"This is but another evidence of the impiousness of the Lebrenn family, a family of reprobates, of accursed people, to whom this poor creature was soon to be joined by even closer bonds than those that already join her to them!"
"A Rochelois prisoner informed me that you were the betrothed of Antonicq, the son of him who was my brother."
"Monk, I shall not invoke to you the bonds of family—you have reddened your hands with your brother's blood. I shall not invoke your pity—you are pitiless. But, seeing that no heretics have been burnt for quite a while, I hope you will consent to cause me to be condemned to the pyre for a hardened heretic. I abhor the Pope, his Church and his priests! I abhor them as I do Kings. I execrate all monks, and the whole tonsured fraternity."
Cornelia calculated upon exasperating the Cordelier to fury, and thus to wrest from him the order to be taken to immediate execution—her only refuge from the threats of the Duke of Anjou. But the unfortunate girl deceived herself. Fra Hervé listened to her impassively, and resumed:
"You are cunning. You aspire to martyrdom because death will protect you from the outrage that you fear. I am not your dupe. There will be no pyre for you!"
"Woe is me!" murmured the young girl, seeing her last hope dashed. "Woe is me! I am lost!"
"You are saved—if you will!" Fra Hervé proceeded to say.
"What do I hear?" cried Cornelia perceiving a new glimmer of hope. "What must I do? Speak!"
"Publicly abjure your heresy! Renounce Satan and your father! Humbly implore our holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church to receive you into her bosom at her mercy and discretion. The soilure, now upon you, being washed off, you shall take the eternal vows and shall bury in the shadow of the cloister the criminal life you have led in the past. Choose: either immediate abjuration, or—to the soldiers. These pious Catholics will slake their amorousness upon you."