With the aid of the apprentices, who were no less compassionate than Septimine and the old man, Rosen-Aër was drawn sitting on a stool near the forge. Little by little she felt the salutary effect of the penetrating heat, she gradually recovered her senses, and finally awoke. Gathering her thoughts, she stretched out her arms to Septimine and said in a feeble voice: "Dear child, you saved me!"
Septimine threw herself around Rosen-Aër's neck, shedding glad tears, and answered: "We have done what we could; we are only poor slaves."
"Oh! my child, I am a slave like yourselves, brought to this country from the center of Languedoc. We spent the night on the road between the two ponds of this monastery. The oxen had been unhitched from the carts. We were caught in the inundation that began at daybreak——" But Rosen-Aër suddenly broke off and rose to her feet. Her face was at first expressive of stupor, but immediately a delirious joy seized her, and precipitating herself towards the open window, she passed her arm through the thick iron bars, crying: "My son! I see my son Amael yonder!"
For a moment both Septimine and Bonaik believed the unhappy woman had become demented, but when they approached the window the young girl joined her hands and cried out: "The Frankish Chief, he in an underground passage of the abbey?"
Rosen-Aër and Septimine saw on the other side of the moat Berthoald holding himself up with both hands by the iron bars of the air-hole of the cavern. He suddenly saw and as quickly recognized his mother, and, delirious with joy, he cried in a thrilling voice that, despite the distance, reached the workshop: "Mother!... My dear mother!"
"Septimine," Bonaik said anxiously to the girl, "do you know that young man?"
"Oh, yes! He was as good to me as an angel from Heaven! I saw him at the convent of St. Saturnine. It is to that warrior that Charles donated this abbey."
"To him!" replied the old man, bewildered. "How, then, comes he in that cavern?"
"Master Bonaik," one of the apprentices ran by saying, "I hear outside the voice of the intendant Ricarik. He stopped under the vault to scold some one. He will be here in a minute. He is coming on his morning round, as is his habit. What is best to be done?"
"Good God!" cried the old man in terror. "He will find this woman here, and will question her. She may betray herself and acknowledge that she is the mother of that young man—undoubtedly a victim of the abbess." And the old man, running to the window, seized Rosen-Aër by the arm and said to her while he dragged her away: "In the name of your son's life, come! Come quick!"