cries and essayed to resist the men who were dragging him into the donjon. "It is now your turn to step in, Bezenecq the Rich. Come, brother, resistance is useless."
"Have I not offered you three hundred gold sous for my ransom, Count of Plouernel?" asked the merchant. "If you do not find that sum enough I shall add another hundred gold pieces. I shall have given you my whole fortune!"
"Oh, worthy brother, in honor to the commerce of Nantes, I cannot admit that one of its wealthiest merchants is worth only four hundred gold sous!" Then, turning to his men: "Conduct my guest and his daughter to their quarters."
At the moment when the men of Neroweg were about to take hold of Bezenecq the Rich, Gonthram, brutally seizing the hand of Isoline, whom the merchant held fainting in his embrace, said: "I take this girl! She is my share of the ransom!"
"I also want her," cried out Guy, his eyes all aflame and advancing toward his brother with a menacing look. But Gonthram, little caring for the words and threats of his brother, made ready to seize the maid and carry her off. Guy then drew his sword. Gonthram in turn drew his, while the daughter of the townsman, distracted with terror, shrank within herself, inert, in a swoon.
"Guy! Gonthram! Put up your swords! This maid shall be none of yours," ordered Neroweg. "She shall not leave her father. In the presence of his daughter the bourgeois will prove more accommodating. Put back your swords! You, Garin," he went on, turning to the bailiff, "take this beauty in your arms, if she cannot walk, and carry her in with the old man."
Isoline, catching, despite her terror, the last words of Neroweg, rose to her feet with an effort and said to Garin in a suppliant voice: "For mercy's sake, my good seigneur, take me along with my father. I shall have strength to walk."
"Come," answered the bailiff, leading her to the draw bridge, while Guy and Gonthram, slowly returning their swords to their scabbards, exchanged such vindictive looks that the Count considered it necessary to remain near them in order to prevent a fresh outbreak.
Isoline, following Garin with unsteady step, crossed the draw bridge and entered the hall of the stone table, where still several vassals of the seigneur awaited the close of the session that had been interrupted by the arrival of the prisoners. At one of the corners of this hall was the stone staircase that led down in a spiral from the platform of the donjon to its lowest cells. Near the steps was a trap door. Two men of sinister figure, clad in goat skins and carrying lanterns in their hands, stood near the gaping opening. Bezenecq was loudly calling for his daughter, and resisting with all his force the men who were dragging him in. Seeing, however, his daughter advancing towards him, he ceased to offer resistance, but broke down, weeping.
"Hurry up, my rich townsman!" said Garin the Serf-eater to him; "my seigneur wishes that you and your daughter remain together." Then, turning to the gaolers who carried the lanterns: "Go down first and light our way." The gaolers obeyed, and soon the merchant and Isoline disappeared with them in the depths of the subterranean donjon.
CHAPTER VII.
ABBOT AND MONK
The donjon cells of the manor of Plouernel consisted of three vaulted stories, the only daylight into which penetrated through three narrow slits opening upon the gigantic ditch, out of which rose the donjon itself. Within, apart from a massive door studded with iron, these cells consisted of stone only – they were roofed with stone, floored with stone, and the walls were of stone, ten feet thick. The cell, whither the Bishop of Nantes and the monk Jeronimo were taken, was at the very bottom of this subterraneous structure. A narrow loophole barely filtered through a pale ray of light into that semi-Stygian darkness. The walls sweated a greenish moisture. In the center of the dungeon stood a stone bed, intended for torture or death. Chains and heavy iron rings fastened to the headpiece, to the sides and the feet of the long stone slab, that rose three feet above the floor, announced the purpose of that funereal couch, on which were now seated the monk and the Bishop of Nantes. The latter, a prey at first to agonizing despair, had by degrees recovered his composure. His face, now almost serene with a melancholic good nature, contrasted with the somber severity of his companion. "I am now resigned to death," the prelate was saying to Jeronimo, "yet I confess, I feel my heart fail me at the thought of leaving my wife and children without protection in days as dark as these are."
"There you have one of the consequences of the marriage of priests," the monk answered. "How justly did Gregory VII. reason when he forced the councils to interdict marriage to the clergy!"
After a moment's silence the Bishop of Nantes resumed with a melancholy smile: "Stoics, like the philosophers of antiquity, let's consider at this very moment of imminent torture and death the dogmas that bear upon our present situation."
"Let's commence with the great question of the spiritual and temporal dominion of the church."
"It is a grand subject. I listen."
"In our days, for every twenty abbots or bishops who are sovereign in their abbeys or bishoprics, are there not a hundred dukes, counts, marquises or seigneurs, sovereign masters in their dukedoms, counties or seigniories?"
"Sad to say, 'tis so!"
"Did not a large portion of the estates, that proceeded from the gifts of Charles Martel, return to the hands of the clergy at the time of the terror the people were seized with at the thought of the end of the world, – a terror ably fomented by the church down to the year 1000, and prolonged to 1033 by dint of able maneuvers?"
"That's true, too. The terrified seigneurs abandoned to the church a large part of their goods, thinking the day of judgment was at hand. Since then, however, the same seigneurs, or their descendants, retook their rich donations from the clergy. The hatred that the Count Neroweg pursues me with has no other cause than the recovery of the lands that his grandfather bequeathed to my predecessor, at the time when those brutes expected to see the end of the world. The Count wages war against me to re-enter upon domains that once belonged to his family. The lance is rising against the holy water sprinkler."
"It has been so in all the other provinces. One of the causes of the wars of the seigneurs against the bishops and abbots has, for the last fifty years, been the recovery of the goods given to the Church on the occasion of the end of the world. In these impious strifes the seigneurs have almost always come out on top. The church was vanquished."
"It is a sad fact."
"In order to recover its omnipotence, the Church must again become richer than the seigneurs. She must, above all, rid herself forever of those brigands who dare reach out a sacrilegious hand towards the goods of the Church, and assault the priests of our Lord, the ministers of God."
"Alack, Jeronimo, it is a far way from the wish to the fact! The sword gets the best of the bishop's crook!"
"The distance is simply the journey from here to Jerusalem. That's all!"
The bishop regarded the monk with amazement, repeating without understanding the words: "The journey from here to Jerusalem!"
"I am a legate of Pope Urban II." proceeded Jeronimo. "As such, I am initiated in the policies of Rome. The French Pope Gerbert, and, after him, Gregory VII., conceived a great idea – to submit the peoples of Europe to the papal will. In order, however, to habituate them to a passive obedience, an ostensible purpose had to be held out. Gerbert conceived the thought of the deliverance of the tomb of Christ, which had fallen into the hands of the Saracens, the masters of Syria and Jerusalem. This pregnant thought, conceived in the head of Gerbert and hatched out by Gregory VII., was the subject of long cogitations on the part of their successors. The Popes recommended to the faithful the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to which they attached special indulgences and privileges. The people of Germany, of Spain, of Gaul, of England, gradually began to hear Jerusalem, the Holy City, talked about. The pilgrimages multiplied. Long though the voyage was, it did not seem impossible; moreover, it insured indulgences for all crimes, and, above all, it was a pleasure trip for the mendicants, the vagabonds, the runaway serfs from the domains of their masters. The pilgrims found good lodgings in the abbeys; they picked up some little money in the cities, and obtained free passage on the Genoese or Venetian vessels as far as Constantinople, where they then departed for Jerusalem, traversing Syria and lodging over night from convent to convent. Arrived at the Holy City, they