The Poniard's Hilt - Or Karadeucq and Ronan. A Tale of Bagauders and Vagres

Eugène Sue

Informations

• Publié par: ornou
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 32
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The
Poniard's Hilt, by Eugène Sue,
Translated by Daniel De Leon
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Poniard's Hilt
Or Karadeucq and Ronan. A Tale of Bagauders and Vagres
Author: Eugène Sue
Release Date: March 25, 2010 [eBook #31782]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PONIARD'S
HILT***
E-text prepared by Chuck Greif
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from scanned images of public domain material generously made available by
the Google Books Library Project
(http://books.google.com/)
Note: Images of the original pages are available through the the
Google Books Library Project. See
http://books.google.com/books?vid=kNMrAAAAMAAJ&id
THE PONIARD'S HILT
THE FULL SERIES OF
The Mysteries of the People
OR
History of a Proletarian Family
Across the Ages
B y E U G E N E S U EConsisting of the Following Works:
THE GOLD SICKLE; or, Hena the Virgin of the Isle of
Sen.
THE BRASS BELL; or, The Chariot of Death.
THE IRON COLLAR; or, Faustine and Syomara.
THE SILVER CROSS; or, The Carpenter of Nazareth.
THE CASQUE'S LARK; or, Victoria, the Mother of the
Camps.
THE PONIARID'S HILT; or, Karadeucq and Ronan.
THE BRANDING NEEDLE; or, The Monastery of
Charolles.
THE ABBATIAL CROSIER; or, Bonaik and
Septimine.
THE CARLOVINGIAN COINS; or, The Daughters of
Charlemagne.
THE IRON ARROW-HEAD; or, The Buckler Maiden.
THE INFANT'S SKULL; or, The End of the World.
THE PILGRIM'S SHELL; or, Fergan the Quarryman.
THE IRON PINCERS; or, Mylio and Karvel.
THE IRON TREVET; or Jocelyn the Champion.
THE EXECUTIONER'S KNIFE; or, Joan of Arc.
THE POCKET BIBLE; or, Christian the Printer.
THE BLACKSMITH'S HAMMER; or, The Peasant
Code.
THE SWORD OF HONOR; or, The Foundation of the
French Republic.
THE GALLEY SLAVE'S RING; or, The Family
Lebrenn.
P u b l i s h e d U n i f o r m W i t h T h i s V o l u m e B y
T H E N E W Y O R K L A B O R N E W S
C O .
2 8 C I T Y H A L L P L A C E N E W Y O R K
C I T Y
T H E P O N I A R D ' S
H I L T
: : : : OR : : : :
KARADEUCQ AND
RONAN


