Romane de Clos-Vougeot will bear your tidings like a man!" "Fatima is well," answered Philibert once again; "she hath had no measles: she lives and is still fair." "Fair, ay, peerless fair; but what more, Philibert?
Not false?
By Saint Botibol, say not false," groaned the elder warrior.
"A month syne," Philibert replied, "she married the Baron de Barbazure." With that scream which is so terrible in a strong man in agony, the brave knight Romane de Clos-Vougeot sank back at the words, and fell from his charger to the ground, a lifeless mass of steel.
II.
Like many another fabric of feudal war and splendor, the once vast and magnificent Castle of Barbazure is now a moss-grown ruin.

The traveller of the present day, who wanders by the banks of the silvery Loire, and climbs the steep on which the magnificent edifice stood, can scarcely trace, among the shattered masses of ivy-covered masonry which lie among the lonely crags, even the skeleton of the proud and majestic palace stronghold of the Barons of Barbazure.
In the days of our tale its turrets and pinnacles rose as stately, and seemed (to the pride of sinful man!) as strong as the eternal rocks on which they stood.

The three mullets on a gules wavy reversed, surmounted by the sinople couchant Or; the well-known cognizance of the house, blazed in gorgeous heraldry on a hundred banners, surmounting as many towers.

The long lines of battlemented walls spread down the mountain to the Loire, and were defended by thousands of steel-clad serving-men.
Four hundred knights and six times as many archers fought round the banner of Barbazure at Bouvines, Malplaquet, and Azincour.

For his services at Fontenoy against the English, the heroic Charles Martel appointed the fourteenth Baron Hereditary Grand Bootjack of the kingdom of France; and for wealth, and for splendor, and for skill and fame in war, Raoul, the twenty-eighth Baron, was in no-wise inferior to his noble ancestors.
That the Baron Raoul levied toll upon the river and mail upon the shore; that he now and then ransomed a burgher, plundered a neighbor, or drew the fangs of a Jew; that he burned an enemy's castle with the wife and children within;--these were points for which the country knew and respected the stout Baron.