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"Never mind my being Duke, but play as we used to do." "Then let us play as I did with Bertrand's sons at Montemar. I was their Baron, as you are my Duke, but my mother said there would be no sport unless we forgot all that at play." "Then so we will. Come, begin again, Alberic, and you shall have the first turn."
"Yes, thanks to God!" said Richard, crossing himself and kneeling reverently for some minutes, while he repeated his Latin prayer; then, rising and looking at Alberic, he said, "I must thank Him, indeed, for he has saved Osmond and me from the cruel King and Queen, and I must try to be a less hasty and overbearing boy than I was when I went away; for I vowed that so I would be, if ever I came back.
"Alberic is gone to warn the Count of Harcourt, to call the Normans together, and here we are ready to defend this chamber to our last breath, but we are few, the French are many, and succour may be far off." "Then you meant to have taken me out of their reach this morning, Osmond?" "Yes, my Lord." "And if I had not flown into a passion and told who I was, I might have been safe! O Sir Eric!
As a result of all this, my rivals grew more angry day by day. On one occasion Alberic, accompanied by some of his students, came to me for the purpose of intimidating me, and, after a few bland words, said that he was amazed at something he had found in my book, to the effect that, although God had begotten God, I denied that God had begotten Himself, since there was only one God.
He was no sooner, however, in the open country and upon a spot remote from human habitations, than he was suddenly beset by a band of forty soldiers under command of Don Alberic Lodron and Don Sancho de Lodrono. These officers had been watching his movements for many days. The capture of Bakkerzeel was accomplished with equal adroitness at about the same hour.
Then turning to Bertrand, Alberic's Seneschal, he said, "Bear the Count de Harcourt's greetings to the noble Dame de Montemar, and say to her that her son is of a free bold spirit, and if she would have him bred up with my Lord Duke, as his comrade and brother in arms, he will find a ready welcome." "So, Alberic, you will come back, perhaps?" said Richard.
Then, in the year 987, when Hugh Capet took France for himself and for his descendants through eight centuries, and when John the Fifteenth was Pope in Rome, 'a new tyrant arose in the city which had hitherto been trampled down and held under by the violence of the race of Alberic, that is, the race of Theodora, 'and that tyrant was Crescentius. And Crescenzio was the kinsman of Alberic's children.
Before him lay a large folio, bound, perhaps, late in the seventeenth century, with the arms of Canon Alberic de Mauléon stamped in gold on the sides. There may have been a hundred and fifty leaves of paper in the book, and on almost every one of them was fastened a leaf from an illuminated manuscript. Such a collection Dennistoun had hardly dreamed of in his wildest moments.
"Alas, no!" said the Seneschal; "our Dame is gone with young Alberic on a pilgrimage to Jumieges to pray for the Duke's safety. What joy for them to know that their prayers have been granted!" Osmond, however, could scarcely rejoice, so alarmed was he at the extreme weariness and exhaustion of his charge, who, when they brought him into the Castle hall, hardly spoke or looked, and could not eat.
He lives there with his mother, and if he be not yet returned, you shall see him presently. Osmond, go you and seek out the lodgings of the young Montemar, and tell him the Duke would see him." Richard had never had a playfellow of his own age, and his eagerness to see Alberic de Montemar was great.
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