They exaggerated the havoc made by his dogs in the chase; they spoke of
the brutal manner in which he had treated the citizens at the time
of their complaint concerning the fishing-nets; in short, after the
appearance of the recorder in La Ciotat, they began to speak of the
Baron des Anbiez as a veritable feudal tyrant.
While the storm was gathering on that side, the most perfect
tranquillity reigned in Maison-Forte.
Raimond V. drank and hunted in the finest style, going through his
domains almost every day, with an unequalled activity; he visited his
neighbours at their country-seats, in order to preserve, as he said, the
sacred fire, or, rather, the general opposition to the Marshal of
Vitry, demanding from each one his signature, appended to a supplication
addressed to the king.
In this manifesto, or public declaration, the Provençal nobility
formally demanded the recall of the marshal, reminding Louis XIII. that
his father, of glorious memory, the great Henri, had, under similar
circumstances, recalled the Duke d’Epernon, in order to redress the
just complaints of the country.
Finally, the nobility expressed, in this act, their respectful regrets
not to be able to submit to the orders of the cardinal, in renouncing
their right to arm their houses, inasmuch as their own safety required
that they should always be in a state of defence.
Redoubling his activity, the baron regained, as he said, the legs and
arms of twenty years, in this crusade against Marshal of Vitry.
Such was the moral aspect of Maison-Forte some days after the event of
which we have spoken.
We have not forgotten the Bohemian, who, arriving in the train of the
recorder, had, upon the baron’s invitation, scaled the balcony in so
agile and surprising a manner.
To make use of a particular and modern expression, the vagabond Bohemian
had become quite the fashion in the rustic and warlike habitation of
Raimond V.
In the first place, he had mended numerous household utensils with
remarkable skill.
Then Eclair, the favourite greyhound of the baron, put her paw out
of joint, whereupon the Bohemian went up on the mountain and gathered
certain herbs by the light of the moon, and carefully wrapped the sick
member in them, and the next day Eclair was able to stretch her legs on
the rosy heather of the baronial plains and valleys.
That was not all. Mistraon, the favourite horse of Raimond V., was
wounded in the frush of his foot by a sharp stone; by means of a thin
layer of iron deftly inserted in the slope of the shoe, the Bohemian
made a sort of Turkish horseshoe, which ever after preserved the invalid
foot of Mistraon from all injury.
The baron doted on the Bohemian. Dame Dulceline herself, notwithstanding
her holy horror of this unbeliever, who, never having been baptised,
could not bear the name of Christian, relented somewhat when the
unbeliever gave her marvellous recipes for colouring pieces of glass,
stuffing birds, and making excellent cordials.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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