y to witness the punishment. The young Gaul was
stripped of his clothes to the waist and tied down, face up, to a stout
bench that stood outside of the shed. Ricarik then made a slight
incision on the right breast of the lad so as to whet the hawk's
appetite. Attracted by the blood, the bird pounced upon the breast of
Broute-Saule, into whose flesh it stuck its beak.

At this moment the tramp of several horses was heard, and immediately
the slaves and colonists who stood near the bench on which Broute-Saule
lay, and with a greedy gap watched his punishment, fell upon their
knees. The abbess Meroflede had ridden in among them, mounted upon a
vigorous grey stallion. Curious to ascertain the cause of the excited
crowd that stood outside of the shed, the abbess reined in her horse
with a sudden tug at the reins. Meroflede was dressed in a long black
robe; a white veil, fastened under her chin, framed in her face. Clasped
at the height of her neck, a sort of caped red cloak floated in the
breeze over her monastic garb. Slender, tall and graceful, the woman was
about thirty years of age. Her features would have been handsome but for
their combined expression that was alternately sensuous, haughty or
savage. Her face, wan from excess, rivaled by its pallor the whiteness
of the veil that surrounded it, the same as the color of her cloak vied
with her red and lascivious lips that were shaded by a light moustache
of reddish gold. Her hooked nose terminated in palpitating and inflated
nostrils. Her large eyes of sea-green color glistened under thick and
reddish eyebrows. Meroflede reined in her horse near the crowd, which
knelt down, and in doing so discovered to her sight the half-naked
youth, whose breast the sparrow-hawk had begun to peg into. Broute-Saule
turned towards her his face that nestled in his black and wavy hair, and
despite the pain that the bird's beak gave him, the young Gaul, whose
features were expressive of involuntary admiration, cried: "How
beautiful she is!"

Motionless, with the gloved hand that held her whip reclining upon her
thigh, Meroflede looked steadily upon the slave whose flesh the hawk was
eating up; on the other hand, insensible to his own pain, Broute-Saule
contemplated the abbess and repeated in a low voice as if in a rapture:
"How beautiful she is! Oh, madam, the Queen Mary and mother of God is
not more beautiful!"

For a few seconds Meroflede contemplated the spectacle; she then called
Ric