le! By virtue of what law is this _vassus_ (or _valiant_
one) held to his power? People will thereon have it, that _vassus_ may
also mean _slave_. In like manner the word _servus_, meaning a
_servant_, often indeed a proud one, even a Count or Prince of the
Empire, comes in the case of the weak to signify a _serf_, a wretch
whose life is hardly worth a halfpenny.

In this damnable net are they caught. But down yonder, on his ground,
is a man who avers that his land is free, a _freehold_, a _fief of the
sun_. Seated on his boundary-stone, with hat pressed firmly down, he
looks at Count or Emperor passing near. "Pass on, Emperor; go thy
ways! If thou art firm on thy horse, yet more am I on my pillar. Thou
mayest pass, but so will not I: for I am Freedom."

But I lack courage to say what becomes of this man. The air grows
thick around him: he breathes less and less freely. He seems to be
_under a spell_: he cannot move: he is as one paralysed. His very
beasts grow thin, as if a charm had been thrown over them. His
servants die of hunger. His land bears nothing now; spirits sweep it
clean by night.

Still he holds on: "The poor man is a king in his own house." But he
is not to be let alone. He gets summoned, must answer for himself in
the Imperial Court. So he goes, like an old-world spectre, whom no one
knows any more. "What is he?" ask the young. "Ah, he is neither a
lord, nor a serf! Yet even then is he nothing?"

"Who am I? I am he who built the first tower, he who succoured you, he
who, leaving the tower, went boldly forth to meet the Norse heathens
at the bridge. Yet more, I dammed the river, I tilled the meadow,
creating the land itself by drawing it God-like out of the waters.
From this land who shall drive me?"

"No, my friend," says a neighbour--"you shall not be driven away. You
shall till this land, but in a way you little think for. Remember, my
good fellow, how in your youth, some fifty years ago, you were rash
enough to wed my father's little serf, Jacqueline. Remember the
proverb, 'He who courts my hen is my cock.' You belong to my
fowl-yard. Ungird yourself; throw away your sword! From this day forth
you are my serf."

There is no invention here. The dreadful tale recurs incessantly
during the Middle Ages. Ah, it was a sharp sword that stabbed him. I
have abridged and suppressed much, for as often as one returns to
these times, the same steel, the same sharp point, pierces right
through the heart.