"Without fail," replied Matheline; and the sting of her laughter pierced Josserande like a poisonous thorn.
The grand abbot received her, surrounded by great books and dusty manuscripts. When she wished to explain her son's case, he stopped her, and said,—
"Widow of Martin Ker, poor, good woman, since the beginning of the world, Satan, the demon of gold and pride, has worked many such wickednesses. Do you remember the deceased brother, Thaël, who is a saint for having resisted the desire of making gold,—he who had the power to do it?"
"Yes," answered Josserande; "and would to heaven my Sylvestre had imitated him!"
"Very well," replied Gildas the Wise. "Instead of sleeping, I passed the rest of the night with St. Thaël, seeking a means to save your son, Sylvestre Ker."
"And have you found it, father?"
The grand abbot neither answered yes nor no, but he began to turn over a very thick manuscript filled with pictures; and, while turning the leaves, he said,—
"Life springs from death, according to the divine word; death seizes the living, according to the pagan law of Rome; and it is nearly the same thing in the order of miserable temporal ambition, whose inheritance is a strength, a life, shot forth from a coffin. This is a book of the defunct Thaël's, which treats of the question of maladies caused by the breath of gold,—a deadly poison.... Woman, would you have the courage to strike your wolf a blow on his head powerful enough to break the skull?"
At these words Josserande fell her full length upon the tiles, as if she had been stabbed to the heart; but in the very depth of her agony—for she thought herself dying—she replied,—