. Every minute, every hour, you could delight in his anguish
and drink his tears. You could go down into his cell and speak to him
and bargain with him, laugh at his tortures, and discuss his ransom; you
could live on and off him, through his slowly ebbing life and his
plundered treasures. Your whole castle, from the top of the towers to
the bottom of the trenches, weighed on him, crushing, and burying him;
and thus family revenges were accomplished by the family itself, a fact
which constituted their potency and symbolised the idea.

Sometimes, however, when the wretched prisoner was an aristocrat and a
wealthy man, and he near death, and one was tired of him, and his tears
had acted upon the hatred of his master like refreshing bleedings, there
was talk of releasing him. The captive promised everything; he would
return the fortified towns, hand over the keys to his best cities, give
his daughter in marriage, endow churches and journey on foot to the Holy
Sepulchre. And money! Money! Why, he would have more of it coined by the
Jews! Then the treaty would be signed and dated and counter-signed; the
relics would be brought forth to be sworn on, and the prisoner would be
a free man once more. He would jump on his horse, gallop away, and when
he reached home he would order the drawbridge hoisted, call his vassals
together, and take down his sword from the wall. His hatred would find
an outlet in terrific explosions of wrath. It was the time of frightful
passions and victorious rages. The oath? The Pope would free him from
it, and the ransom he simply ignored.

When Clisson was imprisoned in the Chateau de l'Hermine, he promised for
his freedom a hundred thousand francs' worth of gold, the restitution of
the towns belonging to the duke of Penthievre, and the cancelling of his
daughter Marguerite's betrothal to the Duke of Penthievre. But as soon
as he was set free, he began by attacking Chateladren, Guingamp,
Lamballe and St. Malo, which cities either were taken or they
capitulated. But the people of Brittany paid for the fun.

When Jean V. was captured by the Count of Penthievre at the bridge of
Loroux, he promised a ransom of one million; he promised his eldest
daughter, who was already betrothed to the King of Sicily. He promised
Montcontour, Sesson and Jugan, etc., but he gave neither his daughter
nor the money, nor the cities. He had promised to go to the Holy
Sepulchre. He acquitted himself of this by proxy. He had t