THE ROYAL HOUSE OF FRANCE - outriders poetry project

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© 2009 Max Wickert
pardoned Bertha, he added, to make all men love Charles the better, that he had sent the two away
with Charles’ consent.
But now Charles outlawed Miles from all lands in Charles’ possession and power, and sent to Pope
Leo to have him excommunicated. The excommunication hurt Miles worse than the banishment,
for no man would harbor him. Bertha too was banished on pain of burning, as well as
excommunicated. And Bernard and his sons were more violently opposed to Miles, and uttered
loudly menaced him, than Charles. Charles seized Angrant and stripped Miles of all his lands.
Miles and Bertha, deprived of any dwelling place by the excommunication (it had been proclaimed
throughout Christendom), crossed into Italy, determined to go to Rome. When they arrived eight
leagues from Rome at a city called Sutri, Miles was penniless, with nothing left to live on, and out of
necessity sold his horses and weapons. He decided to settle in Sutri, for he saw that no one knew
him there. Yet, since Sutri lay on the main road, he feared being recognized. He found a cavern in a
solitary place one mile from Sutri, and inside that cavern there was a hollow used as a stable. Miles
stopped to dwell in that cave, fetched straw and hay to it, dressed himself like a pilgrim and began to
live by begging. One day, two months later, when Miles had gone to the city to beg, Bertha gave
birth to a boy child. When Bertha, lying on the straw bed, had delivered him. she swaddled him as
best she could and laid him down by her side in the straw.
Meanwhile Miles returned from the city. As he came to the cave entrance, the babe, wrapped
roundabout in swaddling cloths, rolled from the straw and moved right up to the entrance of the
cave. When Miles saw him rolling in this manner, he halted, and when the infant stopped rolling, he
began to weep. Miles picked him up, cradled him on his arm, and brought him back to his mother,
speaking these words: “Ah, my son! in what poverty do I see you born, not by any sin of yours, but