“Robber, do you want me to call you son? Well, then—son—it makes no difference now—I will never see you again. It’s all the same! Like an old blackthorn, they bloomed—oh, Lord, those scoundrels, those old scoundrels!”
“No,” Haggart replied sternly.
“Then you are the devil, that’s who you are. You are the devil,” mutters the abbot, rising heavily from the ground. Haggart shows his teeth, enraged.
“Do you wish to sell your soul to the devil? Yes? Eh, abbot—don’t you know yet that the devil always pays with spurious money? Let me have a torch, sailor!”
He seizes a torch and lifts it high over his head—he covers his terrible face with fire and smoke.
“Look, here I am! Do you see? Now ask me, if you dare!”
He flings the torch away. What does the abbot dream in this land full of monstrous dreams? Terrified, his heavy frame trembling, helplessly pushing the people aside with his hands, he retreats. He turns around. Now he sees the glitter of the metal, the dark and terrible faces; he hears the angry splashing of the waters—and he covers his head with his hands and walks off quickly. Then Khorre jumps up and strikes him with a knife in his back.
“Why have you done it?”—the abbot clutches the hand that struck him down.
“Just so—for nothing!”
The abbot falls to the ground and dies.