Adventure stories; Brigands and robbers -- Fiction; France -- History -- 15th century -- Fiction; Historical fiction
Al let you mé coutsi
Cinq antsels y trobi:
Doux al capt, trés as pès,
Et la mayré de Diou al met.[6]
[6] Equivalent to our "Four corners to my bed; two angels at my
head; two to bottom; two to pray; two to bear my soul away."
Then he threw up his feet on the board that was given him for bed, and
in five minutes slept and snored.
It was otherwise with Le Gros Guillem. He would tolerate no one near him
but his wife and daughter, and they came in for explosions of wrath. The
fever caused by pain had inflamed his head: he talked, swore, raged
against everyone and all things, and boasted of the example he would
make on the morrow of the man who was in his power. Noémi knew that some
expedition had been undertaken, and that it had failed, but she knew no
particulars, certainly had no idea that it had resulted in the capture
of Jean del' Peyra's father.
She bathed and bound up her father's feet, and applied cold water as
often as they began to burn. This gradually eased him, especially as he
lay with his feet raised. The wounds he had received were of no great
depth, but they were painful, because the soles of the feet are
especially sensitive; and as all the grit and thorns had been removed by
the surgeon before he left Domme, there was no fear but that with rest
he would be well again in a week or ten days; well enough at least to
walk a little.
The wife of Gros Guillem was a dreamy, desponding woman, who paid no
attention to what he said, interested herself in no way in his affairs;
neither stirring him to deeds of violence nor interfering to mitigate
the miseries wrought by him. She accepted her position placidly. She was
fond of Guillem in her fashion without being demonstrative, and it was a
marvel to everyone how it was that he was so attached to her, and that
she had maintained her hold on him through so many years.
It was reported, and the report was true, that the lady had been carried
off by Guillem from the Castle of Fénelon. Guillem had retained her, in
defiance of the excommunication launched at him by the Bishop of Cahors,
and in defiance of the more trenchant and material weapons wielded
against him by the Fénelon family, which was powerful in Quercy, and had
a fortress on the Dordogne above Domme, and a house and rock castle
above La Roque Gageac, side by side with that belonging to the Bishop of
Sarlat. In an affray with Guillem's company the husband had been killed;
the widow accepted this fact as she had accepted the fact that she had
been carried off by violence. She sighed, lamented, pitied herself as a
veritable martyr, and acquiesced in being the wife of the man who,
though he had not killed her husband with his own hand, had caused his
death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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