pleasure and mercy of your lord?”
“Oh, yes, we are serfs, Master Garin,” replied the wretches, “we are serfs at the mercy of our master!”
“Seeing you are serfs, you and your race, why always stingying, cheating and pilfering on the taxes? How often have I not caught you in fraud and at fault. The one sharpens his plow-share without notifying me, that he may purloin the denier due to the seigniory every time he sharpens his sock; the other pretends he is free from the horn-dues under the false claim that he owns no horned cattle; others carry their audacity to the point of marrying in a neighboring seigniory; and so on, any number of enormities! Must you, then, miserable fellows, be reminded that you belong to your lord in life and death, body and goods? Must it be repeated to you that all there is of you belongs to him — the hair on your heads, the nails on your fingers, the skin on your vile carcasses, everything, including the virginity of your daughters?”
“Oh, good Master Garin,” an old serf, named by reason of his subtlety, Martin the Prudent, ventured without daring to raise his eyes, “oh, we know it; the priests repeat to us incessantly that we belong, soul, body and goods, to the lords whom the will of God sets over us. But there are those who say ... oh, it is not we who dare to say aught ... things contrary to these declarations.”
“And who is it dares contradict our holy priests? Give me the name of the infidel, the rashling.”
“It is Fergan the Quarryman.”
“Where is that knave, that miscreant? Why is he not here among you?”
“He must have remained cutting stone at his quarry,” put in a timid voice; “he never quits work until dark.”
“And what is it that Fergan the Quarryman says? Let’s see how far his audacity goes,” replied the bailiff.
“Master Garin,” the old serf went on to say, “Fergan recognizes that we are serfs of our lord, that we are compelled to cultivate for his benefit the fields where it has pleased him to settle us forever, us and our children. Fergan says that we are bound to labor, to plant, to gather in the harvests on the lands of the castle, to mount guard at the strongholds of the seigniory and to defend it.”
“We know the rights of the seigniory. But what else does Fergan say?”
“Fergan pretends that the taxes imposed upon us increase unceasingly, and that, after having paid our dues in products, the little we can draw from our harvests is insufficient to satisfy the ever new demands of our lord. Oh, dear Master Garin, we drink water, we are clad in rags, for only nourishment we have chestnuts, berries, and, when in luck, a little bread of barley or oats.”
“What!” exclaimed the bailiff in a threatening voice, “you have all the good things, and yet you dare complain!”
“No, no, Master Garin,” replied the frightened serfs; “no, we do not complain! We are on the road to Paradise!”
“If, occasionally, we suffer a little, it is all the better for our salvation, as the parish priest tells us. We shall enjoy the pleasures of the next world.”
“We do not complain. It is only Fergan who spoke that way the other day. We listened to him, but without approving his words.”
“And we even found great fault with him for holding such language,” added old Martin the Prudent, all in a tremble. “We are satisfied with our lot. We venerate, we love our lord, Neroweg VI, and also his helpful bailiff, Garin. May God preserve them long.”
“Yes, yes,” exclaimed the serfs in chorus, “that’s the truth, the pure truth!”
“Vile slaves!” roared the bailiff in a rage mixed with disdain, “cowardly knaves! You basely lick the hand that scourges you. Don’t I know that, among yourselves, you call the noble Lord Neroweg VI ‘Worse than a Wolf,’ and me, his helpful bailiff, ‘Serf-eater!’ These are our nick-names.”
“Upon our eternal salvation, Master Garin, it is not we who have given you that nick-name, Master Garin.”
“By my beard! We propose to deserve our surnames. Yes, Neroweg VI will be ‘worse than a wolf’ to you, you pack of idlers, thieves and traitors! And, as for me, I will eat you to the bone, villeins or serfs, if you try to cheat your lord of his rights. As to Fergan, that smooth talker, I’ll come across him some other day, and I feel it in my bones that he will yet make acquaintance with the gibbet of the seigniory of Plouernel. He will be hanged high and dry!”
“And we will not pity him, dear and good Master Garin. Let Fergan be accursed, if he has dared to speak ill of you and of our venerated lord!” answered the frightened serfs.
At this moment, Pierrine the Goat returned, accompanied by the man-at-arms, who had been charged by the bailiff to disinter the treasure of Peter the Lame. The young serf had a somberer and wilder look, her tears had dried, but her eyes shot lightning. Twice she threw her thick black hair back from her forehead with her left hand, as she held her right hand behind her. She drew nearer to the bailiff step by step, while the man-at-arms, delivering to Garin a round piece of hollow wood, said: “It contains nine copper deniers, but four of them are not of the mintage of our Lord Neroweg VI.”
“Foreign coin in the seigniory! And yet I have forbidden you to accept any under penalty of the whip!”
