"Well, well, soldiers are not clerks and milk-sops."
"Do you know who she is?"
"I know not. Some saucy lass who ogled him, and he took her winks as an invitation."
"Sieur!" thundered Pabo, and the veins in his brow turned black. "She is the noblest, purest of women."
"Among broken sherds, a cracked pitcher is precious."
"Bishop, she is my wife!"
"Your wife!" jeered Bernard, leaned back, placed his hands to his side, and laughed. "Priests have no wives; you mean your harlot."
In a moment the bishop was staggering back, and would have fallen unless he had had the timber wall of the church to sustain him. In a moment, maddened beyond endurance by the outrage, by the words, by the demeanor of the prelate, in forgetfulness of the sacred office of the man who insulted him, in forgetfulness of his own sacred office, forgetful of everything save the slur cast on the one dearest to him in the whole world, the one to whom he looked with a reverence which from her extended to all womanhood, the incandescent Welsh blood in his veins burst into sudden flame, and he struck Bernard in the face, on the mouth that had slandered her and insulted him. And the bishop reeled back and stood speechless, with blear eyes fixed, his hands extended against the split logs, and from his lips, cut with his teeth, blood was flowing.
Then, in the dead silence that ensued, an old hermit, clothed in sackcloth, bareheaded, with long matted white hair, walking bent by the aid of a staff—a man who for thirty years had occupied a cell on the mountain-side without leaving it—stood forward before all, an unwonted apparition; and slowly, painfully raising his distorted form, he lifted hand and staff to heaven, and cried: "Wo, wo, wo to the Blessed Valley! The peace of David, our father, is broken. Blood has flowed in strife. That cometh which he foresaw, and over which he wept. Wo! wo! wo!"