The Iron Arrow Head or The Buckler Maiden: A Tale of the Northman InvasionSue, Eugène
General
The Iron Arrow Head or The Buckler Maiden: A Tale of the Northman Invasion
Sue, Eugène
Northmen -- Fiction
"Martha, neither your husband nor your son are on the road to their
salvation. You must redouble your own piety to the end that you may be
more surely able to intercede for them with the Lord. I forbid you to
mention our pilgrimage either to Eidiol or your son."
"I shall obey you, good father. Is it not to the end of living longer at
their side that I wish to go and adore that incomparable relic?"
"It is then agreed. Towards nightfall, you and your daughter will wait
for me on the other side of the Little Bridge. Understood?"
"Myself and Anne will wait for you, holy father, well muffled in our
capes."
Fultrade left the room, descended the staircase with meek gravity, and
before leaving the house said to the old skipper, while affecting not to
look at Anne the Sweet:
"May the Lord prosper your voyage, Eidiol."
"Thanks for the good wish, Fultrade," answered Eidiol, "but my voyage
could not choose but be favorable. We are to descend the Seine; the
current carries us; my vessel has been freshly scraped; my ash-tree
oars are new, my sailors are young and vigorous, and I am an old pilot
myself."
"All that is nothing without the will of the Lord," answered the monk
with a look of severity, while following with lustful side glances the
movements of Anne, who was ascending the stairs to fetch from the upper
chambers the great coats which her father and brother wished to take
along for use during the night on the water. "No!" continued Fultrade,
"without the will of the Lord, no voyage can be favorable; God wills all
things."
"By the wine of Argenteuil, which you sold to us at such dear prices in
the church of Notre Dame, when we used to go there and play dice, Father
Fultrade, how like a sage you are now talking!" cried Rustic the Gay,
whose name well fitted his looks. The worthy lad, having learned at the
Port of St. Landry about the arrest of the dean of the Skippers' or
Mariners' Guild of Paris, had hastened to the spot, greatly alarmed
about Martha and her daughter, to whom he came to offer his services.
"Oh, Father Fultrade!" the young and merry fellow went on to say, "what
good broiled steaks, what delicate sausages did you not use to sell us
in the rear of the little chapel of St. Gratien where you kept your
tap-room! How often have I not seen monks, vagabonds and soldiers
wassailing there with the gay lassies of Four-Banal street! What giddy
whirls did they not use to dance in front of your hermitage!"
"Thanks be to God, Father Fultrade needs no longer to sell wine and
broiled steaks!" put in Martha with marked impatience at the jests of
Rustic the Gay, and annoyed at seeing the young skipper endeavor to
humiliate the holy man with the recollection of the former traffic in
wine and victuals in which he had indulged as was the habit with the
priests of lower rank. "Father Fultrade is now the leader of the choir
of St. Denis and one of the high dignitaries of the Church. Hold your
tongue, brainless boy!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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