"Oh! Oh!... Where are they?" Charles the Wicked answered back with a Satanic leer. "Where are they?... That is an embarrassing question, that is!... Since man is man it has been the despair of those who seek to fathom the secret of where we go ... when we leave this world.... They are where we all shall go!"
"What is that? The Jacques?——"
"They are where we all shall go.... Do you not understand me?"
"Dead!?" cried Jocelyn, stupefied with terror. "Dead! Massacred! My God!"
"Come, keep cool.... Listen to the details of the adventure ... you are to transmit it to your friends."
"This man frightens me!" thought Jocelyn, a cold perspiration bathing his forehead. "Is it some trap he is laying for me?"
"The Jacques came," resumed Charles the Wicked, "those wild beasts that pillage and burn down castles, massacre priests and seigneurs, outrage women, and pitilessly cut the throats of children, to the end, as these devils put it, of annihilating the nobility!"
"Oh, God!" cried Jocelyn, sitting up, "the reprisals of Jacques Bonhomme lasted one day ... his martyrdom centuries!——"
"Vassal!" the King of Navarre haughtily interrupted Jocelyn, "the rights of the conqueror over the conquered, of the seigneur over the serf, are absolute and from heaven!... A villein or peasant in revolt deserves death. It is the feudal law."
The champion shivered, and looking fixedly at the King of Navarre said: "Charles the Wicked, you will not let me leave this place alive; you would be a lost man if I carried your words to Marcel!"