United States or Papua New Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The boisterous mirthfulness of the leudes is at its height. Neroweg wishes to speak. Three times he strikes on the table with the handle of his scramasax, the name given by the barbarians to the knife used at table, and habitually worn at the warrior's belt. Silence, or some degree of silence ensues. The count is to speak.
The Master of the Hounds pranced all along astride of the cane, encouraged in his antics by the laughter that it provoked in the Franks. Remembering the success that had crowned his efforts during the nights of the calends of January, he indulged in gambols that delighted the blockish leudes and that carried their hilarity to the pitch of hysterics.
The latter asserts, the former denies the theft. Which of the two lies? In order to ascertain the truth, let us put the two cubs to the cold water and hot iron trials, according to the law of our Salic Franks." The tribunal assembles. The count presides over the mahl on his seat; seven leudes, ranked on benches on either side, assist him. The torch-bearing slaves stand behind the judges.
He ordered a set of necklaces and baldrics to be made of imitation gold, and sent them through one of his familiars to the leudes who accompanied Ragnacaire with the message that, in exchange for the present, they deliver to him their chief and his son. The bargain was struck, and the two Ragnacaires were delivered to Clovis.
He was brave, and he made war on occasion; but, he did not permit himself to be dragged into it either by his own passions or by the unlimited taste of his lieges for adventure and plunder. He found, on this point, salutary warnings in the history of his predecessors. It was very often the Franks themselves, the royal "leudes," who plunged their kings into civil or foreign wars.
The neighing of horses, the bellowing of cattle, the imprecations of the Franks, the cries of the wounded leudes whom the flaming ruins burned, or rolled down upon and crushed! And what a beautiful illumination lighted the tableau a ruddy flamboyant light!
A double row of rounded oak trunks, a sort of rustic colonnade, divides the spacious hall into three compartments along its full length, reaching at one end the door of the mahl, and at the other to the count's chamber, which, in turn communicates with the apartments of Godegisele and her women. Between the two rows of pillars stands the table of the count and of the leudes, his peers.
And ever caressing his moustache, Neroweg cast ironical and cruel glances at his leudes. "Seigneur, how will you have me extinguish my torch?" "I wish you to put it out between your knees." The Frankish leudes received the comical idea of the count with loud applause and wild yells and laughter.
Saying this Neroweg took one of his leudes aside and whispered to him: "Ansowald, you and Bertefred will arm yourselves well and remain near the door of the apartment into which I am to go with Chram. Hold yourselves in readiness to run in at my first call." "What do you fear, seigneur count?" "The family of Clovis has a strong liking for other people's goods.
Let them immediately give the alarm. I mistrust the Lion of Poitiers. Neither do I take the other two favorites of Chram to be less pagan or less dissolute than the wild lion himself. I hold them capable of anything just as their royal master. Did you count the number of armed men in Chram's suite?" "He brought in only one-half of his leudes his antrustions, as the haughty crew style themselves.
Word Of The Day