ARCHBISHOP FRANCON.
One of the pavilions of the royal residence at Compiegne served as the
apartment of Ghisèle, the daughter of Charles the Simple, King of the
Franks. The young princess usually was in the company of her female
associates in the large hall on the first floor. A high and narrow
window, made of little glass squares, pierced a wall ten feet thick, and
opened upon the sombre and vast forest in the midst of which rose the
palace of Compiegne. This morning Ghisèle was engaged upon a piece of
tapestry. She had just completed her fourteenth year. Married at
sixteen, her father, Charles the Simple, was a parent at seventeen.
Ghisèle's face was childlike and mild. Her nurse, a woman of about
forty, handed to her the strands of woolen thread of different colors
which the princess used at her work. At the princess' feet, on a wooden
bench, sat Yvonne, her foster-sister. A little further away, several
young girls were busily spinning, or conversed in an undertone while
plying their needles.
"Jeanike," said Ghisèle to her nurse, "my father always comes to embrace
me in the morning; he has not yet come to-day."
"Count Rothbert and seigneur Francon, the Archbishop of Rouen, arrived
last night from Paris with a large escort. The chamberlain was sent to
wake up the King, your father. Since four in the morning he has been in
conversation with the count and the archbishop. The conference must be
on some very important matter."
"This night call makes me uneasy. I only hope it does not mean some bad
news."
"What bad news is there to be feared? The proverb runs: 'Can the
Northmans be in Paris?'" retorted the nurse smiling and shrugging her
shoulders. "Do not take alarm so quickly, my dear child."
"I know, Jeanike, that the Northmans are not in Paris. May God save us
from those pirates! May He hold them back in their frozen haunts."
"The chaplain was telling us the other day," put in Yvonne, "that they
have hoofs of goats and on their heads horns of oxen."
"Keep still! Keep still, Yvonne!" exclaimed Ghisèle with a shudder. "Do
not mention those pagans! Their bare name horrifies me! Alas, were they
not the cause of my mother's death?"
"It is true," answered the nurse sadly. "Oh, it was a fearful night in
which those demons, led by the accursed Rolf, attacked the castle of
Kersey-on-the-Oise after a rapid and unexpected ascent of the river. The
Queen, your mother, was nursing you at the time. She was so frightened
that her breasts dried and she died. It was upon that misfortune that
you shared my milk with my little Yvonne. Until that time I had felt
very wretched. A stray child, sold in her early years to the intendant
of the royal domain of Kersey, my fate improved when I became your
foster-mother. It helped my eldest son, Germain, to become one of the
chief foresters of the woods of Compiegne."
"Oh, nurse," replied Ghisèle with a sigh, her eyes filling with tears,
"everyone has his troubles! I am a King's daughter, but am motherless.
For pity's sake never mention in my hearing the name of those Northmans,
of those accursed pagans who deprived me of a mother's love!"
"Come, dear child, do not cry," said Jeanike affectionately and drying
the tears on Ghisèle's face, while the princess' foster-sister, kneeling
upon the little bench and unable to repress her own tears, looked at the
princess disconsolately.
At that moment the curtain over the farther door of the apartment was
pushed aside, and the King of the Franks, Charles the Simple, stepped
in. This descendant of Charles the great emperor, was then thirty-two
years of age. His bulging eyes, his retreating chin, his hanging lower
lip imparted to his physiognomy a look of such stupidity and dullness
that anyone would pronounce him a fool, at first sight. His long hair,
the symbol of royalty, framed in a puffed face that was fringed with a
sparse beard. The King looked profoundly downcast, and brusquely said to
Jeanike:
"Go out, nurse! Out of the room everybody!"
The King remained alone with Ghisèle. The child embraced her father
tenderly and looked to find in his presence the needed consolation for
the painful thoughts that the recollection of her mother had awakened in
her. Charles the Simple quietly submitted to the caresses of his
daughter, and said:
"Good morning, child; good morning. But why do you weep?"
"For very little, good father. I was feeling sad. Your sight banishes
my sadness. You are late this morning. My nurse tells me that last night
the Count of Paris arrived at the castle together with the Archbishop of
Rouen."
The King sighed, and nodded affirmatively with his head.
"They did not, I hope, bring you bad news, father?"
"Alas," answered Charles the Simple, sighing again and looking up at the
ceiling, "the tidings that they bring would be disastrous, aye, they
would, if I refuse to accept certain conditions!"
"And is it in your power to fulfil those conditions?" asked Ghisèle, and
the girl looked into her father's face with so childlike and mild a
countenance that Charles the Simple, but not wicked, seemed embarrassed
and touched. He dropped his eyes before his daughter and stammered:
"Those conditions! Oh, those conditions! They are hard! Oh, so very
hard! But--what is to be done? Fain would I resist. But I am forced to.
What would you have me do if I should be forced to do what should give
us pain?"
"You can not be commanded, you, the master, the sovereign, the King of
the Franks!"
