"Adieu, good father, you will pray to God for me, in order that I may have a good part of paradise."
"Man finds paradise in his own heart when he acts justly: the priests who promise heaven are knaves. I shall pray to God that He may inspire you to perform charitable deeds.—Adieu."
Loysik left the duke's tent expecting to be able to leave the village instantly. His hope was not verified. As he walked away he found himself in a narrow street that divided two rows of huts and was cut at right angles by a wide highroad. Loysik was walking thither in order to rejoin the young brother who guarded his mule, when suddenly the uproar of voices, that had before smitten his ears several times, broke out louder and nearer. Immediately thereupon, a crowd of the people who had followed Brunhild to the village in order to enjoy the sight of her death, broke forth like an eruption out of the highway, poured over the narrow street, and despite Loysik's efforts to disengage himself, carried him away like a straw by the torrent. The flood of people consisted of men, women and children; they were all in rags; they were slaves and were of the Gallic race. All cried at the top of their voices:
"Brunhild is coming out of the camp! She will pass this way!"
Loysik made no further efforts to contend against the crowd; he found himself pushed forward until further progress was barred at the sort of square in the center of which rose the tent of Clotaire II. A strong cordon of warriors drawn around the place, prevented the mob from entering it. As he stood there, in the very front ranks of the surging crowd Loysik witnessed the following spectacle:
Before him extended a rather wide avenue, now completely deserted of people; to his left the entrance to the royal tent; before the tent, Clotaire II, surrounded by the seigneurs of his suite, among whom was the Bishop of Troyes. Two slaves on foot brought and kept before the King a spirited stallion, which they were hardly able to curb by means of two thongs attached to his bit; the animal reared violently although his hind legs were hoppled. With blood-shot eyes and dilated nostrils, the powerful beast made such frantic efforts to tear himself from the two slaves that his deep black coat streamed with sweat on his flanks and chest. The animal carried no saddle; his long mane floated to the breeze, or fell down over and almost completely covered his savage head. Despite all, the slaves succeeded in leading the stallion to Clotaire's tent. The King made a sign. Immediately, at the imminent risk of being trampled to pieces, the unhappy slaves crawled down upon their hands and knees, and slipped a rope with a running knot over each of the animal's hind legs; other slaves thereupon kept the horse in sufficient control to allow the removal of his hopples. During this perilous process, the stallion became so furious that he reared and struck one of the slaves on the head with his front hoofs; the luckless fellow fell bleeding under the feet of the animal that then stooped, bit him ferociously, and crushed his bones with the trample of his hoofs. The corpse was removed, and two other slaves received orders to join those who, in order to control the stallion, clung with all their might to the thongs from his bit. Again cries were heard, first from a distance, but drawing nearer and nearer. The highroad, deserted but a moment before and running into the square in front of Loysik, was suddenly filled with a dense mass of foot soldiers, and presently a camel that towered by the full height of its body over the armed multitude, hove in sight of the aged monk. The troop of Frankish soldiers rent the air with their clamor:
"Brunhild! Brunhild! Triumph to Brunhild—Queen, look down upon your good people of Burgundy who are at your feet!"
Although in a dying state, although broken down by the tortures that she had undergone during the last three days, still the old Queen, recalled from her stupor by the loudness of the yells that broke out all around her, found strength enough to raise herself for a last time upon the back of the camel, astride of whose back she had been placed and firmly bound. She was only a few steps from where Loysik stood. What the venerable monk then saw—Oh, what he saw is nameless, like the crimes of Brunhild herself. Her long, white, tangled, blood-clotted hair was the only—the only cover to the nakedness of the old Queen. The woman's legs; her thighs, her shoulders, her bosom, in short her every limb was no longer of human shape; it was but a heap of palpitating wounds and swollen, blackened, bleeding burns; two of her toe-nails, that had been pulled out, still hung dangling from reddening pellicules at her great toes; in the other toes of her feet and in her fingers, long iron needles were seen inserted between the nail and the flesh. Only her face had been spared. Despite its cadaverous paleness; despite the traces of the unheard-of superhuman sufferings that it registered, left there by the tortures inflicted during the three consecutive days;—despite all, her face still bore the stamp of pride; a frightful smile curled the Queen's purplish lips; a flash of savage haughtiness illumined from time to time her breaking eyes. And, oh, fatality, those eyes alighted accidentally upon Loysik at the moment that Brunhild passed before him. At the sight of the monk, whose robe, long white beard and tall stature had attracted the dying Queen's eyes, her body seemed thrilled by a sudden emotion; she straightened in her seat; and gathering the little strength that still remained to her, she cried in a voice of despair, that sounded almost repentant:
"Monk, your speech was soothe—there is a justice in heaven! At this hour I am thinking, I am thinking—I am thinking of the death of Victoria."
The furious hootings of the crowd drowned Brunhild's voice; her last effort, put forth in raising herself and speaking to Loysik exhausted her failing strength. She fell over backward, and her inert body jolted up and down over the camel's crupper. Loysik had long struggled against the horror of the shocking spectacle. Hardly had Brunhild's voice ceased to be heard than he felt his head swim and his knees sink under him. But for two poor women, who, struck with compassion for his old age, supported him, the monk would have fallen to the ground and been trampled to death.