“Speak for yourself, count. If you are short-sighted, I have a tolerably keen vision. It would serve you right, by St. James! if I were to have both your eyes put out for telling me such absurd nonsense. Now, I am neither an Esculapius nor a Hermes Trismegistus; but I am going to prescribe a remedy which will do you a very great deal of good. You will start, with your one-eyed warriors, for Aquitaine, where the air is said to be very beneficial to the sight, and you will take a letter for me to your friend Wolf, and bring me back an answer.” Charlemagne thereupon turned his back on the count, who set out the same night for Toulouse. The meeting of Miton and Milaiue [Illustration: 140] CHAPTER VIII. HOW ROLAND UNDERTOOK TO CARRY SARAGOSSA BY STORM. IF, my young friends, I have for some few chapters omitted mention of Roland, don’t jump at the conclusion that he did not distinguish himself during the war in Spain, for he took the most notable part in it, as you may judge for yourselves. After three months spent in fruitless attacks, Saragossa still stood as strong as it was on the first day of the siege. The catapults and balistæ had become disabled without making the slightest impression on the ramparts. The scaling parties had been repulsed, and the stormers, hacked in pieces with daggers and lances, had been flung from the walls into the fosse, or fell among the flames of the raging fires--for burning pitch had been flung over the walls until it had covered them with a coating of bitumen as impenetrable as iron. Roland lost patience. “Prepare everything for the storm to-morrow,” said he to Charlemagne. “In one hour the breach shall be made!” And he descended into the fosse with no other arms, offensive or defensive, than Durandal and his shield. “Whither goes your nephew, sire?” said Turpin to Charlemagne, following Roland with his eyes. “Is he mad, or tired of life?” “I don’t know what he is going to do, but he has bidden me have all ready for the assault, saying that within an hour the breach will be made.” “He will do it, then, sire, as he has said it; and, by my faith! I am grateful to him, for we are beginning to grow mouldy here.” Charles mounted his horse, and began to make his dispositions for the assault. The Saracen sentries on guard on the rampart hardly took any notice of the single warrior who approached the city; but, hearing a great noise, they leant over and saw Roland, who was hammering at the wall with repeated strokes of the pommel of Durandal. The Saracens laughed, and asked one another what the idiot wanted. “Shall we smash him?” said one of them, preparing to roll a huge stone over the rampart. “What for?” said another. “Is there any reason to be afraid of him? Shouldn’t you like; to know what he has come here to do?”