"Oh, great St. Martin, blessings upon your name for giving me the opportunity to chastise the sacrilegious whelp who had the audacity to raise his switch at my holy bishop, and who has never ceased sneering at both the holy man and me since he stepped into my burg," cried the count, deaf to the words of Chram, and striving to reach his adversary, from whom he had been again separated in the midst of the uproar.
"Boys, let us defend Neroweg!" Sigefrid called out to his fellow leudes of the count. "This is a good opportunity to prove to the braggards that our rough-looking swords are better than their parade weapons! To arms! Down with them to the last man!"
"And we also to arms! let us settle accounts with these dogs of the basement! They think they are strong, because they are on their own dunghill. Death to the clowns. Let us defend the favorite of King Chram, our King! Swing your axes!"
"My dear sons in God," screamed the bishop in a vain endeavor to dominate the tumult and the increasing uproar, "I order you, all of you, to put up your swords! It is an affliction to the Lord to see His sons quarrel over trifles. Obey your father in God!"
"My friends!" cried Chram in his turn but without being able to make himself heard, "it is folly, it is stupidity to slay one another in this wise. Imnachair! Spatachair! calm our men; and you, Neroweg, calm yours instead of exciting them!"
Vain words; they dropped unheard; neither Neroweg nor the rest of the leudes did or cared to listen to words of conciliation. As to Neroweg himself, a mass of combatants had again thrown themselves between him and the Lion of Poitiers, to whom he called in an enraged voice and struggled to reach. The warriors of Chram and those of the count soon passed from insults and threats, hurled at each other from a distance, to a hand-to-hand conflict. At the first blow the engagement became general--maddening, furious, maudlin and all the more terrible because the torch-bearing slaves, who alone lighted the hall, fearing to be killed in the brawl, fled away precipitately, some throwing their torches to the ground and thus extinguishing them, others carrying the lighted torches with them in their distracted flight. In an instant the banquet hall was deprived of its living illumination; the battle continued in the dark with blind ferocity.