The King looked fixedly at Ghisèle, and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand said in a voice broken with sobs: "Do you know what Count Rothbert--" but suddenly breaking off he proceeded with an explosion of idle rage: "I abhor this family of the Counts of Paris! It is they who robbed us of the duchy of France.--Those people are our most dangerous enemies! Some fine day, that Rothbert will dethrone me absolutely, as his brother Eudes dethroned Charles the Fat! Oh, felonious, impudent and thieving family! With what joy would I not exterminate you, if I only had the power of Charles the Great!--But I have no courage--I do not even dare to order them to be killed. They are well aware of this--and that is why they trample over me!" The King's voice was smothered by his sobs. He could only add: "Shame and humiliation!" "I conjure you, dear father; drive away these evil thoughts--But what did that wicked Count Rothbert say to you?" "First of all, he said to me that the Northmans were before Paris, and in immense numbers." "The Northmans!" cried Ghisèle turning pale and shuddering from head to foot with fear. "The Northmans before Paris! Oh, woe, woe is us!" and the child hid her face in her hands, while tears inundated her countenance and her frame shook with convulsive sobs. With his eyes fixed on the floor, not venturing to raise them lest they should encounter his daughter's, Charles the Simple proceeded with a tremulous voice: "The Count of Paris, as I was saying, informed me that the Northmans were before the city. 'What would you have me do against it?' I asked him; 'I have neither soldiers nor men; you, seigneurs, who are the masters of almost all Gaul, have nothing else to do but to defend your own possessions; that is your concern.' Rothbert answered me: 'The Northmans threaten to burn down Paris, massacre the people, and to overrun Gaul ravaging and sacking the fields and towns. No resistance can be offered them. The majority of the villeins and serfs refuse to take the field against them. The soldiers at the disposal of us, the seigneurs, are too few in number to pretend to combat the pirates. We must treat with them.' I then, my little Ghisèle, said to the count: 'Very well, treat; that is your affair, seeing those pagans are before your walls of Paris and in your duchy of France.' 'And so I did,' Rothbert answered me; 'I treated in your name with the envoys of Rolf, the Northman chief.'" "With Rolf," murmured Ghisèle clasping her hands in horror. "With that pirate! That felon steeped in crime and sacrilege! That monster who was the cause of my mother's death!" "Alas! To the desolation of us both, dear daughter, this accursed Rothbert, aiming only at the protection of his city of Paris and of his duchy of France from the clutches of the old Northman brigand, promised in my name that I would relinquish Neustria to him--Neustria, the best of the provinces left to me--and besides--"