The ordeal of battle has to decide between the two parties; there are elaborate preparations and preliminaries, obviously of the most vivid interest to the audience. The demeanour of the Abbot of Clugni ought not to be passed over: he vows that if Heaven permits any mischance to come upon Huon, he, the Abbot, will make it good on St. Peter himself, and batter his holy shrine till the gold flies. In the combat Huon is victorious; but unhappily a last treacherous effort of his enemy, after he has yielded and confessed, makes Huon cut off his head in too great a hurry before the confession is heard by the Emperor or any witnesses:-- Le teste fist voler ens el larris: Hues le voit, mais ce fu sans jehir. The head went flying over the lea, but it had no more words to speak. Huon is not forgiven by the Emperor; the Emperor spares his life, indeed, but sends him on a hopeless expedition. And there the first part of the story ends. The present version is dated in the early part of the reign of St. Louis; it is contemporary with Snorri Sturluson and Sturla his nephew, and exhibits, though not quite in the Icelandic manner, the principal motives of early unruly society, without much fanciful addition, and with a very strong hold upon the tragic situation, and upon the types of character. As in _Raoul de Cambrai_, right and wrong are mixed; the Emperor has a real grievance against Huon, and Huon, with little fault of his own, is put apparently in the wrong. The interests involved are of the strongest possible. There was not a single lord among those to whom the minstrel repeated his story who did not know that he might have to look out for encroachments and injustice--interference at any rate--from the king, and treachery from his neighbours. No one hoped to leave his castles and lands in peace to his son, who did not also fear that his son might be left defenceless and his lands exposed to competition; a fear most touchingly expressed in the lament of William of Poitiers, when he set out on the first Crusade.[78] [Footnote 78: "Pos de chantar m'es pres talens:"--Raynouard, _Choix des poésies des Troubadours_, iv. p. 83; Bartsch, _Chrestomathie provençale_.] Whatever general influences of law or politics or social economy are supposed to be at work in the story of _Huon of Bordeaux_,--and all this earlier part of it is a story of feudal politics and legal problems,--these influences were also present in the real world in which the maker and the hearers of the poem had their life. It is plain and serious dealing with matter of fact. But after the ordeal of battle in which Huon kills the traitor, the tone changes with great abruptness and a new story begins.