to see and embrace you before she dies. Your presence will sweeten her sorrow at the loss of your mother, whom she mourns as grieviously to-day as when my beloved wife was taken from me. Pick up courage and calm your mind, my child."
"I shall pick up courage, father, as you wish. I shall surmount my idle terrors and my childish fears."
"Were it not for the imperious duty that made us undertake this journey, I would say to you: 'Let's return to our peaceful home in Nantes, where you are happy and gay from morning to evening.' If your smile cheers my soul," Bezenecq added in a voice deeply moved, "every tear you drop falls upon my heart!"
"Behold me," said Isoline. "Would you say I look apprehensive, alarmed?" And saying this she pressed against the merchant her charming face, that had recovered its serenity and confidence. The townsman contemplated for a moment in silence the beloved features of his daughter. A tear of joy then gathered in his eye, and endeavoring to subdue his emotion, he cried out: "The devil take these crupper saddles! They prevent one even from embracing his own child with ease!" Whereupon the young girl, with a movement full of gracefulness, threw her arms on her father's shoulders, and drew her rosy face so close to Bezenecq's that he had but to turn his head to kiss the lassie on her forehead and cheeks, which he did repeatedly with ineffable happiness.
During this tender exchange of words and carresses between the merchant and his daughter, the other travelers, before proceeding upon either of the two routes that opened before them, had gathered in the middle of the crossing to consider which to take. Both roads led to Angers. One of them, that marked by the post surmounted with a serpent-dragon, after making a wide circuit, traversed a sombre forest; it was twice as long as the other. Each of the two roads having its own advantages and disadvantages, several of the travelers insisted upon the road of the post with the three eagle's talons. Simon, the monk whose face was almost wholly concealed under his cowl, strove, on the contrary, to induce his companions to take the other road. "Dear brothers! I conjure you;" cried Simon, "believe me … do not cross the territory of the seigneur of Plouernel… He has been nick-named 'Worse than a Wolf' and the reprobate but too well justifies the name… Every day stories are heard of travelers whom he arrests and plunders while crossing his grounds."
"My dear brother," put in a townsman, "I can testify, like you, that the keeper of Plouernel is a wicked man, and his donjon a terrible donjon. More than once from the ramparts of our city of Nantes have we seen the men of the Count of Plouernel, bandits of the worst stripe, pillage, burn, and ravage the territory of our bishop, with whom Neroweg was at war over the possession of the ancient abbey of Meriadek."
"Is that the abbey where the prodigious miracle of about four hundred years ago happened?" inquired another bourgeois. "Saint Meroflede, abbess of the monastery, summoned by the soldiers of Charles Martel to surrender the place, invoked heaven, and the miscreants, overwhelmed by a shower of stones and fire, were asphyxiated in the fumes of burning sulphur and pitch, whither they were dragged by horned, clawed and hairy demons, frightful to behold. And so it happened that the venerable abbess died in the odor of sanctity."
"An ineffable odor that has lasted down to our own days. The common people entertain a particular devotion for the chapel of Saint Meroflede, which has been raised on the borders of a large lake, close by the very place where the miracle was accomplished."
"The chapel is never empty of the faithful. The offerings furnish a large revenue to the incumbent. As the abbess was of the house of the Nerowegs, the seigneur of Plouernel laid claim to, and sought to reacquire the property of the chapel. Hence the wars between the count and the Bishop of Nantes. Those were fearful wars, my friends. They happened at the season when the bishop was marrying his last daughter, whom he gave for a dower the benefice of Saint Paterne. It was a beautiful wedding. The wife and the daughter of his grace the bishop were beautifully ornamented. The young bride wore a necklace of inestimable value."
The moment the name of the Bishop of Nantes was mentioned, Simon the monk pulled down the cowl of his cloak, trying to hide his face completely.
