at be to your taste?" and raising one of the heavy silver flagons with
a virile hand, she filled to the brim the gold cup that was placed near
her guest. After merely moistening her own red lips in the cup, she
reached it to the young chief and said resolutely:

"Let us drink your welcome to this convent!"

Berthoald held the cup for a moment between his two hands, and casting
one more look at the portrait of Neroweg, he smiled caustically, fixed
upon the abbess a look as bold as that which she cast at him, and
replied: "Let us drink, beautiful abbess!" and emptying the cup at one
draught, he added: "Let us drink to love!... which overpowers the
abbesses as it does the simple maids!"

"Aye! Let us drink to love, the god of the world, as the pagans used to
say!" answered Meroflede, and filling her own cup from a little red
flagon, and replenishing the cup of the young chief, who fixedly gazed
at her with eyes that shot fire, she added: "I have drunk to your toast;
now drink to mine!"

"Whatever it be, holy abbess, and even though this cup be filled with
poison, I shall empty it to your toast, I swear by your snow-white
arms!--by your beautiful eyes!--by your voluptuous lips! I drink to
Venus Callipyge!"

"Well, then," said the abbess, fixing a penetrating look upon the young
man, "let us drink to the Jew Mordecai!"

Berthoald had his cup at his lips, but at the name of the Jew he
shivered, laid his cup down abruptly, his face grew dark and he cried in
terror:

"Drink to the Jew Mordecai?"

"Come, by Venus, the patroness of lovers, do not tremble like that, my
brave friend!"

"Drink to the Jew Mordecai!... I----"

"You said to me: 'Let us drink to Love!'" replied the abbess, without
losing the effect of her words upon Berthoald; "you swore by the
whiteness of this arm," and she raised her sleeves, "you swore to drink
my toast. Fulfill your promise!"

"Woman!" cried Berthoald with impatience and embarrassment, "what whim
is that? Why do you wish me to drink to the Jew Mordecai, to a merchant
of human flesh?"

"I shall satisfy your curiosity.... Had not Mordecai sold you as a slave
to the Seigneur Bodegesil, you would not have stolen your master's horse
and armor to go in search of adventures, and palmed yourself off upon
that devil of a Charles Martel--you, a Gaul of the subject race--for a
noble of the Frankish race and son of a dispossessed beneficiary, and
finally, Charles, one of whose best captains you