The ferryman poled them across the river, cursing the wagoners, the pitch, and the entire world. They said that the pitch was urgently needed at the Vloré base. That is how it has always happened. As soon as tar begins to move fast along the highways,, you know that blood will flow after it. Meanwhile dire foreboding continually thickened around us, or, 1 would say, around everything that centered upon this cursed bridge. Now it was not merely the bards who went on casting their grim spell night and day at the Inn of the Two Roberts. No, this matter was now a topic of general conversation from morning to night; strangest of all, it became a most simple and natural thing to talk about a sacrifice, as if it were the weather or the crops. The idea of sacrifice, up to now a truth within a song, had emerged from its cocoon and suddenly crept up on us. Now it moved among us, alive and on equal terms with all the other concerns of the day. On the roads, at home, and in taverns along the great highway, people talked of the reward the bridge and road builders would give to the family of the man who would allow himself to be sacrificed in the bridge piers.
