“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:
“If you should order me to do it, I would.”
“You have this great confidence in me, poor woman?” cried Gildas, much moved.
“You are a man of God,” answered Josserande, “and I have faith in God.”
Gildas the Wise prostrated himself on the ground and struck his breast, knowing that he had felt a movement of pride. Then, standing up, he raised Josserande, and kissed the hem of her robe, saying:
“Woman, I adore in you the most holy faith. Prepare your axe, and sharpen it!”