Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/274

250 In the distance, mocking songs give echo to their tragic chaunts. The quarry braves and provokes them, finding pleasure in throwing off the trail and frustrating the greedy huntresses. Woe betide the laggard, the isolated male: he will pay for the rest! Woe even to the profane, or the stranger, whom they accost; he is summoned forthwith to make his choice of a female, or else to follow and serve her to whom he is adjudged by lot. Sinister stories have long filled the repertory of the ballad singers, and Olfgar was not the only victim of the lust-scenes in the woods of Smaragdis.

Henry de Kehlmark was not unaware of the violence of these traditionary festivals; and consequently, however fond he might be of bizarre amusements, he had always avoided going out on this evening of the fair. It was indeed the only public fête, the only local tradition, of which he was most careful to fight shy. The people had, up to the present, tolerated his abstention, by reason of the very excesses and enormities of the Saturnalia. So highly placed a personage could not decently identify himself with such demoniacs.

On this day respectable girls also,