peradventure these walls had
been confided to thy keeping as they have been to mine, wouldst thou do
as thou biddest me?"

"If ever I do so," answered Siegfried, "may my head be condemned to fall
by the sword and serve as food to the dogs! But if thou yield not to our
prayers, so soon as the sun shall commence his course our armies will
launch upon thee their poisoned arrows; and when the sun shall end his
course, they will give thee over to all the horrors of famine; and this
will they do from year to year."

The bishop, however, persisted, without further discussion; being as
certain of Count Eudes as he was of himself. Eudes, who was young and
but recently made Count of Paris, was the eldest son of Robert the
Strong, Count of Anjou, of the same line as Charlemagne, and but lately
slain in battle against the Northmen. Paris had for defenders two
heroes, one of the Church and the other of the empire: the faith of the
Christian and the fealty of the vassal; the conscientiousness of the
priest and the honor of the warrior.

The siege lasted thirteen months, whiles pushed vigorously forward with
eight several assaults, whiles maintained by close investment, and with
all the alternations of success and reverse, all the intermixture of
brilliant daring and obscure sufferings that can occur when the
assailants are determined and the defenders devoted. Not only a
contemporary but an eye-witness, Abbo, a monk of St. Germain des Pres,
has recounted the details in a long poem, wherein the writer, devoid of
talent, adds nothing to the simple representation of events; it is
history itself which gives to Abbo's poem a high degree of interest. We
do not possess, in reference to these continual struggles of the
Northmen with the Gallo-Frankish populations, any other document which
is equally precise and complete, or which could make us so well
acquainted with all the incidents, all the phases of this irregular
warfare between two peoples, one without a government, the other without
a country. The bishop, Gozlin, died during the siege. Count Eudes
quitted Paris for a time to go and beg aid of the Emperor; but the
Parisians soon saw him reappear on the heights of Montmartre with three
battalions of troops, and he reentered the town, spurring on his horse
and striking right and left with his battle-axe through the ranks of the
dumfounded besiegers. The struggle was prolonged throughout the summer;
and when, in November, 886, Charles