“Oh, Master Garin,” explained Peter the Lame, still lying on the ground, and crying at the sight of his lacerated hands, “the foreign merchants who pass, and who occasionally buy a pig, a calf or a sheep, frequently have none but coin minted in other seigniories. What are we to do? If we refuse to sell the little we have, where are we to find the money to pay the taxes with?”
The bailiff placed the deniers of Peter the Lame in a large leather pouch, and answered the serf: “You owe six deniers; among these nine pieces there are four of foreign coinage; I confiscate them. There remain five deniers of this seigniory. I take them on account. You will give me the sixth when you pay the next taxes. If you don’t, look out!”
“I propose to pay now!” shrieked Pierrine the Goat, striking the bailiff full in the face with a large stone that she had picked up on the road. Garin lost his balance with the violence of the blow, and the blood ran down his face; but he pr
omptly recovered from the shock, and, rushing furiously upon the young serf, threw her down, trampled her under foot, and, half drawing his sword, was on the point of dispatching her, when, recollecting himself, he said to his men: “Bind her fast; take her to the castle; her eyes will be put out to-night; and, at dawn to-morrow, she shall be hanged from the patibulary forks.”
“The punishment of Pierrine the Goat will be well merited,” exclaimed the serfs, hoping to turn away from themselves the wrath of Garin the Serf-eater. “Bad luck to the accursed girl! She has spilled the blood of the good bailiff of our glorious seigneur! Let her be punished as she deserves!”
“You are a set of cowards!” cried Pierrine the Goat, her face and breast bruised and bleeding from the blows that Garin had given her while trampling on her. Then, turning to Peter the Lame, who was sobbing but dared not defend his daughter, or raise his voice to implore mercy for her, she said: “Adieu; to-morrow you will see ravens circling on the side of the seigniorial gibbet; they will be the living shroud of your daughter”; and showing her fists to the dismayed serfs, she went on: “Cowards! you are three hundred, and you are afraid of six men-at-arms! There is among you all but one man truly brave; that’s Fergan!”
“Oh!” yelled the bailiff, exasperated by the bold words of Pierrine the Goat, and staunching the blood that flowed from his face, “if I meet that Fergan on my route, he shall be your gibbet mate, the infamous blasphemer!” With that, Garin the Serf-eater remounted, and followed by his men, together with the serfs whom he had arrested, Pierrine the Goat among them, was soon lost to sight, leaving the inhabitants of the village struck with such terror, that on that evening they forgot to carry away the poor blind and mutilated old man, who was left to spend the night in the open.
CHAPTER II.
FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN.
IT WAS LONG after the bailiff had led away his prisoners. The night grew rapidly darker. A young woman, pale, lean and deformed, clad in a tattered smock, her feet bare, her head half covered with a hood from which her hair escaped, held her face hidden in her hands, as she sat on a stone near the hearth of the hut which Fergan inhabited at the extremity of the village. A few chips of brush-wood were burning in the fire-place. Above rose the blackened walls, cracked by the recent conflagration; bunches of brush fastened on poles replaced the roof, through which here and there some brilliant star could be seen. A litter of straw in the best protected corner of the hovel, a trunk, a few wooden vessels — such was the furnishing of the home of a serf. The young woman, seated near the fire-place, was the wife of Fergan, Joan the Hunchback. Her forehead in her hands, crouching upon the stone which served her as a seat, Joan remained motionless. Only at intervals a slight tremor of the shoulders announced that she wept. A man entered the hut. It was Fergan the Quarryman. Thirty years of age, robust and large of frame, his dress consisted of a goat-skin kilt, of which the hair was almost worn off; his shabby hose left his legs and feet bare; on his shoulder he carried an iron pick and the heavy hammer which he used to break and extract the stones from the quarry. Joan the Hunchback raised her head at the sight of her husband. Although homely, her suffering and timid figure breathed an angelic kindness. Advancing quickly towards Fergan, her face bathed in tears, Joan said to him with an inexpressible mixture of hope and anxiety, while she interrogated him with her eyes: “Have you learned anything?”
“Nothing,” answered the serf in despair, throwing down his pick and hammer; “nothing, nothing!”
Joan fell back upon the stone sobbing. She raised her hands to heaven and murmured: “I shall never again see Colombaik! My poor child is lost for ever!”
Fergan, no less distressed than his wife, sat down on another stone placed near the fire-place, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. Thus he remained for a long spell, gloomy, silent. Suddenly rising, he started to walk uneasily, muttering in a muffled voice: “That cannot remain so — I shall go — Yes, I shall! I must find him!”
Joan, hearing the serf repeat: “I shall go! I shall go!” raised her head, wiped her tears with the back of her hand and asked: “Where is it you want to go?”
“To the castle!” roared the serf, continuing his agitated walk, his arms crossed over his chest. Trembling from head to foot, Joan clasped her hands, and tried to speak. In her terror, she could not at first utter a word; her teeth chattered. At last she said in a faint voice: “Fergan — you must have lost your wits when you say you will go to the castle.”
