As Matheline hesitated in her answer—for Sylvestre’s brave deeds were too recent to be forgotten—Pol Bihan came to her assistance and gaily cried:
“You must wait, Sylvestre, my saviour, until your leg and eye are healed.”
“Still longer,” added Matheline (and now Sylvestre Ker saw the two new pearls, for in her laughter she opened her mouth from ear to ear)—“still longer, as limping, one-eyed men are not to my taste—no, no!”
“But,” cried Sylvestre Ker, “it is for your sakes that I am one-eyed and lame.”
“That is true,” said Bihan.
“That is true,” also repeated Matheline; for she always spoke as he did.
“Ker, my friend Ker,” resumed Bihan, “wait until to-morrow, and we will make you happy.”
And off they went, Matheline and he, arm-in-arm, leaving Sylvestre to go hobbling along to the tower, alone with his sad thoughts.
Would you believe it? Trudging wearily home, he consoled himself by thinking that he had seen two new pearls behind the smile. You may, perhaps, think you have never met such a fool. Undeceive yourself: it is the same with all the men, who only look for laughing girls with teeth like pearls.
But the sorrowful one was Josserande, the widow, when she saw her son with only one eye and one sound leg.