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I have said that the powder-sheltering boulder was a cliff for size; the mighty upheaval of the explosion had toppled it in ruins into the stream, and huge fragments the bigness of a wine-butt had been hurled with the storm of lighter debris broadcast upon the camp. At first we saw no sign of life in all the firelit space.
Roused from sluggishness by the sight of a gold piece, which Blaise displayed, the old couple succeeded in getting for us a passable supper, which we had served to us on the end of an old wine-butt outside the inn, as the kitchen was intolerably smoky. "A poor place, mademoiselle," said I, ashamed of having conducted so delicate a creature to this miserable hovel.
I rejoined the now somewhat boisterous party at the wine-butt in time to catch Blaise making an attempt to kiss Jeannotte, who was maintaining a fair pretence of resistance. She seemed rather displeased at my return, for as Blaise, unabashedly, continued his efforts, she was compelled, in order to make her coyness seem real to me, to break from him, and flee into the inn.
To meet him meant bad luck, and whoever was ruined by ill-judged love was said to have been with the Geancanach. Another evil sprite was the Clobher-ceann, "a jolly, red-faced, drunken little fellow," always "found astride of a wine-butt" singing and drinking from a full tankard in a hard drinker's cellar, and bound by his appearance to bring its owner to speedy ruin.
Here, once again came sounds of stifled merriment, what time the Prior, puffing out his fat cheeks, fell to his curses full-tongued: "Upon this evil city be the malison of Holy Church, her maledictions bitter, her imprecation and anathema. I do pronounce all within this city ex " "Abate thee, friar, abate!" roared Giles, "cease thy rumbling, thou empty wine-butt.
It was the case with Caesar and with Alexander, and the Swede died so much the more gloriously than either the one or the other, in that it is more becoming the condition of a great captain and a conqueror to die sword in hand, making a tomb for his body of his enemies on the field of battle, than to be hated of his own and poniarded by the hands of his nearest and dearest, or to die of poison or of drowning in a wine-butt."
"Never since my wine-butt leaked, and let out its liquor by an illegal vent," replied the friar, "and so left me nothing to drink but my patron's bounty here." Then plunging his hands and head into the fountain, he washed from them all marks of the midnight revel.
"I was only thinking, lad, that when I set up my hero, he shall not be a man that met his death in a wine-butt." "What? Oh! Alexander. Well, we have all our failings," admitted Bertram, reluctant to give up his favourite. "Thou sayest sooth, lad." "Father Wilfred, who is thine hero?" "Wist thou who is God's hero?" asked the illuminator, laying down his pen, and fixing his eyes on the boy.
Cosmo, my son, don't you learn to drown your soul in your body, like the poor Duke of Clarence in the wine-butt."
To the left a large space was devoted to three or four bulky casks, and here an aproned drawer sat astride of a rush-bottomed chair, grinning delightedly and exchanging nods and winks from time to time with an impish, undersized lad who lay on his stomach on a wine-butt with his head craning forward over the edge.
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