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THE PILGRIM'S SHELL
: : OR : :
FERGAN THE QUARRYMAN
A Tale from the Feudal Times
By EUGENE SUE
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH BY
DANIEL DE LEON
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS COMPANY, 1904
Copyright 1904, by the
NEW YORK LABOR NEWS CO.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
In my introduction to "The Silver Cross; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth,"
I said:
"Eugene 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 bourgeois or capitalist class was struggling for a
foot-hold, and beginning to break through the thick feudal incrustation
above. More fully than Moliere'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.
Eugene 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.
INDEX
Translator's Preface iii
Part I. The Feudal Castle.
Chapter 1. The Serfs of Plouernel 3
Chapter 2. Fergan the Quarryman 13
Chapter 3. At the Cross-road 22
Chapter 4. The Manor of Plouernel 32
Chapter 5. Azenor the Pale 36
Chapter 6. Feudal Justice 44
Chapter 7. Abbot and Monk 55
Chapter 8. The Chamber of Torture 66
Chapter 9. The Rescue 82
Chapter 10. Cuckoo Peter 90
Part II. The Crusade.
Chapter 1. The Syrian Desert 109
Chapter 2. Serf and Seigneur 118
Chapter 3. The Emir's Palace 132
Chapter 4. Orgies of the Crusaders 141
Chapter 5. The King of the Vagabonds 151
Chapter 6. The Market Place of Marhala 156
Chapter 7. The Fall of Jerusalem 169
Part III. The Commune of Laon.
Chapter 1. The Rise of the Communes 185
Chapter 2. The Charter of Laon 189
Chapter 3. Episcopals and Communiers 206
Chapter 4. The Ecclesiastical Seigniory of Gaudry 214
Chapter 5. Bourgeois and Ecclesiastical Seigneur 227
Chapter 6. The Gathering Storm 239
Chapter 7. "To Arms, Communiers!" 247
Chapter 8. Retribution 258
Chapter 9. Resting on Their Arms 267
Epilogue 278
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 pise, 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."
"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 promptly 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.