“But how?” asked Miserlix dispiritedly. “You have no weapons, no soldiers—”
“This is why I have come to you,” interrupted the Prince. “You will make me the weapons and I shall raise the soldiers, only tell me where all the men of the land are hiding. For I have not seen a single one, either in the fields or on the roads.”
Miserlix laughed a dry, bitter laugh.
“If you were to go to the tavern,” he said, “you would find all of them there together.”
“I shall go then to the tavern. You, however — you must not waste an instant. Forge weapons for me.”
“But what with, what with?!” said Miserlix in despair. “I do not even have a pound of iron left any more!”
The Prince cast a meaningful silent glance at the iron furniture around him.
Miserlix understood the hint, and smiled.
“You want me to spoil good work that was completed long ago?” he said sadly.
“And why not, if there is need?” answered the Prince with burning fervour.
Seeing, however, the wretchedness on Miserlix’s face, he rose up hastily:
“It would have been your duty to your King and to your country to do so, and you would have fulfilled it, no matter what it cost you personally. Yet there is no need to spoil work that has been already finished. Show me where the mines are, tell me how to extract the ore, and I shall get you at once as much iron as you desire!”
Miserlix was electrified.
“You could awaken a man long dead with that soul of yours, you could!” he said with passion. “Yours is my furniture, yours too is my life!”
And seizing hold of two pickaxes, he went outside.
“Take the handcart, a coil of cable and the miner’s lamp, and follow us!” he called out to his daughter.
With long strides he headed with the Prince towards the mines, while behind them followed the girl with the handcart.
On their way they met a pale, scrawny boy, who stretched out his hand to them when he saw them.
“Why are you begging?” asked the Prince.
“I have no bread,” replied the boy.
“Then come with us. I have no money to give you, but if you work, I shall give you food to quell your hunger.”
So the boy followed them. They reached the pits.
“Tie the rope around my waist,” said the Prince. “I shall go down myself.”
He took the pickaxe, secured the lantern to his belt, and Miserlix lowered him down the shaft.
When he reached the pit bottom, he saw that there was no need to dig for ore. There were numerous loose piles of rocks already mined, even two or three baskets already filled and left lying around.
The Prince called to Miserlix to lower down the little errand boy, and together they dragged one of these baskets to the opening of the shaft, tied it up with the cable, and told Miserlix to lift it up, and to lower it down again after emptying it.
“And now, my boy, you are to do yourself as I have done,” the Prince said, after they had filled several baskets in this manner. “And when your work is finished, come, and I shall give you food.”
Then the Prince attached once again the rope around his waist, and went up the shaft.
He found Miserlix hacking at the ore stones with his pickaxe, separating the metal from the raw earth, and piling it in the handcart.
“Now go back home,” he said to his daughter. “Unload there the metal, and bring me back the handcart.”
And he asked the Prince:
“You leave us, my lord?”
“Yes! I shall go to the tavern. Time flies, and I must gather together the soldiers who are to fight with the swords and spears that you will make for me,” the Prince replied.
The Prince and Miserlix’s daughter set off together. On the way, they talked.
“You hope in vain that you could ever fight against your enemies, my lord,” said the girl sorrowfully. “You have no soldiers.”
“I shall find them,” replied the Prince. “This is why I am going to the tavern.”
“They will never follow you, they don’t care any more about this land, and whether it should perish; they only have two thoughts in their heads, gaming and wine. But even if they were to follow you, how could my father ever manage to forge so many weapons on his own? And furthermore, my father is a blacksmith: he can make arrow tips and spearheads, but not arrow shafts and lances. He does not work with wood.”
“What you say is right,” replied the Prince. “But what happened to all the craftsmen who used to work for your father in the past?”
“Some have left, some have changed trades. The best one amongst them, his brother, opened his own smithy. Only his business did not prosper, and now he does nothing.”
“Where is he?” asked the Prince. “I shall go and find him, and I shall fetch him here…”
The young maiden shook her head slowly.
“You words will be to no avail; no one shall come without florins!”
“And yet I shall try. Your uncle, can he work with wood?”
“Of course he can, he is one of the most skilled craftsmen for weaponry and arms.”
“And where would I find him?”
“At the tavern, just like everyone else.”
“Then I shall go and get him. Prepare a meal for several people,” said the Prince, animated. “I will be bringing him to supper.”
And with that, he hastened to the capital. He went straight to the tavern. The door was open. Some youths, pale and wretched, were drinking, seated around a filthy rustic table made of rough-hewn wooden boards. Some others, collapsed on the floor, were sleeping heavily, and others still, half-sprawled across the table, were throwing dice or were snoring, their heads resting on their folded arms.
One man, glass in hand, was telling in a husky voice the story of his youth.
The Prince sat across from him. From the similarities in his features, he understood that this was Miserlix’s brother.
“Those were the good days, when Prudentius I was still alive and reigning, God rest his soul,” the man was saying, sighing deeply. “No man would spend his time drinking in a tavern then; we never even set foot in one.”
“And who is forcing you to come here now, old man?” said the Prince.
“Who? Who else but the very wretchedness of this place. How can a man kill time otherwise, except by coming to the tavern? It was different back then. Then we worked. Not like these young lads here!..”
“And why don’t you work now, too?”
The man sighed.
“I grew tired of working for no reason and with no sense of purpose,” he said with heavy weariness.
The eyes of the Prince were suddenly ablaze.
“Well then, work now, for a reason and for a purpose,” he said, and his heart was beating thunderously hard in his chest.
“Do you think I would be sitting here if I could find a purpose?!” answered the man.
“Nor would we, old Master Miserlix,” said a youth, with the fiery sheen of wine in his eyes. “Offer us some good profit, and you will see with what fervour we will work!”
“For profit or for a purpose?” asked the Prince.
“It is all the same.”
“No, it is not all the same,” said the Prince, inflamed with great fire, “for I shall give work to any one of you who wants it. Yet it shall be for a great and sacred purpose, which will yield you no profit.”
“You are trying to be funny, countryman!” said the youth, laughing.
“I am not trying to be funny at all. The enemy is right in our midst, marching in our lands!”
The youth rose, leant across the table and looked intently at the Prince.
“What work are you proposing we do?” he asked seriously.
“The work that is the duty of every citizen at a time of national danger.”