Эжен Сю - The Poniard's Hilt; Or, Karadeucq and Ronan. A Tale of Bagauders and Vagres

The invasion of Gaul by Clovis introduced feudalism in France, which is equivalent to saying in Europe, France being the teeming womb of the great historic events of that epoch. It goes without saying that so vast a social system as that of feudalism could not be perfected in a day, or even during one reign. Indeed, generations passed, and it was not until the Age of Charlemagne that feudalism can be said to have taken some measure of shape and form. Between the Ages of Clovis and Charlemagne a period of turbulence ensued altogether peculiar to the combined circumstances that feudalism was forced to struggle with two foes – one internal, the disintegrating forces that ever accompany a new movement; the other external, the stubborn and inspiring resistance, on the part of the native masses, to the conqueror from the wilds of Germania. Historians, with customary levity, have neglected to reproduce this interesting epoch in the annals of that social structure that is mother to the social structure now prevalent. The task was undertaken and successfully accomplished by Eugene Sue in this boisterous historic novel entitled The Poniard's Hilt; or, Karadeucq and Ronan , the sixth of his majestic series of historic novels, The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages . The leading characters are all historic. It required the genius, the learning, the poetry, the tact, withal the daring of a Sue to weave these characters into a fascinating tale and draw a picture as vivid as the quartos, from which the facts are gathered, are musty with old age.

January, 1908.

Occasionally they are long-lived, these descendants of the good Joel, who, five hundred and fifty years ago and more lived in this identical region, near the sacred stones of the forest of Karnak. Yes, the descendants of the good Joel are, occasionally, long-lived, seeing that I, Araim, who to-day trace these lines in the seventy-seventh year of my life, saw my grandfather Gildas die fifty-six years ago at the advanced age of ninety-six, after having inscribed in his early youth a few lines in our family archives.

My grandfather Gildas buried his son Goridek, my father. I was then ten years old. Nine years later I lost my grandfather also. A few years after his demise I married. I have survived my wife, Martha, and I have seen my son Jocelyn become, in turn, a father. To-day he has a daughter and two boys. The girl is called Roselyk, she is eighteen; the elder of the two boys, Kervan, is three years his sister's senior; the younger, my pet, Karadeucq, is seventeen.

When you read these lines, as you will some day, my son Jocelyn, you will surely ask:

"What can have been the reason that my great-grandfather Gildas made no other entry in our chronicles than the death of his father Amael? And what can be the reason that my grandfather Goridek wrote not a line? And, finally, what can be the reason that my own father, Araim, waited so long – so very long before fulfilling the wishes of the good Joel?"

To that, my son, I would make this answer:

Your great-grandfather had no particular liking for desks and parchments. Besides, very much after the style of his own father Amael, he liked to postpone for to-morrow whatever he could avoid doing to-day. For the rest, his life of a husbandman was neither less peaceful nor less industrious than that of our fathers since the return of Schanvoch to the cradle of our family, after such a very long line of generations, kept away from Armorica by the hard trials and the slavery that followed in the wake of the Roman conquest. Your great-grandfather was in the habit of saying to my father:

"There will always be time for me to add a few lines to our family's narrative; besides, it seems to me, and I admit the notion is foolish, that to write 'I have lived', sounds very much like saying 'I am about to die' – Now, then, I am so happy that I cling to life, just as oysters do to their rocks."

And so it came about that, from to-morrow to to-morrow, your great-grandfather reached his ninety-sixth year without increasing the history of our family with a single word. When he lay on his deathbed he said to me:

"My child, I wish you to write the following lines for me in our archives:

" 'My grandfather Gildas and my father Goridek lived in our house quietly and happy, like good husbandmen; they remained true to their love for old Gaul and to the faith of our fathers; they blessed Hesus for having allowed them to be born and to die in the heart of Britanny, the only province where, for so very many years, the shocks that have elsewhere shaken Gaul have hardly ever been felt – those shocks died out before the impregnable frontiers of Breton Armorica, as the furious waves of our ocean dash themselves at the feet of our granite rocks.' "

That, then, my son Jocelyn, is the reason why neither your grandfather Goridek nor his father wrote a line themselves.

"And why," you will insist, "did you, Araim, my father, why did you wait so long, until you had a son and grandchildren, before you paid your tribute to our chronicle?"

There are two reasons for that: the first is that I never had enough to say; the second is that I would have had too much to write.

"Oh!" you will be thinking when you read this. "His advanced age has deranged old Araim's mind. He says in one breath that he had too much and too little to say. Is that sensible?"

Wait a moment, my son; be not in a hurry to believe that your old father has fallen into his second infancy. Listen, and you will discover how it is that I have at once too much and not enough to write upon.

As to what concerns my own life, being an old husbandman, I have been in the same predicament as my ancestors since Schanvoch – there never was sufficient matter for me to write about. Indeed, the interesting and charming narrative would have run somewhat after this fashion:

"Last year the autumn crop was richer than the winter crop; this year it is the reverse."

Or, "The large black cow yields daily six pints of milk more than the brindled cow."

Or, "The January sheep have turned out more woolly than the sheep of last March."

Or, "Last year grain was so dear, so very dear, that a 'muid' of old wheat sold at from twelve to thirteen deniers. The price of cattle and poultry is also on the upward tack: we now pay two gold sous for a draft ox, one gold sou for a milch-cow, six gold sous for a draft horse."

Or, "Will not our descendants be delighted to know that in these days a pig, if good and fat, fetches twelve deniers in autumn, which is neither more nor less than the cost of a bell-wether? And will they not rejoice to learn that our last coop of one hundred fat geese was sold last winter at the market of Vannes for a full pound of silver by the weight? And imagine how well posted they will feel when they learn that the day-laborers whom we hire during harvest time are paid by us one denier a day."

That would hardly be considered either a charming or a thrilling narrative.

On the other hand, would our descendants feel more elated if I were to tell them:

"That in which my pride lies is the knowledge that there is no better field-laborer than my son Jocelyn, no better housekeeper than his wife Madalen, no sweeter creature than my granddaughter Roselyk, no handsomer and more daring lads than my two grandsons, Kervan and Karadeucq – especially the latter, the youngest of the set, my own pet! – a very demon for deviltry, bravery and attractiveness. One should see him, at seventeen years of age, break in the wild colts of our meadows, dive into the sea like a fish, not lose an arrow out of ten when he shoots at the sea-gulls on the wing, along the beach, during a storm – or handling the 'pen-bas,' our redoubtable Breton stick! Five or six soldiers armed with lances or swords would find more sores than pleasure if they rubbed against my Karadeucq with his 'pen-bas.' He is so robust, so agile, so dexterous! And then, he is so handsome, with his beautiful blond hair cut round and falling over the collar of his Gallic blouse; his eyes of the blue of heaven, and his stout cheeks tanned by the wind of the fields and the breeze of the sea!"