But just as he had determined to ride forward and return their kindly greeting with words of cheer and promise of protection, the young and fiery Arab on which he was mounted, terrified by the shoutings, and the caps tossed into the air, reared bolt upright, made a prodigious bound forward, and then, wheeling round, yerked out his heels violently, and dashed away with such fury, that before the young rider, who sat as firmly in his saddle as though he had been a portion of the animal, could arrest him, they were almost among the men-at-arms. The whole passed in a minute; but that minute was of fearful import to many there assembled, many both innocent and guilty. Even in the point of time when the wild horse was plunging forward to the bridal-party, the young lord’s eye, undiverted by the sense of his own keen peril, had fallen upon the lovely face and exquisite symmetry of the fair bride, who, moved by a timid apprehension for the safety of the handsome cavalier, leaned forward a little way in front of her young companions, with clasped hands and cheeks blanched somewhat by sympathetic fear and pity. The blood rushed in a torrent to his cheek, and remained settled there in a red, hectic spot; a fierce, unnatural light gleamed from his glassy eye, and his lip curled with an odious smile. A volume of fierce passions rushed over his soul, overpowering in an instant all his better characteristics. He was determined, in that instant, by that one glance, to possess her, reckless what misery and madness he might cause--reckless of all things, human or Divine! And, whether the disembodied fiend, who, we are taught to believe, is ever ready at such moments of temptation to urge the incipient sinner on to deeper crime and ruin, did spur his wicked will or not--there was a human, sneering, tempting fiend, who, as he rode beside him, read his inmost soul in every look and gesture, and spared nothing of allurement to excite him onward on that fell road of evil passions which should insure his subjugation to his own sins and their readiest minister. “Ha! what is this?” exclaimed the young man, almost angrily, as he pulled up his violent horse, at length, beside the aged seneschal; “what is this, Michael Rubempré--or who am I, that my villeyns and serfs wed at their will, without my consent, or consideration of my droits and dues?” “So please you, beau seigneur, these be no serfs,” replied the old man, bowing low, “but vassals of the highest class, in this your lordship of Roche d’or--free vassals, beau sire, of the highest class. Your consent was applied for duly, and granted, in all form, by me, as, in your absence, by letters of instruction, your representative and agent. The dues were all paid, and a large present above them, as a donation to mademoiselle, your sister, on whom the young bride attended, when she dwelt in the house of the Ursulines, in Clermont.”