A Tale of Bagauders and Vagres
B y E U G E N E S U E




T R A N S L A T E D F R O M T H E O R I G I N A L
F R E N C H B Y
DANIEL DE LEON
N E W Y O R K L A B O R N E W S C O M P A N Y ,
1 9 0 7
Copyright, 1908, by the
New York Labor News Company
INDEX.
Translator's Preface 5
PART I. THE KORRIGANS.
CHAP. I. ARAIM 9
II. FAIRIES AND HOBGOBLINS 15
III. HEVIN, THE PEDDLER 25
IV. OFF TO THE BAGAUDY! 37
PART II. THE VAGRES.
CHAP. I. "WOLVES'-HEADS" 45
II. BISHOP AND COUNT 49
III. AT THE CHAPEL OF ST. LOUP 61
IV. THE DEMONS! THE DEMONS! 66
V. VAGRES IN JUDGMENT 71
VI. TO THE FASTNESS OF ALLANGE 85
VII. THE VAGRES AT FEAST 101
VIII. THE MIRACLE OF ST. MARTIN 107IX. LOYSIK AND RONAN 114
X. THE MIRACLE OF ST. CAUTIN 129
PART III. THE BURG OF NEROWEG.
CHAP. I. LEUDES AT HOME 139
II. THE MAHL 151
III. THE SPECTRE OF WISIGARDE 161
IV. THE LION OF POITIERS 170
V. IN THE TREASURE-CHAMBER 184
VI. THE BEAR OF MONT-DORE 194
VII. IN THE ERGASTULA 203
VIII. IN THE BANQUET HALL 211
IX. THE RESCUE 235
X. COUNT AND VAGRE 242
PART IV. GHILDE.
CHAP. I. AT THE HEARTH OF JOEL 251
II. ON THE HILL NEAR MARCIGNY 258
III. THE DEATH OF CHRAM 272
EPILOGUE 281
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
The invasion of Gaul by Clovis introduced feudalism in France, which is equivalent to
saying in Europe, France being the teeming womb of the great historic events of that
epoch. It goes without saying that so vast a social system as that of feudalism could not
be perfected in a day, or even during one reign. Indeed, generations passed, and it was
not until the Age of Charlemagne that feudalism can be said to have taken some measure
of shape and form. Between the Ages of Clovis and Charlemagne a period of turbulence
ensued altogether peculiar to the combined circumstances that feudalism was forced to
struggle with two foes—one internal, the disintegrating forces that ever accompany a
new movement; the other external, the stubborn and inspiring resistance, on the part of
the native masses, to the conqueror from the wilds of Germania. Historians, with
customary levity, have neglected to reproduce this interesting epoch in the annals of that
social structure that is mother to the social structure now prevalent. The task was
undertaken and successfully accomplished by Eugene Sue in this boisterous historic
novel entitled The Poniard's Hilt; or, Karadeucq and Ronan , the sixth of his majestic
series of historic novels, The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian
Family Across the Ages. The leading characters are all historic. It required the genius, the
learning, the poetry, the tact, withal the daring of a Sue to weave these characters into a
fascinating tale and draw a picture as vivid as the quartos, from which the facts are
gathered, are musty with old age.
DANIEL DE LEON.
January, 1908.PART I
THE KORRIGANS
CHAPTER I.
ARAIM.
Occasionally they are long-lived, these descendants of the good Joel, who, five
hundred and fifty years ago and more lived in this identical region, near the sacred stones
of the forest of Karnak. Yes, the descendants of the good Joel are, occasionally, long-
lived, seeing that I, Araim, who to-day trace these lines in the seventy-seventh year of
my life, saw my grandfather Gildas die fifty-six years ago at the advanced age of ninety-
six, after having inscribed in his early youth a few lines in our family archives.
My grandfather Gildas buried his son Goridek, my father. I was then ten years old.
Nine years later I lost my grandfather also. A few years after his demise I married. I have
survived my wife, Martha, and I have seen my son Jocelyn become, in turn, a father. To-
day he has a daughter and two boys. The girl is called Roselyk, she is eighteen; the elder
of the two boys, Kervan, is three years his sister's senior; the younger, my pet,
Karadeucq, is seventeen.
When you read these lines, as you will some day, my son Jocelyn, you will surely ask:
"What can have been the reason that my great-grandfather Gildas made no other entry
in our chronicles than the death of his father Amael? And what can be the reason that my
grandfather Goridek wrote not a line? And, finally, what can be the reason that my own
father, Araim, waited so long—so very long before fulfilling the wishes of the good
Joel?"
To that, my son, I would make this answer:
Your great-grandfather had no particular liking for desks and parchments. Besides,
very much after the style of his own father Amael, he liked to postpone for to-morrow
whatever he could avoid doing to-day. For the rest, his life of a husbandman was neither
less peaceful nor less industrious than that of our fathers since the return of Schanvoch to
the cradle of our family, after such a very long line of generations, kept away from
Armorica by the hard trials and the slavery that followed in the wake of the Roman
conquest. Your great-grandfather was in the habit of saying to my father:
"There will always be time for me to add a few lines to our family's narrative; besides,
it seems to me, and I admit the notion is foolish, that to write 'I have lived', sounds very
much like saying 'I am about to die'—Now, then, I am so happy that I cling to life, just
as oysters do to their rocks."
And so it came about that, from to-morrow to to-morrow, your great-grandfather
reached his ninety-sixth year without increasing the history of our family with a single
word. When he lay on his deathbed he said to me:
"My child, I wish you to write the following lines for me in our archives:" 'My grandfather Gildas and my father Goridek lived in our house quietly and happy,
like good husbandmen; they remained true to their love for old Gaul and to the faith of
our fathers; they blessed Hesus for having allowed them to be born and to die in the
heart of Britanny, the only province where, for so very many years, the shocks that have
elsewhere shaken Gaul have hardly ever been felt—those shocks died out before the
impregnable frontiers of Breton Armorica, as the furious waves of our ocean dash
themselves at the feet of our granite rocks.' "
That, then, my son Jocelyn, is the reason why neither your grandfather Goridek nor his
father wrote a line themselves.
"And why," you will insist, "did you, Araim, my father, why did you wait so long,
until you had a son and grandchildren, before you paid your tribute to our chronicle?"
There are two reasons for that: the first is that I never had enough to say; the second is
that I would have had too much to write.
"Oh!" you will be thinking when you read this. "