in every direction are monsters who look at you, and when I turned round
as we were coming away, I saw great white figures fluttering above the
wall. But, mother, you know all the history of the castle, do you not?"

Hubertine replied, as she smiled in an amused way: "Oh! as for ghosts, I
have never seen any of them myself."

But in reality, she remembered perfectly the history, which she had read
long ago, and to satisfy the eager questionings of the young girl, she
was obliged to relate it over again.

The land belonged to the Bishopric of Rheims, since the days of Saint
Remi, who had received it from Clovis.

An archbishop, Severin, in the early years of the tenth century, had
erected at Hautecoeur a fortress to defend the country against the
Normans, who were coming up the river Oise, into which the Ligneul
flows.

In the following century a successor of Severin gave it in fief to
Norbert, a younger son of the house of Normandy, in consideration of an
annual quit-rent of sixty sous, and on the condition that the city of
Beaumont and its church should remain free and unincumbered. It was in
this way that Norbert I became the head of the Marquesses of Hautecoeur,
whose famous line from that date became so well known in history. Herve
IV, excommunicated twice for his robbery of ecclesiastical property,
became a noted highwayman, who killed, on a certain occasion, with his
own hands, thirty citizens, and his tower was razed to the ground by
Louis le Gros, against whom he had dared to declare war. Raoul I, who
went to the Crusades with Philip Augustus, perished before Saint Jean