"It must be full of game. We shall hunt deer, bucks and wild boars.... Long live Charles Martel!" "And the ponds that extend down there on either side of the road, they must be full of fish.... We shall fish carp, tench and pike that I like so well!... Long live Charles!" "Do you not find, comrades, that this abbey has a certain martial aspect, with its high battlements, its counter forts, its ramparts, its few and narrow windows and its ponds that surround it like a natural defence?" "So much the better! Within its walls we shall be entrenched as within a fortress; and should it please the successors of our good Charles, or the phantom kings, to dispossess us in turn, as we are about to dispossess this abbess, we shall be able to prove that we wear hose and not skirts." "Our tapers are lances, our benedictions sabre cuts." "Let us hasten our horses; it will soon be night and I am hungry.... Upon the word of Richulf, two whole hams, four pikes and a whole mountain of cabbage will barely suffice to appease my hunger." "Sharpen your teeth, glutton! As to me, I propose to invite the abbess and her nuns. The feast will then be complete." "I shall invite the young and handsome ones to share our lodgings at the abbey. What say you, comrades?" "What! Invite them, Sigewald!... They must, by my beard! They shall be forced to remain with us.... The good Charles will laugh at the move. If the Bishop of Nantes should raise a howl, we shall tell him to come and take his sheep from the wolves." "The devil take the Bishop of Nantes! The day of these tonsured people has gone by, that of the soldier has come!... We are masters in our house!" While his companions were delivering themselves of these gross jokes, Berthoald preceded them silent and pensive. Charles had invested him with the high dignity of count; he dragged a rich booty behind him in his carts; the donation of the abbey insured to him the possession of a large income; all notwithstanding, the young chief seemed troubled in mind; at times a bitter and painful smile curled his lips. The Frankish riders were presently on the narrow road at either side of which an immense pond extended as far as the eye could reach. Richulf presently said to the young chief: "I do not know whether it is the dusk that impedes my sight, but it looks to me as if this road is cut off by a mound of earth a little distance ahead of us."