Note 105 — ARABIAN NIGHTS’ (continued 28)

This circumstance has been also brought into Europe, and copied by the Normans. Duke Richard, surnamed “Richard sans peur,” walking one evening in the forest of Moulineaux near one of his castles, on the banks of the Seine, with his courtiers, hearing a prodigious noise coming towards him, sent one of his esquires to know what was the matter, who brought him word, that it was a company of people under a leader or king. Richard, with five hundred of his bravest Norman, went out to see a sight which the peasants were so accustomed to that they viewed it two or three times a week without fear. The sight of the troop, preceded by two men who spread a cloth on the ground, made all the Normans run away, and leave the duke alone. He saw the strangers form themselves into a circle on the cloth, and on asking who they were, was told, they were the spirits of Charles V. king of France and his servants, condemned to expiate their sins by fighting all night against the wicked and the damned. Richard desired to be of their party, and receiving a strict charge not to quit the cloth, was conveyed with them to mount Sinai, where leaving them without quitting the cloth, he said his prayers in the church of St. Catherine’s abbey there, while they were fighting, and returned with them. In proof of the truth of this story, he brought back half the wedding-ring of a knight in that convent, whose wife, after six years, concluded him dead, and was going to take a second husband.