"I, King of the Franks!" cried Charles the Simple with bitterness and
rage. "Is there, perchance, a King of the Franks in existence? The
counts, the dukes, the marquises, the bishops, the abbots--they are the
kings! Have not the seigneurs, for the last century, made themselves the
sovereign and hereditary masters of the counties and duchies which they
were simply put there to administer during their lives and in the name
of the King? Who is it that reigns in Vermandois? Is it I? No, it is
Count Herbert! Who reigns over the country of Melun? Is it I? No, it is
Count Errenger!--and over the country of Rheims? Archbishop Foulque;
and in Provence? Duke Louis the Blind; and in Lorraine? Duke Louis IV;
and in Burgundy? Duke Rodulf; and in Brittany? Duke Allan--Those are the
brigands, they and so many other thieves, small and large, who have
plucked us of one province after another; bit by bit they have
appropriated to themselves the royal heritage of our fathers. I tell you
this, my child, in order that you may understand that, however hard the
conditions may be that are imposed upon me, I must, alas! submit. The
seigneurs command, I obey. Am I in a condition to resist them? Are they
not intrenched in the fortified castles that they have made Gaul to
bristle with all over the face of the land? I barely can muster up
enough soldiers to defend the small domain that is left to me. Over what
region can I say that I reign to-day--I, the descendant of Charles the
Great, the redoubtable emperor who ruled over the world? I do not
possess the hundredth part of Gaul! Figure it out, Ghisèle, figure it
out, and you will see that there is nothing now left to me but the
Orleanois, Neustria, the country of Laon and my domains of Compiegne,
Fontainebleau, Braine and Kersey. How would you expect me to resist the
seigneurs, and that I say 'No!' when they order me to say 'Yes!' seeing
my forces are so trifling?" And Charles the Simple, stamping the floor
with rage, clenched his fists and cried out: "Oh, my poor Ghisèle! If we
only had our ancestor Charles the Great to defend us now, we would not
now be dictated to as we are! The brave emperor would march forth at the
head of his troops to crush the insolent seigneurs and archbishops in
their own lairs!--Alack! Alack! I have neither the courage, nor the
will, nor the power! They call me 'the Simple'!--They are right," added
the King overcome with sorrow and weeping profusely. "Yes, yes; I am a
simpleton! But a poor simpleton who is greatly to be pitied--especially
at this hour--my child!"
"Good father!" exclaimed Ghisèle, throwing herself on the neck of the
King whose face was bathed in tears. "Do not give way to grief so. Will
there not always be enough land left to you in which to live in peace
with your daughter who loves and your servants who are attached to you?"
The King looked fixedly at Ghisèle, and wiping his eyes with the back of
his hand said in a voice broken with sobs: "Do you know what Count
Rothbert--" but suddenly breaking off he proceeded with an explosion of
idle rage: "I abhor this family of the Counts of Paris! It is they who
robbed us of the duchy of France.--Those people are our most dangerous
enemies! Some fine day, that Rothbert will dethrone me absolutely, as
his brother Eudes dethroned Charles the Fat! Oh, felonious, impudent and
thieving family! With what joy would I not exterminate you, if I only
had the power of Charles the Great!--But I have no courage--I do not
even dare to order them to be killed. They are well aware of this--and
that is why they trample over me!" The King's voice was smothered by his
sobs. He could only add: "Shame and humiliation!"
"I conjure you, dear father; drive away these evil thoughts--But what
did that wicked Count Rothbert say to you?"
"First of all, he said to me that the Northmans were before Paris, and
in immense numbers."
"The Northmans!" cried Ghisèle turning pale and shuddering from head to
foot with fear. "The Northmans before Paris! Oh, woe, woe is us!" and
the child hid her face in her hands, while tears inundated her
countenance and her frame shook with convulsive sobs.
With his eyes fixed on the floor, not venturing to raise them lest they
should encounter his daughter's, Charles the Simple proceeded with a
tremulous voice:
"The Count of Paris, as I was saying, informed me that the Northmans
were before the city. 'What would you have me do against it?' I asked
him; 'I have neither soldiers nor men; you, seigneurs, who are the
masters of almost all Gaul, have nothing else to do but to defend your
own possessions; that is your concern.' Rothbert answered me: 'The
Northmans threaten to burn down Paris, massacre the people, and to
overrun Gaul ravaging and sacking the fields and towns. No resistance
can be offered them. The majority of the villeins and serfs refuse to
take the field against them. The soldiers at the disposal of us, the
seigneurs, are too few in number to pretend to combat the pirates. We
must treat with them.' I then, my little Ghisèle, said to the count:
'Very well, treat; that is your affair, seeing those pagans are before
your walls of Paris and in your duchy of France.' 'And so I did,'
Rothbert answered me; 'I treated in your name with the envoys of Rolf,
the Northman chief.'"
"With Rolf," murmured Ghisèle clasping her hands in horror. "With that
pirate! That felon steeped in crime and sacrilege! That monster who was
the cause of my mother's death!"
