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,