this,
half away: with his brothers hiding in the Ardennes, living on roots and
berries, at bay before Charlemagne; or wandering ragged and famishing
through France; with King Yon brilliant at Toulouse, seeing perhaps for
the first time his bride Clarisse, or the towers of Montauban rising
under the workmen's hands; thinking perhaps of the frightful siege, when
all, all had been eaten in the fortress, and his children Aymonnet and
Yonnet, all thin and white, knelt down and begged him to slaughter his
horse Bayard that they might eat; perhaps of that journey, when he and
his brothers, all in red-furred robes with roses in their hands, rode
prisoners of King Charles across the plain of Vaucouleurs; perhaps of
when he galloped up to the gallows at Montfaucon, and cut loose his
brother Richard; or of that daring ride to Paris, where he and his horse
won the race, snatched the prize from before Charlemagne and sped off
crying out that the winner was Renaud of Montauban; or, perhaps, seeing
once more the sad, sweet face of the Lady Clarisse, when she had burned
all her precious stuffs and tires in the castle-yard, and lay dead
without him to kiss her cold mouth; of seeing once more his good horse
Bayard, when he kissed him in his stall before giving him to be killed
by Charlemagne. Thinking of all that past, seeing it all within his
mind, and seeing but little of the present; as, in the low yellow light,
he helped, for his bread, the workmen to heave the great beams, to carry
the great stones of the cathedral, to split the huge marble masses while
they stared in astonished envy; as he sat, unconscious of their
mutterings, eating his dry bread and porridge in the building docks by
the river. And then, when wearied, he had sunk to sleep in the hay-loft,
dreaming perchance that all this evil life was but a dream and the
awakening therefrom to happiness and strength; the jealous workmen came
and killed him with their base tools, and cast him into the Rhine. They
say that the huge body floated on the water, surrounded by a great halo;
and that when the men of the banks, seeing this, reverently fished it
out, they found that the noble corpse was untouched by decay, and still
surrounded by a light of glory. And thus, it seems to me, this Renaud,
this rebel baron of whose reality we know nothing, has floated
surrounded by a halo of poetry down the black flood of the Middle Ages
(in which so much has sunk); and when we look upon his face