"Alas! To the desolation of us both, dear daughter, this accursed
Rothbert, aiming only at the protection of his city of Paris and of his
duchy of France from the clutches of the old Northman brigand, promised
in my name that I would relinquish Neustria to him--Neustria, the best
of the provinces left to me--and besides--"
As Ghisèle perceived that her father hesitated to finish the sentence,
she wiped his tears and asked; "And besides, what else do they demand,
father?"
Charles the Simple remained for a moment silent, and shuddered.
Presently, however, overcoming the imbecile weakness of his character,
he broke out into fresh tears, crying: "No! No! I will not! However much
of a simpleton I may be, that shall never be. No! For once, at least, in
my life I shall act the King!" And closing his daughter in his arms,
Charles the Simple covered her head with kisses and cried: "No! No! He
shall not have my Ghisèle! The insolence of that old brigand, to think
of marrying--the grand-daughter of Charles the Great--and she a child of
barely fourteen! Sooner than see you the wife of Rolf, I would kill
you--I would kill you on the spot. Oh, Lord God, have mercy upon me!"
Ghisèle heard her father's words almost without understanding them. She
was gazing upon him with mingled doubt and stupor when a new personage
stepped into the hall. It was Francon, Archbishop of Rouen. The man's
impassive face, cold and hard, resembled a marble mask. He approached
close to Ghisèle and her father, who still clung together in a close
embrace, and pointing with his hand to the curtain behind which he had
kept himself concealed up to then, said in his sharp, short style:
"Charles, I have heard everything."
"You spied upon me!" cried the King. "You have dared to surprise the
secrets of your master!"
"I mistrusted your weakness. After our interview with Rothbert, I
followed you. I have overheard everything;" and addressing himself to
the young girl who, trembling at every limb, had fallen back upon her
seat, the Archbishop of Rouen proceeded in a solemn and threatening
voice: "Ghisèle, your father told you the truth. He is King only in
name. The little territory that he still is master of is, like his
crown, at the mercy of the Frankish seigneurs. They will dethrone him
whenever it should please them, as they dethroned Charles the Fat and
crowned in his stead Eudes, the Count of Paris, only twenty-five years
ago."
"Yes! Yes! And there will be no lack for a bishop to consecrate the new
usurper, just as there was found one to consecrate Count Eudes, not so,
Francon?" cried Charles the Simple with bitterness. "Such is the
gratitude of the priests towards the descendants of the Frankish Kings
that have made the Church so rich!"
"The Church owes nothing to Kings; the Kings owe to the Church the
remission of their sins!" was the disdainful reply of the archbishop.
"The Kings have bestowed wealth upon the Church here below, on earth;
they have been rewarded a hundredfold in heaven and all eternity. Now,
Ghisèle, listen to what I have to say to you. If, by reason of your
refusal, or the refusal of your father, the Northman pagans should, as
they threaten to do, renew against Gaul the frightful and sacrilegious
warfare that we are all familiar with, but which they promise to put an
end to in the event of your father's consenting to grant your hand to
their chieftain Rolf and to relinquish Neustria to him, then you and
your father will be alone responsible for the frightful ills that will
anew desolate the land."
"Francon," put in Charles the Simple imploringly, "the seigneurs also
have provinces and daughters. Why could not they give to Rolf one of
their provinces and one of their daughters?"
"Rolf wants Neustria, and Neustria belongs to you; Rolf wants Ghisèle,
and Ghisèle is your daughter. The two sacrifices impose themselves upon
the King!"
"I to marry that monster who caused my mother's death!" cried Ghisèle.
"No! Never! Never! Rather would I die!"
"A curse, then, upon you in this world and the next!" shouted the
archbishop in a thundering voice. "Let the blood that is to flow in this
impious war fall upon your head and your father's! You will both have to
answer before God for all the acts of sacrilege that you can prevent!
You will both expiate these sins here on earth by the excommunication
that I shall hurl upon you, and after death in everlasting flames!
Charles, excommunicated and damned in this world shall be an object of
horror to all his subjects. The Church that consecrated him King, will
pronounce him damned and forfeit of his throne! His life will be ended
in a dungeon!"
The terror that took hold of Charles the Simple as the Archbishop of
Rouen spoke, now reached its height. He fell upon his knees at the
priest's feet and clasping his hands implored:
"Mercy! Mercy, holy father! I shall give Neustria to Rolf--but not my
daughter! She is barely fourteen years of age! Fourteen years! It is in
itself almost a crime to marry a child at that age! And, then, she is so
timid! Alas, to place her in that monster's bed would be to consign her
to death!" And the wretched sovereign sobbed convulsively, and still
implored: "Mercy! Mercy! Can you threaten me with eternal punishment
because I refuse to deliver my child to a bandit whom the Church has
excommunicated for his unspeakable crimes?"
"Rolf will be baptized!" answered the prelate solemnly. "The lustral
waters will wash away his soilure, and he will enter the nuptial couch
clad in the white robes of a catechumen, the symbol of innocence!"
"Help! Nurse, help! My daughter is dying!" cried Charles the Simple
leaping from the floor and convulsively straining in his arms the inert
body of Ghisèle, who pale and cold as a corpse, had swooned away in her
seat.
The prelate triumphed.