At this sight a great shout of joy went up from the throats of the
toil-worn heroes, and the good archbishop returned thanks to Heaven for
their deliverance from peril. And, a few hours later, the whole army
emerged into the pleasant valleys of Piedmont, and encamped not far
from Aosta.




WHAT HAPPENED AT RONCEVAUX

In all the world there was not such another king as Charlemagne.
Wherever his arms were carried, there victory followed; and neither
Pagan nor haughty Christian foe dared lift up hands any more against
him. His kingdom stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Italian shores,
and from beyond the Rhine to the great Western Ocean. Princes were his
servants; kings were his vassals; and even the Pope of Rome did him
homage. And now he had crossed the Pyrenees, and was carrying fire and
sword into the fair fields and rich towns of the Spanish Moors; for he
had vowed to punish Marsilius, king of Spain, for the injuries he had
done the French in former years. He had overrun the whole of that
haughty land, and had left neither castle, nor city, nor wall,
unbroken, save only the town of Saragossa.

One day Charlemagne sat beneath the blossoming trees of an orchard near
Cordova. White was his beard, and flowered was his head; yet still
handsome was his body, and proud his form. Around him were the noblest
of knights, Roland and Oliver and old Duke Namon, and fifteen thousand
of the choicest men of France. It was a gala-day for the French, and