"Oh, nurse," replied Ghisèle with a sigh, her eyes filling with tears, "everyone has his troubles! I am a King's daughter, but am motherless. For pity's sake never mention in my hearing the name of those Northmans, of those accursed pagans who deprived me of a mother's love!" "Come, dear child, do not cry," said Jeanike affectionately and drying the tears on Ghisèle's face, while the princess' foster-sister, kneeling upon the little bench and unable to repress her own tears, looked at the princess disconsolately. At that moment the curtain over the farther door of the apartment was pushed aside, and the King of the Franks, Charles the Simple, stepped in. This descendant of Charles the great emperor, was then thirty-two years of age. His bulging eyes, his retreating chin, his hanging lower lip imparted to his physiognomy a look of such stupidity and dullness that anyone would pronounce him a fool, at first sight. His long hair, the symbol of royalty, framed in a puffed face that was fringed with a sparse beard. The King looked profoundly downcast, and brusquely said to Jeanike: "Go out, nurse! Out of the room everybody!" The King remained alone with Ghisèle. The child embraced her father tenderly and looked to find in his presence the needed consolation for the painful thoughts that the recollection of her mother had awakened in her. Charles the Simple quietly submitted to the caresses of his daughter, and said: "Good morning, child; good morning. But why do you weep?" "For very little, good father. I was feeling sad. Your sight banishes my sadness. You are late this morning. My nurse tells me that last night the Count of Paris arrived at the castle together with the Archbishop of Rouen." The King sighed, and nodded affirmatively with his head. "They did not, I hope, bring you bad news, father?" "Alas," answered Charles the Simple, sighing again and looking up at the ceiling, "the tidings that they bring would be disastrous, aye, they would, if I refuse to accept certain conditions!" "And is it in your power to fulfil those conditions?" asked Ghisèle, and the girl looked into her father's face with so childlike and mild a countenance that Charles the Simple, but not wicked, seemed embarrassed and touched. He dropped his eyes before his daughter and stammered: "Those conditions! Oh, those conditions! They are hard! Oh, so very hard! But--what is to be done? Fain would I resist. But I am forced to. What would you have me do if I should be forced to do what should give us pain?" "You can not be commanded, you, the master, the sovereign, the King of the Franks!"