id 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
the room like a coward and a man taken in crime, stung to the quick by
those prayers continuously said for the monk. The night was passed in
tears, groans, and prayers.

By an express order from Madame, her servant had been to Loches to
purchase for her the attire of a young lady of quality, and for her
poor child a horse and the arms of an esquire; noticing which the
Sieur de Bastarnay was much astonished. He sent for Madame and the
monk's son, but neither mother nor child returned any answer, but
quietly put on the clothes purchased by the servant. By Madame's order
this servant made up the account of her effects, arranged her clothes,
purples, jewels, and diamonds, as the property of a widow is arranged
when she renounces her rights. Bertha ordered even her alms-purse be
included, in order that the ceremony might be perfect. The report of
these preparations ran through the house, and everyone knew then that
the mistress was about to leave it, a circumstance that filled every
heart with sorrow, even that of a little scullion, who had only been a
week in the place, but to whom Madame had already given a kind word.

Frighte