forth from amongst you, came hither with much shipping and made desert a great part of the kingdom of the Franks?” “Yes,” said Rollo, “we have heard tell of him; Hastings began well and ended ill.”  “Will ye yield you to King Charles?” asked Hastings.  “We yield,” was the answer, “to none; all that we shall take by our arms we will keep as our right.  Go and tell this, if thou wilt, to the king, whose envoy thou boastest to be.”  Hastings returned to the Gallo-Frankish army, and Rollo prepared to march on Paris.  Hastings had gone back somewhat troubled in mind.  Now there was amongst the Franks one Count Tetbold (Thibault), who greatly coveted the countship of Chartres, and he said to Hastings, “Why slumberest thou softly?  Knowest thou not that King Charles doth purpose thy death by cause of all the Christian blood that thou didst aforetime unjustly shed?  Bethink thee of all the evil thou hast done him, by reason whereof he purposeth to drive thee from his land.  Take heed to thyself that thou be not smitten unawares.”  Hastings, dismayed, at once sold to Tetbold the town of Chartres, and, removing all that belonged to him, departed to go and resume, for all that appears, his old course of life.

[Illustration:  PARIS BESIEGED BY THE NORMANS——­259]

On the 25th of November, 885, all the forces of the North-men formed a junction before Paris; seven hundred huge barks covered two leagues of the Seine, bringing, it is said, more than thirty thousand men.  The chieftains were astonished at sight of the new fortifications of the city, a double wall of circumvallation, the bridges crowned with towers, and in the environs the ramparts of the abbeys of St. Denis and St. Germain solidly rebuilt.  Siegfried hesitated to attack a town so well defended.  He demanded to enter alone and have an interview with the bishop, Gozlin.  “Take pity on thyself and thy flock,” said he to him; “let us but pass through this city; we will in no wise touch the town; we will do our best to preserve for thee and Count Eudes, all your possessions.”  “This city,” replied the bishop, “hath been confided unto us by the Emperor Charles, king and ruler, under God, of the powers of the earth.  He hath confided it unto us not that it should cause the ruin but the salvation of the kingdom.  If 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.