What with the wars that the ecclesiastical seigneurs plunged Gaul into in their efforts to retain possession of the property of the lay seigneurs whom they had despoiled by the jugglery of the "End of the World," and what with these religious persecutions, Gaul continued to be desolated down to the year 1033, the new term that had been fixed for the last day of judgment. The belief in the approaching dissolution of the world, which the clergy now again zealously preached, although not so universally entertained as that of the year 1000, was accompanied with results that were no less horrible. In 999, the expectation of the end of the world had put a stop to work; all the fields except those belonging to the ecclesiastical seigneurs, lay fallow. The formidable famine of the year 1000 was then the immediate result, and that was followed by a wide-spread mortality. Agriculture pined for laborers; every successive scarcity engendered an increased mortality; Gaul was being rapidly depopulated; famine set in almost in permanence during thirty years in succession, the more disastrous periods being those of the years 1003, 1008, 1010, 1014, 1027, 1029 and 1031; finally the famine of 1033 surpassed all previous ones in its murderous effects. The serfs, the villeins and the town plebs were almost alone the victims of the scourge. The little that they produced met the needs of their masters--the seigneurs, counts, dukes, bishops or abbots; the producers themselves, however, expired under the tortures of starvation. The corpses of the wretches who died of inanition strewed the fields, roads and highways; the decomposing bodies poisoned the air, engendered illnesses and even pestilential epidemics until then unknown; the population was decimated. Within thirty-three years, Gaul lost more than one-half its inhabitants--the new-born babies died vainly pressing their mother's breasts for nourishment. CHAPTER II. YVON THE FORESTER'S HUT. Yvon--now no longer the Calf, but the Forester, since his appointment over the canton of the Fountain of the Hinds--and his family did not escape the scourge.