“Ah, my brother! my brother! if you assisted at these executions, never in your life could you have the heart to order them.”
“And the Moor?” asked the commander, without replying otherwise to his brother.
“I held his poor hands in mine; he endured the first blows with heroic resignation, closing his eyes to arrest the tears, and saying nothing but, ‘My good father, do not abandon me’. But when the pain became intolerable, when the blood began to gush out under the thongs, the unhappy man seemed to concentrate all his powers upon one thought, which might give him courage to endure this martyrdom. His face took on an expression of painful ecstasy; then he seemed to conquer pain, even to defy it, and cried, with an accent which came from the very depths of his paternal heart, ‘My son! my son! Acoub, my beloved child!’”
As he told of the punishment and last words of the Moor, Father Elzear could no longer restrain his tears; he wept as he continued:
“Ah, Pierre, if you had heard him—if you only knew with what passionate feeling he uttered those words, ‘My son! my beloved child,’ you would have had pity on this poor father, whom they have carried off in a state of unconsciousness.”
What was the astonishment of Father Elzear, when he saw the commander, overwhelmed with emotion, hide his head in his hands and cry, sobbing convulsively:
“A son! a son! I, too, have a son!”
CHAPTER XXIV. THE POLACRE
The day after the execution of the sentence on the Moor, the north wind was blowing with increasing violence.