The touching words of Nominoë, his tender embrace, the memory of his sister, the last words of Tina, the paternal affection he had always felt for his nephew disarmed Tankeru. The hammer slipped from his hand and fell at his feet.
At that moment Serdan and Salaun Lebrenn, whom the vassals had freed, entered precipitately into the cell. Serdan cried out:
"Flee! Flee! The fire is reaching the building!"
Having overheard his son's words in answer to Tankeru's threat to kill him, Salaun took the blacksmith's hand and pressing it warmly in his own, said:
"Brother, I swear to God! Despite the immensity of the wrong that he has done, Nominoë does deserve, if not your pardon, at least your pity!"
"The fire! The fire!" cried several peasants who had descended into the prison to deliver the captives, and who, having regained the stairs, now ran through the gallery of cells. In view of the increasing danger, the blacksmith, Salaun and his son dashed across the black clouds of smoke, picking their way by the ruddy reflections which the conflagration projected upon the steps of the staircase through the prison gate, that looked like the mouth of a roaring furnace. Nominoë followed close upon the steps of his father and the blacksmith who preceded him. Despite the imminence of the danger that he ran, the youth's thoughts now returned to Mademoiselle Plouernel. In heartrending accents he muttered:
"Oh, woe! Oh, woe! The fire is consuming the castle. What may have become of her? Where may Bertha be?"
"She is safe!" answered Serdan, who, happening to walk close by the side of Nominoë, had overheard him. "The peasants informed us that, once masters of the castle, their companions took care of their good demoiselle. A carriage was quickly hitched to a team of horses, and Mademoiselle Plouernel departed with her nurse and an equerry to Mezlean. The Marchioness, terror-stricken, died of apoplexy."
Tankeru, Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and Nominoë made their escape through the underground staircase of the prison building. The building itself was now ablaze, the same as all the out-houses appertaining to the castle. Their roofs fell with crash upon crash within the walls that had partly crumbled in the conflagration, and shot up long streamers of fire and sparkling embers. Seeing that the castle itself did not contain the mass of combustible materials of all sorts with which the out-houses were filled, it offered a longer resistance to the conflagration. Off and on a tongue of fire would be seen expiring in the midst of smoke that was still escaping from the windows on the ground floor; the panes of glass had exploded noisily and the frames were charred black. But the fire spared the upper floors where the vassals still pursued their work of devastation, throwing out of the windows pieces of furniture, looking glasses, bedding, books, pictures. Debris of all kinds was heaped in the center of the court of honor, and the insurgents turned the heap into a huge bonfire that lighted the three gibbets which were erected for Salaun, Serdan and Nominoë, but from which now dangled the lifeless bodies of the Count of Plouernel, Abbot Boujaron and Sergeant La Montagne, all three objects of the implacable hatred of the people—the seigneur, the priest and the King's soldier.
Informed of the death of his brother Gildas who was massacred together with the other delegates of the vassals, Tankeru excepted, Salaun looked for and found the body, and laid it in a grave that he dug with the assistance of Tankeru, Serdan and Nominoë. That funeral duty being fulfilled, Salaun said to them, as he sadly contemplated the scene of wreck and ruin which they had been unable to prevent: