"It is horrible!"
"The baseness confounds my senses and makes my heart to sicken. At the age of fifteen my son disappeared from the valley of Charolles, where he lived free and happy ... before the Saracen invasion. What happened since? I do not know."
Hearing the name of the valley of Charolles, Bonaik, who had remained steeped in thought, trembled and listened to the conversation between Septimine and the mother of Amael, who proceeded to say: "Perhaps the Jew holds the secret of my son's life."
"That Jew?... How?"
"When, despite the pain it gave me, the Jew came to inspect me, I had to undergo the fate of the rest. I was stripped of my clothes.... Oh, may my son never know of my shame! The thought alone would haunt him as a perpetual remorse through life, if he should live," Rosen-Aër interjected in a low voice. "While I underwent the fate of my companions in slavery ... the Jew observed with a start on my left arm these two words traced in indelible letters: 'Brenn,' 'Karnak.'"
"'Brenn,' 'Karnak'!" cried the old goldsmith.
"The custom of doing so was adopted in my family several generations back, because, alack, in those troubled days of continuous war, families were exposed to being rent apart and dispersed far and wide. 'Twas an indelible sign which might help them to recognize one another."
Rosen-Aër had hardly pronounced these words when, drawing near her in deep emotion, Bonaik cried: "Are you of the family of Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak?"
"Yes, father!"
"Did you live in Burgundy in the valley of Charolles, once ceded to Loysik, the brother of Ronan, by King Clotaire I?"