"You have had the impudence to have your bread baked under the ashes, you scurvy beggar!"
"Oh, good Master Garin, our village was set on fire and sacked by the men of the Sire of Castel-Redon; the little clothing that we had has been burnt or pillaged; our cattle stolen or driven off; our crops devastated during the war. Have mercy upon us!"
"I am talking to you about oven and not about war! You owe three deniers oven-dues; you shall pay three more as a fine."
"Six deniers! Poor me! Six deniers! And where do you expect me to find so much money?"
"I know your tricks, knaves that you are! You have hiding places, where you bury your deniers. Will you pay, yes or no, you earth-worm? Answer immediately!"
"We have not one obole ... the people of the Sire of Castel-Redon have left us only our eyes to weep over our disaster!"
Garin raised his shoulders and made a sign to one of the men in his suite. This one then took from his belt a coil of rope, and approached Peter the Lame. The serf stretched out his hands to the man-at-arms: "Take me prisoner, if it pleases you to, I do not own a single denier. It will be impossible for me to satisfy you."
"That's just what we are about to ascertain," replied the bailiff; and, while one of his men bound the hands of Peter the Lame without his offering the slightest resistance, another took from a pouch suspended from his belt some touch-wood, a tinderbox and a sulphurated wick, which he lighted. Garin the Serf-eater, turning to Peter the Lame, who, at the sight of these preparations began to grow pale, said: "They will place this lighted wick between your two thumbs; if you have a hiding place where you bury your deniers, your pain will make you speak. Go ahead."
The serf answered not a word. His teeth chattered with fear. He fell upon his knees before the bailiff, stretching out to him his two bound hands in supplication. Suddenly a young girl jumped out of the group of the villagers. Her feet were bare, and for only cover she had a coarse skirt on. She was called Pierrine the Goat because, like her sheep, she was savage and fond of rugged solitudes. Her thick black hair half hid her savage face, burnt by the sun. Approaching the bailiff without lowering her eyes, she said bluntly to him: "I am the daughter of Peter the Lame; if you want to torture someone, leave my father and take me."
"The wick!" impatiently called out Garin the Serf-eater to his men, without either looking at or listening to Pierrine the Goat. "The wick! And hurry up! Night approaches." Peter the Lame, despite his cries, despite the heart-rending entreaties of his daughter, was thrown upon the ground and held down by the men of the bailiff. The torture of the serf was conducted in sight of his companions in misery, who were brutified with terror, and by the habit of serfdom. Peter uttered fearful imprecations; Pierrine the Goat no longer screamed, no longer implored the tormentors of her father. Motionless, pale, sombre, her eyes fixed and drowned with tears, she alternately bit her fists in mute rage, and murmured: "If I only knew where his hiding-place was, I would tell it."