"Sure enough, my beloved companions," interjected another townsman, "we know that the Sieur 'Worse than a Wolf' is a brigand. But do you imagine that the Sieur Draco, seigneur of Castel-Redon, is a lamb? It is as perilous to cross the territory of the one as of the other, and yet there is no other way out. The road to the east, barred by a river, runs out upon a bridge that is guarded by the men of the seigneur of Castel-Redon; the road to the west, bordered by vast swamps, runs out upon a path guarded by the men of the seigneur of Plouernel. By taking the shorter of the two routes we reduce by one-half the chances of danger."
"This worthy man is right," said several voices. "Let's follow his advice."
"Dear brothers, look out what you do!" cried Simon the monk. "The seigneur of Plouernel is a monster of ferocity. He is given up to sorcery with a female magician, his concubine … a Jewess! He stands excommunicated; he is a pagan."
"To the devil with the Jews!" exclaimed Harold the Norman, merchant of relics. "The Jews have all been hanged, burned, drowned, strangled, quartered, when they were hunted down in all the provinces, like wild beasts. There can not be one of them left alive in our land of Gaul."
"Since the execution of the Orleans heretics, who perished by fire," resumed the monk Jeronimo, "never was an extermination of unclean animals more meritorious than that of those accursed Jews, who instigated the Saracens of Palestine to destroy the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem. Death to the Jews!"
"What say you, dear brother?" inquired a townsman. "Did the Jews of this land of Gaul instigate the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem?"
"Yes, my brother. The abominable mischiefs of those Jews defy time and space. But patience! Soon will the day come when, by divine will, no longer will it be isolated pilgrims that will travel to Jerusalem to there mourn and pray at the tomb of our Lord Jesus Christ. It will be Christianity in mass that will march under arms to the Holy Land, in order to exterminate the infidels and deliver the sepulchre of the Saviour of the world from their sacrilegious presence. Death to all miscreants!"
Bezenecq the Rich, who had just approached the group of debating travelers, and ascertained the subject of their discussion, apprehensive lest his daughter take new alarm, suggested: "Meseems we had better take the shorter route. As to your fears, they are exaggerated. When we shall have paid the toll-collectors of the seigneur of Plouernel for the right to travel over his roads and cross his burgs and villages, what else can he demand of us? We are neither his serfs nor his villeins.'
"Can you, a grey beard, talk like that?" interjected Simon the monk. "Do you imagine these devilish seigneurs care aught for justice or injustice?"
"But I do care a deal about that!" replied Bezenecq the Rich. "If the seigneur of Plouernel should do me violence, me a bourgeois of Nantes, I would appeal to William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, of whom the seigneur of Plouernel stands seized, the same as William IX holds of Philip I, King of the Franks. Each of these seigneurs has his suzerain."
"Which would be like appealing from the wolf to the tiger," replied Simon, shrugging his shoulders. "You can not know William, Duke of Aquitaine. That sacrilegious criminal sought to force Peter, the Bishop of Poitiers, to give him absolution for his crimes by putting a dagger to his throat. William abducted Malborgiane, the wife of the Viscount of Castellerault, a shameless creature, whose picture he dares to carry painted on his shield. William had the effrontery to answer Gerard, the Bishop of Angouleme, who reproached him with this new act of adultery: 'Bishop, I shall return Malborgiane when you frizzle your hair!' The prelate was bald. Such is the man to whom you would appeal from the violent acts of the seigneur of Plouernel."
"That William is certainly a deep-dyed criminal;" put in Jeronimo, "but that much justice must be done him that he approved himself the most implacable exterminator of the Jews. Not one of those who lived on his domains escaped death!"
"It is said that the mere sight of a Jew makes him pale with horror; and that, libertine though he is, a Jewess, be she never such a beauty, be she a maid like the Virgin Mary, would make him run away from her."
"But that does not prevent," insisted Simon the monk, "that if you rely upon the Duke of Aquitaine for redress against the seigneur of Plouernel, you will be acting like a lunatic. On that subject your judgment is at fault."
"If