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But Raimbaut de Vaquieras, a spent fellow, a derelict, barren of aim now that the Holy Wars were over, sat in this unfamiliar place where when he was young he had laughed as a cock crows! and thought how at the last he had crept home to die as a dependent on his cousin's bounty. Thus the evening passed, and at its end Makrisi followed the troubadour to his regranted fief of Vaquieras.
"And, messieurs," said Raynal, "if I waste time you need not. You can pick me my men from your brigades. Give me a strong spice of old hands." The colonels withdrew on this, and General Raimbaut walked sadly and thoughtfully towards the battery. Dujardin and Raynal were left alone. "This postpones our affair, sir." "Yes, Raynal." "Have you writing materials in your tent?" "Yes; on the table."
The composer has set jocosity side by side with horror a jocosity in which he mocks at the only realism he had allowed himself amid the sublime imaginings of his work the pure calm love of Alice and Raimbaut; and their life is overshadowed by the forecast of evil.
If I leave this room alive it will purchase a hideous suffering for my poor body, it will bring about the ruin of many brave and innocent chevaliers. I know. I would perforce confess all that the masked men bade me. I know, for in Prince Conrat's time I have seen persons who had been put to the Question " She shuddered; and she re-began, without any agitation: "Give me the knife, Raimbaut."
That same night the colonel and one of his lieutenants stole out of the trenches, and by the help of a pitch-dark, windy night, got under the bastion unperceived, and crept round it, and made their observations, and got safe back. About noon down came General Raimbaut. "Well, colonel, you are to have your way at last. Your bastion is to be stormed this afternoon previous to the general assault.
Then on the walls were tapestries which depicted Merlin's Dream, so that everywhere recoiling women smiled with bold eyes; and here their wantonness seemed out of place. "Listen," Makrisi was saying; "listen, for the hour strikes. At last, at last!" he cried, with a shrill whine of malice. Raimbaut said, dully: "Oh, I do not understand "
I even beg you to say, as from me, that the assault will be mere suicide bloody and useless." General Raimbaut went off to headquarters in some haste, a thorough convert to Colonel Dujardin's opinion. Meantime the colonel went slowly to his tent. At the mouth of it a corporal, who was also his body-servant, met him, saluted, and asked respectfully if there were any orders.
But here was only stone beneath their feet; and about them showed the high walls and the lead-sheathed towers and the parapets and the sunk windows of Guillaume's chateau. There was no color anywhere save gray; and Raimbaut and Biatritz were aging people now.
"Against that chorus the reality of life the simple life of every-day virtue stands out in the air, in G minor, sung by Raimbaut. For a moment it refreshed my spirit to hear the simple fellow, representative of verdurous and fruitful Normandy, which he brings to Robert's mind in the midst of his drunkenness.
It was a trivial happening to remember after fifty years; but Guillaume was dead, and this hacked flesh was Raimbaut's flesh in part, and the thought of Raimbaut would never trouble Guillaume de Baux any more. In addition there was a fire of juniper wood and frankincense upon the hearth, and the room smelt too cloyingly of be-drugging sweetness.
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