Raimbaut strode up and down, heavy and black as his own ancient donjon. “Comes to me yestereve, as formal as you please, a herald from Montmaure! ‘Hark and hear,’ says he, puffing out his cheeks, ‘to what befell our young lord, Sir Jaufre, riding through the forest called La Belle, and for some matter or other sending a good way ahead those that rode with him. Came a squire out of the wood, drunken and, as it were, mad, and with him, plain to be seen, a stark fiend! Then did the two fall upon Sir Jaufre from behind and forced him to fight, and by necromancy overthrew and wounded him, and, ignobly and villainously, bound him to a tree. Which, when they had done, they vanished. And straightway his men found him and brought him home. And now that fiend may perchance not be found, but assuredly the man may be discovered! When he is, for his foul pride, treason, and wizardry, the Count of Montmaure will flay him alive and nail him head downward to a tree.’” Mistral sent into the hall a withering blast. The smoke from the fire blew out and went here and there in wreaths. It set the abbot coughing. Raimbaut the Six-fingered continued his striding up and down. “Then he puffs his cheeks out and says on, and wits me to know that Savaric of Montmaure calls on every man that owes him fealty to discover—an he is known to them—that churl and misdoer. And thereupon,” ended Raimbaut on a note of thunder, “to my face he describes Garin my esquire!” Garin stood silent, but Foulque panted hard. “Ah, thou unhappy! Ah, the end of Castel-Noir! Ah, my Lord Raimbaut, have we not been faithful liegemen?” He caught his brother by the arm. “Kneel, Garin—and I will kneel—” But Garin did not kneel. He stood young, straight, pale with indignation. “Brother and Reverend Father and my Lord Raimbaut,” he cried, “never in my life had I to do with a fiend! Nor was I drunken nor without sense! Nor did I come upon him from behind! Does he say that, then am I more glad than I was that I brought him fairly to the earth and, because of his own treachery, tied him to a tree and bound his hands with his stirrup leather—” Raimbaut, in his striding up and down being close to his squire, turned upon him at this and delivered the buffet. It brought Garin, hand and knee, upon the rushes, but he rose with lightness. Raimbaut, striding on by, came to the abbot, who, having ended coughing, sat, double chin on hand and foot in furred slipper, tapping the floor. He stopped short, feudal lord beside as massive ecclesiastic. “The Church says it is her part to counsel! Out then with good counsel!” The abbot looked at him aslant, then spoke with a golden voice. “Did you tell the count’s herald that it was your esquire?” “Not I! I said that it had a sound of Aimeric of the Forest’s men.” Aimeric of the Forest was a lord with whom Raimbaut was wont to wage private war. The abbot murmured “Ah!” then, “Did any in your castle betray him?”