and refuge, the gentle Church condemned him to
eternal fire, the gentle law buried him at midnight at the
cross-roads with a stake through his back, and his master
the baron or the bishop confiscated all his property and
turned his widow and his orphans out of doors.

And here were these freemen assembled in the early
morning to work on their lord the bishop's road three
days each -- gratis; every head of a family, and every
son of a family, three days each, gratis, and a day or
so added for their servants. Why, it was like reading
about France and the French, before the ever memor-
able and blessed Revolution, which swept a thousand
years of such villany away in one swift tidal-wave of
blood -- one: a settlement of that hoary debt in the