child, left to the wrath of Bastarnay, forgetting her own agony at the
thought of his cruel future.

"Take this," said the monk; "my life is saved!"

Jehan had the great courage to say these words with an unmoved face,
although he felt the claws of death seizing his heart. Hardly had
Bertha drunk when the prior fell dead, not, however, without kissing
his son, and regarding his dear lady with an eye that changed not even
after his last sigh. This sight turned her as cold as marble, and
terrified her so much that she remained rigid before this dead man,
stretched at her feet, pressing the hand of her child, who wept,
although her own eye was as dry as the Red Sea when the Hebrews
crossed it under the leadership of Baron Moses, for it seemed to her
that she had sharp sand rolling under her eyelids. Pray for her, ye
charitable souls, for never was woman so agonised, in divining that
her lover has saved her life at the expense of his own. Aided by her
son, she herself placed the monk in the middle of the bed, and stood
by the side of it, praying with the boy, whom she then told that the
prior was his true father. In this state she waited her evil hour, and
her evil hour did not take long in coming, for towards the eleventh
hour Bastarnay arrived, and was informed at the portcullis that the
monk was dead, and not Madame and the child, and he saw his beautiful
Spanish horse lying dead. Thereupon, seized with a furious desire to
slay Bertha and the monk's bastard, he sprang up the stairs with one
bound; but at the sight of the corpse, for whom his wife and her son
repeated incessant litanies, having no ears for his torrent of
invective, having no eyes for his writhings and threats, he had no
longer the courage to perpetrate this dark deed. After the first fury
of his rage had passed, he could not bring himself to it, and quitted