(原版)澳大利亞語文第六冊 LESSON 16
LESSON 16 THE BARON AND THE CHARCOAL BURNER
THE BARON AND THE CHARCOAL BURNER
I
If one of the peasants was three days behind with his rent, Baron Lupersan would pitilessly seize his cattle, or his crops, or his meadows, or his vine, or his fields. Without remorse [1] he would sell the small husbandman [2] 's plough, or the poorest widow's goat. But hard as he was in all things, he showed himself absolutely fierce against anyone who was caught poaching on his lands.
He sent offenders against the game-laws to be flogged, or locked them up for as much as a year, or even eighteen months, in the underground dungeons of his castle. Had he but dared, he would willingly have hanged a peasant for snaring a rabbit or bringing down a partridge [3] . The baron was as mean as he was harsh and cruel. He haggled [4] over every bargain; and when workmen or traders brought him their accounts, he beat them down to the lowest figures. It was hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that one year the baron tried in vain, for fully six months, to get charcoal burners to agree to char, or burn to charcoal, six hundred cords of oak logs which he had got his tenants to cut up for him for nothing. He could not get the charring done on the same terms, because charring is work that requires training and knowledge, and he had nobody at hand who had ever tried to do it.
Seeing his wood in danger of rotting, the baron was in no very pleasant humour; when at length, one day in November, a man who said that his name was Louis, and that he was a charcoal burner by trade, came up to the castle, and offered to char the six hundred cords that lay in the great Truisson wood.
Now, as a cord means a pile of logs eight feet long, four feet broad, and four feet high, it was a big piece of work for one man to undertake. But the man was a tall, strapping fellow, and the baron was pleased enough to accept his services—more pleased, indeed, than he allowed it to appear.
I am willing to engage you, he said, "but I want good work, and I want it done regularly."
What do you mean by regularly , sir?
Well, I mean beginning at a regular hour every day, say, at daybreak, and stopping at curfew. We ring it at the castle, and you can easily hear it.
That's not the way charcoal burners work, sir. Sometimes I shall sleep four or five hours in the middle of the day, after I have spent a good part of the night at a stack. You must put up with our ways. There's no help for it.
These are bold words of yours.
Charcoal burners have never been considered afraid to speak out. Besides, they work when and for whom they please. They are not bound to any master.
Accustomed as he was to the ready obedience of those who were completely at his mercy, the baron was impressed by the man's plain speaking and his fearless manner.
Well, well, he said in a more friendly tone, "we are not going to quarrel over that."
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[1] remorse: Grief for one's wrong-doing.
[2] husbandman: Farmer.
[3] partridge: A small game bird resembling the quail.
[4] haggled: Argued.