“I shall go after the moon has set.”
“Oh! I have lost my poor child,” rejoined Joan moaning, “I am going to lose my husband also.” She moaned again. The imprecations and the foot-falls of the serf alone interrupted the silence of the night. The fire went out in the fire-place, but the moon, just risen, threw her pale rays into the interior of the hut through the open spaces left by the pole and bunches of brush that took the place of the burnt-out roof. The silence lasted long. Joan the Hunchback taking courage anew, resumed in an accent that was almost confident: “You propose to go to-night — to the castle — fortunately that’s impossible.” And seeing that the serf did not intermit his silent walk, Joan took his hand as he moved toward her: “Why do you not answer? That frightens me.” He roughly withdrew his hand, and thrusting his wife back, exclaimed in an irritated voice: “Leave me alone, woman, leave me alone.”
The feeble creature fell down a few steps beyond among some rubbish, and her head having struck against a piece of wood, she could not hold back a cry of pain. Fergan walked back, and by the light of the moon he saw Joan rising painfully. He ran to her, helped her to sit down on one of the stones of the fire-place, and asked anxiously: “Did you hurt yourself falling?”
“No, no, my dear husband.”
“My poor Joan!” exclaimed the serf alarmed, having placed one of his hands on the forehead of his wife, “you bleed!”
“I have been weeping,” she replied sweetly, staunching her wound with a lock of her long disheveled hair.
“You suffer? Answer me, dear wife!”
“No, no, I fell because I am feeble,” answered Joan with her angelic mildness; “let’s not think about that,” and she added, smiling sadly and alluding to her deformity, “I need not fear being made ugly by a scar.”
Fergan imagined that Joan the Hunchback meant he would have treated her with less rudeness if she had been handsome, and he felt deeply grieved. In a tone of kind reproach he replied: “Apart from the hastiness of my temper, have I not always treated you as the best of wives?”
“That’s true, my dear Fergan, and my gratitude is great.”
“Have I not freely taken you for wife?”
“Yes, notwithstanding you could have chosen from the serfs of the seigniory a companion who would not have been deformed.”
“Joan,” replied the quarryman with sad bitterness, “if your countenance had been as beautiful as your heart is good, whose would have been the first night of our wedding? Would it not have belonged to Neroweg ‘Worse than a Wolf,’ or to one of his whelps?”
“Oh, Fergan, my ugliness saved us this supreme shame.”
“The wife of Sylvest, one of my ancestors, a poor slave of the Romans, also escaped dishonor by disfiguring herself,” was the thought that flashed through the quarryman’s mind while he sighed, and pondered: “Oh, slavery and serfdom weigh upon our race for centuries. Will the day of deliverance, predicted by Victoria the Great,[A] ever come.”
Joan, seeing her husband plunged in meditation, said to him: “Fergan, do you remember what Pierrine the Goat told us three days ago on the subject of our son? She had, as was her custom, led her sheep to the steepest heights of the great ravine, whence she saw one of the knights of the Count of Plouernel rush on a gallop out of a copse where our little Colombaik had gone to gather some dead wood. Pierrine was of the opinion that that knight carried off our child under his cloak.”
“The suspicions of Pierrine were well founded.”
“Good God! What is it
you say?”
“A few hours ago, while I was at the quarry, several serfs, engaged in repairing the road of the castle which was partly destroyed during the last war, came for stone. For the last three days I have been like crazy. I have been telling everybody of the disappearance of Colombaik. I spoke about it to these serfs. One of them claimed to have seen the other evening, shortly before nightfall, a knight holding on his horse a child about seven or eight years, with blonde hair—”
“Unhappy we! That was Colombaik.”
“The knight then climbed the hill that leads to the manor of Plouernel, and went in.”
“But what can they do to our child?”
“What will they do!” exclaimed the serf shivering, “they’ll strangle him, and use his blood for some infernal philter. There is a sorceress stopping at the castle.”
Joan uttered a cry of fright, but rage swiftly followed upon her fright. Delirious and running to the door she cried out: “Fergan, let’s go to the manor — we shall enter even if we have to tear up the stones with our nails — I shall have my child — the sorceress shall not throttle him — no! no!” The serf, holding her by the arm, drew her back. Almost immediately she fainted away in his arms. Still, in a muffled voice, the poor woman muttered: “It seems to me I see him die — if my heart were torn in a vice I could not suffer more — it is too late — the sorceress will have strangled the child — no — who knows!” Presently seizing her husband by the hand, “You meant to go to the castle — come — come!”
“I shall go alone when the moon is down.”
“Oh, we are crazy, my poor man! Pain leads us astray. How can one penetrate into the lair of the count?”