“You have heard of fair Provence, where I spent my youth; the land of the sunny south; the land of the fig and the olive, the mulberry and the rose, the tulip and the anemone, and all rich fruits and fair flowers,--the land where every city is piled with temples and theatres and towers as high as heaven, which the old Romans built with their enchantments, and tormented the blessed martyrs therein.” “Heavens, how beautiful you are!” cried Hereward, as her voice shaped itself into a song, and her eyes flashed, at the remembrance of her southern home. Torfrida was not altogether angry at finding that he was thinking of her, and not of her words. “Peace, and listen. You know how the Paynim held that land,--the Saracens, to whom Mahound taught all the wisdom of Solomon,--as they teach us in turn,” she added in a lower voice. “And how Charles and his Paladins,” [Charles Martel and Charlemagne were perpetually confounded in the legends of the time] “drove them out, and conquered the country again for God and his mother.” “I have heard--” but he did not take his eyes off her face. “They were in the theatre at Arles, the Saracens, where the blessed martyr St. Trophimus had died in torments; they had set up there their idol of Mahound, and turned the place into a fortress. Charles burnt it over their heads: you see--I have seen--the blackened walls, the blood-stained marbles, to this day. Then they fled into the plain, and there they turned and fought. Under Montmajeur, by the hermit’s cell, they fought a summer’s day, till they were all slain. There was an Emir among them, black as a raven, clad in magic armor. All lances turned from it, all swords shivered on it. He rode through the press without a wound, while every stroke of his scymitar shore off a head of horse or man. Charles himself rode at him, and smote him with his hammer. They heard the blow in Avignon, full thirty miles away. The flame flashed out from the magic armor a fathom’s length, blinding all around; and when they recovered their sight, the enchanter was far away in the battle, killing as he went. “Then Charles cried, ‘Who will stop that devil, whom no steel can wound? Help us, O blessed martyr St. Trophimus, and save the soldiers of the Cross from shame!’ “Then cried Torfrid, my forefather, ‘What use in crying to St. Trophimus? He could not help himself, when the Paynim burnt him: and how can he help us? A tough arm is worth a score of martyrs here.’ “And he rode at that Emir, and gript him in his arms. They both fell, and rolled together on the ground; but Torfrid never loosed his hold till he had crushed out his unbaptized soul and sent it to join Mahound in hell.