"Oh, you are betrothed, Sir!" exclaimed Alison with some confusion, and gulping down a sigh, she added in an unsteady voice: "May God protect your love! I shall do as you say. I shall go to Paris ... I shall calm the anxieties of the girl you love. In her place I would be happy, indeed.... Oh, so happy to be reassured regarding him whom I love," saying which Alison lowered her head to conceal a furtive tear that shone on her beautiful black eyes.
"Oh, Jocelyn!" Rufin said in a low voice, charmed with the grace and kindness of Alison, "a comely and honest body like that is worth a hundred Margots."
"Dear hostess!" resumed Jocelyn after a moment's reflection, "Will you allow me to give you advice? In times like these, a woman who travels alone runs great dangers. Take this friend of mine, Rufin, for your escort."
"Jocelyn," said the student with a lively movement, "I wish to remain with you to fight the nobility."
"You fought bravely despite the wound that you received only day before yesterday, and which still gives you much pain. You can render our cause a great service by returning and notifying Marcel that the peasants are in arms in this province and that William Caillet has given the signal for the uprising. Marcel awaits this news to act.... And if he has any confidential message for me, he will send it through you. You will then rejoin me in Beauvoisis. You will be easily able to learn the whereabouts of Caillet's troops, which I shall not leave"; and seeing that the student was about to yield, Jocelyn added in a low voice: "Despite the indiscretions of your youth, you are an upright fellow; promise me that you will guard Alison as you would your own sister."
"I promise, Jocelyn; and you can trust my word! I shall be a good guardian to Alison."
Suddenly a tremor ran over Jocelyn. He had just noticed Mazurec and Caillet carrying the body of Aveline. He understood what had happened, profound sorrow depicted itself upon his face, and kneeling down he said: "Kneel, Rufin ... kneel, my good hostess ... I shall have to wait till after this funeral to inform Mazurec that I am his brother."
Adam the Devil had finished digging the grave of Aveline. Caillet and Mazurec, holding the body by the shoulders and feet, laid it down in the tomb. The peasants who witnessed the ceremony fell upon their knees. The funeral of the poor female serf piously performed under the vault of the forest in the midst of the heaped-up rocks at the mouth of the cavern—the immense tomb of so many other victims—was a spectacle of mournful grandeur. Everything contributed to render the scene terrible and imposing. There lay the mutilated and bloody members of the bailiff, the pitiless executer of the Sire of Nointel's orders; yonder were strewn the corpses of the English, no less execrated than the seigneurs by the people of the fields; further at a distance was the kneeling crowd of serfs, bare-headed, clad in rags, holding strange and murderous weapons in their hands, and hardly able to restrain their fury; finally there were the father and the husband laying with their own hands into her grave her who should have been the solace of the former's old age and the joy and love of the latter's youth!
As soon as the body of the dead girl was laid in the fosse, Adam the Devil began filling it up with earth, while William Caillet standing at the head of his daughter's sepulchre and holding Mazurec to his breast cried out in a voice that pulled at the heart-strings of all present:
"Adieu, my daughter! Adieu, my poor Aveline! You who never lied! You who never did wrong! Adieu! For evermore adieu!" and raising his trembling hands heavenward, the old peasant proceeded solemnly: "I swear here by the body of my child whom I have buried with my own hands! By the bones of our friends and our relatives whose grave is that cavern! By the sufferings that we endure! By the blood and the sweat of our forefathers! I shall revenge my daughter! I shall revenge our fathers! I shall revenge our race for the tortures it has endured! War upon the castles, without let or mercy!"