"It is my daughter whom I shall make the answer to," answered the merchant, in a solemn voice. "Gaolers will not believe me;" and addressing Isoline in a voice broken with tears: "I swear to you, my child, by the sacred memory of your mother, by my tenderness for you, by all the pleasures you have afforded me since your birth,—I swear to you, by the salvation of my soul, I have not a denier left; I have surrendered all to the Seigneur of Plouernel!"
"Oh, father, I believe you!" exclaimed the girl at his feet, and turning to Garin, she extended her hands towards him in prayer: "You have heard my father's oath; you may join mine to it."
"I hold Bezenecq the Rich incapable of leaving his daughter thus penniless," retorted the bailiff. Turning then to the gaolers: "He will now have to confess to us. Strip him, stretch him on the gridiron and stir the coals. Let the brand flame up."
The men of the seigneur of Plouernel threw themselves upon Bezenecq the Rich. Despite the resistance and the heart-rending, desperate cries of his daughter, whom they brutally held back, they stripped the bourgeois of Nantes, spread him upon the gridiron, and, by means of the iron chains, fastened him over the burning coals. "Oh, my father!" exclaimed Bezenecq, "I have disregarded your advice ... I now undergo the punishment for my cowardice ... for my selfishness ... I die under the torture for having been afraid to die arms in hand at the head of the serfs in revolt against the Frankish seigneurs.... Triumph, Neroweg! Yet, perchance, the terrible day of reprisals will come to the sons of Joel!"
CHAPTER IX.
THE RESCUE.
In her apartment, lighted by a lamp, Azenor the Pale was engaged in the preparation of the magical philter, promised by her to the seigneur of Plouernel. After blowing some powder on a fluid that she had poured into a flagon, she pulled out of a chest a little vial, whose contents she drank. Laying down the vial, she remarked with a sinister smile: "Now, Neroweg, you may come ... I am ready for you." Then, taking up the flagon, half full with a solution of several powders, she proceeded: "This flagon must now be filled with blood ... the imagination of these ferocious brutes must be struck ... come...." she added with a sigh, turning towards the turret where the little Colombaik was secreted. Raising the curtain that masked the alcove, Azenor saw before her the innocent little creature huddled in a lump in a corner, and silently weeping. "Come," said the sorceress to him in a sweet voice, "come to me." The son of Fergan the Quarryman obeyed, he rose and advanced timidly. Wan, thin, broken with want, his pale mien had, like his mother's, Joan the Hunchback's, an inexpressible charm of kindness. "Must you always be sad?" inquired Azenor, sitting down and drawing the child near to her and to a table on which lay a poniard. "Why do you always weep?" The little fellow wept afresh. "What's the cause of your sorrow?"
"My mother, my father," faltered the child, without ceasing to weep, "I do not see them any more!"
"You love your mother and father very much?" Instead of answering the sorceress, the poor little one threw himself sobbing upon her neck. The woman could not resist the impulse of responding to the childish prompting of a caress, and she embraced Colombaik at the very moment when, fearing he had been disrespectful to Azenor, the child was about to drop on his knees before her. Sinking upon the floor, he broke out into copious tears. The young woman, more and more moved, silently contemplated Colombaik, murmuring to herself: "No, no ... I lack courage.... I shall not kill that poor child, a few drops of his blood will be enough for the philter." Already her hand approached the poniard on the table, when suddenly her ear caught an unusual noise in the turret. It was like the scraping of a chain drawn with difficulty over an iron bar. The sorceress, alarmed, pushed the child back and ran toward the turret at the moment that Fergan the Quarryman stepped in, pale, bathed in perspiration and holding in his hand his iron pick. Azenor drew back, dumb with stupor and fear, while Colombaik, with a cry of joy, rushed to the quarryman, holding up his arms to him and calling: "My father! my father!" Beside himself with happiness, Fergan dropped his iron bar, took up the child in his robust arms, and, raising him to his breast, pressed him passionately, interrogating the face of Colombaik with inexpressible anxiety, while the child, taking between his little hands the gruff face of the quarryman, covered it with kisses, muttering: "Good father! Oh, good father! I see you again at last!"
The serf, without noticing the presence of the sorceress, devoured Colombaik with his eyes. Presently he observed, with a profound sigh of relief: "He is pale, he has been weeping, but he does not seem to have suffered; they can't have hurt him!" Embracing Colombaik with frenzy, he repeated several times: "My poor child! How happy your mother will be!" But his paternal alarms being calmed, he remembered that he was not alone, and not doubting that Azenor was the sorceress, whose dreaded name had reached as far as the serfs of the seigniory, he put his child down, took up again his pick, approached the young woman slowly with a savage mien and said to her: "So, it is you, who have children kidnapped to serve your diabolical sorceries?" and with glistening eyes he raised his iron bar with both hands. "You will now die, infernal witch!"
"Father, do not kill her!" cried out the child impetuously, clasping the quarryman's legs with both his hands. "Oh, do not kill this good lady who was embracing me just as you came in!"