that Aigleta came by with weary eyes and pale face, listless and
absorbed in her own thoughts. When she saw Geoffroy lying in the
garden, she was horror-stricken as though she had seen a ghost, and it
was only when she ascertained that he was breathing that she bent down
to wake him. "You still here?" she whispered. "And where is--your
wife?"
He sprang up in haste, and without answering a word, rushed to his
turret. When he opened the door, he gave a cry like a man mortally
wounded, and fell upon the bed. There lay his young bride, one hand
pressed to her heart, from which a little stream of blood still flowed,
her other hand rested on the song-book, which was open at its last
page, and the white fingers pointed to a newly written line that ran
thus in the language of Provence:
Lo deuteire paqua al crezedor tot lo deute.
The debtor pays to the creditor all the debt.
* * * * *
It was noon before the servants ventured carefully to apprise Count
Hugo of the heart-rending truth. He listened to the tidings as though
he did not rightly understand their purport; even when they led him
down to where his child, like a proud and beautiful statue of whitest
marble, lay outstretched on the bed he knew so well, he gave no token
of what he felt, spoke not a word, shed not a tear. All night he shut
himself up with the dead. The next morning he ordered a bier to be
prepared. He would redeem his word, he said, and carry the bride to her
bridegroom. The servants silently obeyed. Geoffroy--who might else have
put in his claim--lay in a raging fever, tended by Aigleta; his wound
on the forehead had burst open afresh, and no salve availed to close
it.
When the procession came to Gaillac, Count Hugo at its head, the dead
bride on a high bier borne by his servants, a great crowd of peasants
and retainers behind, the bride's father sent a herald in advance to
blow his trumpet three times, and cry with a loud voice, "The debtor
pays to the creditor all that he owes him!" At this cry, Count Pierre
de Gaillac appeared on the balcony of his castle; but when he saw the
lamentable spectacle he turned away horrified, and violently signed to
them to go back, that he would have no such wedding. Then he flung
himself on his horse and rode far away, and only returned after many
days a broken-down man who had forgotten how to laugh.
Count Hugo, however, without giving one sign of grief, next ordered the
bearers to carry the bier to a chapel that stood in the open country,
and was dedicated to the blessed Lady of Mont Salvair. There on the
land and property belonging to the Count de Gaillac, to whom he had to
pay his debt, he buried the beautiful body of his child. And no one
dared to touch a spade, for he determined with his own hands to prepare
her last resting-place. When this ceremony had been performed amidst
the tears of the crowd, all went away and left him. He remained alone
in the chapel; no one knew whether he was praying or speaking with the
dead. But when they went to look after him the next day, and to offer
him food and drink, he was no longer living, and they buried him beside
his child.
Of Geoffroy the chronicle tells nothing further, except that in the
autumn of the same year he joined the crusaders, and travelled towards
Jerusalem, from whence he never came back. But any one turning over the
old records of the Convent of Mont Salvair would there find that
towards the end of the century, there was an abbess of the name of
Aigleta von Malaspina--in religion named Sor Sofrenza (in modern French
S[oe]ur Souffrance,)--who only at an advanced age entered into eternal
rest.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1:
Sack that's torn will not hold grain.
To poor men good advice is vain.]
THE END.
* * * * * * * * *
PRINTING OFFICE OF THE PUBLISHER.
End of Project Gutenberg's Barbarossa and Other Tales, by Paul Heyse