[Illustration:  Big Ferre——­376]

When the fight was over, Big Ferre, overcome with heat and fatigue, drank a large quantity of cold water, and was forthwith seized of a fever.  He put himself to bed without parting from his axe, which was so heavy that a man of the usual strength could scarcely lift it from the ground with both hands.  The English, hearing that Big Ferre was sick, rejoiced greatly, and for fear he should get well they sent privily, round about the place where he was lodged, twelve of their men bidden to try and rid them of him.  On espying them from afar, his wife hurried up to his bed where he was laid, saying to him, ’My dear Ferre, the English are coming, and I verily believe it is for thee they are looking; what wilt thou do?’ Big Ferre, forgetting his sickness, armed himself in all haste, took his axe which had already stricken to death so many foes, went out of his house, and entering into his little yard, shouted to the English as soon as he saw them, ’Ah! scoundrels, you are coming to take me in my bed; but you shall not get me.’  He set himself against a wall to be in surety from behind, and defended himself manfully with his good axe and his great heart.  The English assailed him, burning to slay or to take him; but he resisted them so wondrously, that he brought down five much wounded to the ground, and the other seven took to flight.  Big Ferre, returning in triumph to his bed, and heated again by the blows he had dealt, again drank cold water in abundance, and fell sick of a more violent fever.  A few days afterwards, sinking under his sickness, and after having received the holy sacraments, Big Ferre went out of this world, and was buried in the burial-place of his own village.  All his comrades and his country wept for him bitterly, for, so long as he lived, the English would not have come nigh this place.”

There is probably some exaggeration about the exploits of Big Ferre and the number of his victims.  The story just quoted is not, however, a legend; authentic and simple, it has all the characteristics of a real and true fact, just as it was picked up, partly from eye-witnesses and partly from hearsay, by the contemporary narrator.  It is a faithful picture of the internal state of the French nation in the fourteenth century; a nation in labor of formation, a nation whose elements, as yet scattered and incohesive, though under one and the same name, were fermenting each in its own quarter and independently of the rest, with a tendency to mutual coalescence in a powerful unity, but, as yet, far from succeeding in it.