Эжен Сю - The Pilgrim's Shell; Or, Fergan the Quarryman - A Tale from the Feudal Times

"And what is it that Fergan the Quarryman says? Let's see how far his audacity goes," replied the bailiff.

"Master Garin," the old serf went on to say, "Fergan recognizes that we are serfs of our lord, that we are compelled to cultivate for his benefit the fields where it has pleased him to settle us forever, us and our children. Fergan says that we are bound to labor, to plant, to gather in the harvests on the lands of the castle, to mount guard at the strongholds of the seigniory and to defend it."

"We know the rights of the seigniory. But what else does Fergan say?"

"Fergan pretends that the taxes imposed upon us increase unceasingly, and that, after having paid our dues in products, the little we can draw from our harvests is insufficient to satisfy the ever new demands of our lord. Oh, dear Master Garin, we drink water, we are clad in rags, for only nourishment we have chestnuts, berries, and, when in luck, a little bread of barley or oats."

"What!" exclaimed the bailiff in a threatening voice, "you have all the good things, and yet you dare complain!"

"No, no, Master Garin," replied the frightened serfs; "no, we do not complain! We are on the road to Paradise!"

"If, occasionally, we suffer a little, it is all the better for our salvation, as the parish priest tells us. We shall enjoy the pleasures of the next world."

"We do not complain. It is only Fergan who spoke that way the other day. We listened to him, but without approving his words."

"And we even found great fault with him for holding such language," added old Martin the Prudent, all in a tremble. "We are satisfied with our lot. We venerate, we love our lord, Neroweg VI, and also his helpful bailiff, Garin. May God preserve them long."

"Yes, yes," exclaimed the serfs in chorus, "that's the truth, the pure truth!"

"Vile slaves!" roared the bailiff in a rage mixed with disdain, "cowardly knaves! You basely lick the hand that scourges you. Don't I know that, among yourselves, you call the noble Lord Neroweg VI 'Worse than a Wolf,' and me, his helpful bailiff, 'Serf-eater!' These are our nick-names."

"Upon our eternal salvation, Master Garin, it is not we who have given you that nick-name, Master Garin."

"By my beard! We propose to deserve our surnames. Yes, Neroweg VI will be 'worse than a wolf' to you, you pack of idlers, thieves and traitors! And, as for me, I will eat you to the bone, villeins or serfs, if you try to cheat your lord of his rights. As to Fergan, that smooth talker, I'll come across him some other day, and I feel it in my bones that he will yet make acquaintance with the gibbet of the seigniory of Plouernel. He will be hanged high and dry!"

"And we will not pity him, dear and good Master Garin. Let Fergan be accursed, if he has dared to speak ill of you and of our venerated lord!" answered the frightened serfs.

At this moment, Pierrine the Goat returned, accompanied by the man-at-arms, who had been charged by the bailiff to disinter the treasure of Peter the Lame. The young serf had a somberer and wilder look, her tears had dried, but her eyes shot lightning. Twice she threw her thick black hair back from her forehead with her left hand, as she held her right hand behind her. She drew nearer to the bailiff step by step, while the man-at-arms, delivering to Garin a round piece of hollow wood, said: "It contains nine copper deniers, but four of them are not of the mintage of our Lord Neroweg VI."

"Foreign coin in the seigniory! And yet I have forbidden you to accept any under penalty of the whip!"

"Oh, Master Garin," explained Peter the Lame, still lying on the ground, and crying at the sight of his lacerated hands, "the foreign merchants who pass, and who occasionally buy a pig, a calf or a sheep, frequently have none but coin minted in other seigniories. What are we to do? If we refuse to sell the little we have, where are we to find the money to pay the taxes with?"

The bailiff placed the deniers of Peter the Lame in a large leather pouch, and answered the serf: "You owe six deniers; among these nine pieces there are four of foreign coinage; I confiscate them. There remain five deniers of this seigniory. I take them on account. You will give me the sixth when you pay the next taxes. If you don't, look out!"

"I propose to pay now!" shrieked Pierrine the Goat, striking the bailiff full in the face with a large stone that she had picked up on the road. Garin lost his balance with the violence of the blow, and the blood ran down his face; but he promptly recovered from the shock, and, rushing furiously upon the young serf, threw her down, trampled her under foot, and, half drawing his sword, was on the point of dispatching her, when, recollecting himself, he said to his men: "Bind her fast; take her to the castle; her eyes will be put out to-night; and, at dawn to-morrow, she shall be hanged from the patibulary forks."

"The punishment of Pierrine the Goat will be well merited," exclaimed the serfs, hoping to turn away from themselves the wrath of Garin the Serf-eater. "Bad luck to the accursed girl! She has spilled the blood of the good bailiff of our glorious seigneur! Let her be punished as she deserves!"

"You are a set of cowards!" cried Pierrine the Goat, her face and breast bruised and bleeding from the blows that Garin had given her while trampling on her. Then, turning to Peter the Lame, who was sobbing but dared not defend his daughter, or raise his voice to implore mercy for her, she said: "Adieu; to-morrow you will see ravens circling on the side of the seigniorial gibbet; they will be the living shroud of your daughter"; and showing her fists to the dismayed serfs, she went on: "Cowards! you are three hundred, and you are afraid of six men-at-arms! There is among you all but one man truly brave; that's Fergan!"

"Oh!" yelled the bailiff, exasperated by the bold words of Pierrine the Goat, and staunching the blood that flowed from his face, "if I meet that Fergan on my route, he shall be your gibbet mate, the infamous blasphemer!" With that, Garin the Serf-eater remounted, and followed by his men, together with the serfs whom he had arrested, Pierrine the Goat among them, was soon lost to sight, leaving the inhabitants of the village struck with such terror, that on that evening they forgot to carry away the poor blind and mutilated old man, who was left to spend the night in the open.

It was long after the bailiff had led away his prisoners. The night grew rapidly darker. A young woman, pale, lean and deformed, clad in a tattered smock, her feet bare, her head half covered with a hood from which her hair escaped, held her face hidden in her hands, as she sat on a stone near the hearth of the hut which Fergan inhabited at the extremity of the village. A few chips of brush-wood were burning in the fire-place. Above rose the blackened walls, cracked by the recent conflagration; bunches of brush fastened on poles replaced the roof, through which here and there some brilliant star could be seen. A litter of straw in the best protected corner of the hovel, a trunk, a few wooden vessels – such was the furnishing of the home of a serf. The young woman, seated near the fire-place, was the wife of Fergan, Joan the Hunchback. Her forehead in her hands, crouching upon the stone which served her as a seat, Joan remained motionless. Only at intervals a slight tremor of the shoulders announced that she wept. A man entered the hut. It was Fergan the Quarryman. Thirty years of age, robust and large of frame, his dress consisted of a goat-skin kilt, of which the hair was almost worn off; his shabby hose left his legs and feet bare; on his shoulder he carried an iron pick and the heavy hammer which he used to break and extract the stones from the quarry. Joan the Hunchback raised her head at the sight of her husband. Although homely, her suffering and timid figure breathed an angelic kindness. Advancing quickly towards Fergan, her face bathed in tears, Joan said to him with an inexpressible mixture of hope and anxiety, while she interrogated him with her eyes: "Have you learned anything?"