t to ten feet above those of the
ponds.... Do you understand what will follow?"

"No, my mind is heavy ... I hardly remember ... our charming night ...
but why am I pinioned?"

"For the purpose of checking your joy when, as will soon be the case,
you will have recovered your senses.... Now, let us continue our
confidential chat. You will understand that the moment the dikes are
broken through and the locks opened, the water will rise in these ponds
to the extent that they will submerge the narrow road on which your
companions encamped for the night with their horses and the carts that
held their booty and slaves.... Now, watch.... Do you notice how the
water is rising? It is now up to the very edge of the jetty.... Within
an hour, the jetty itself will be entirely submerged. Not one of your
companions will have escaped death.... If they seek to flee, a deep
trench, cut at my orders over night, will stop their progress.... Not
one will escape death.... Do you hear, my handsome prisoner?"

"All drowned!" murmured Berthoald, still under the dominion of a dull
stupor; "all my companions drowned----"

"Oh, does not yet that new piece of confidential news wake you up?...
Let us pass to another thing," and the abbess proceeded with a voice of
ringing triumph: "Among the female slaves, taken from Languedoc, that
your band brought in its train, there was a woman ... who will drown
with the rest, and that woman," said Meroflede, emphasizing each word in
the hope of each being a dagger in Berthoald's heart, "is--your--mother!"

Berthoald trembled violently, leaped up in his bonds, and vainly sought
to snap them. He uttered a piercing cry, cast a look of despair and
terror upon the immense sheet of water that, tinted with the first rays
of the rising sun, now extended in every direction. The wretched man
called aloud: "Oh, my mother!"

"Now," said Meroflede with savage joy, "the water has almost completely
invaded the causeway. The tent-cloths that cover the carts can hardly be
seen. The flood still rises, and at this very hour your mother is
undergoing the agonies of death ... agonies that are more horrible than
death itself."

"Oh, demon!" cried the young man, writhing in his bonds. "You lie! My
mother is not there!"

"Your mother's name is Rosen-Aer, she is forty years of age; she lived
one time in the valley of Charolles in Burgundy."

"Woe! Woe is me!"

"Fallen into the hands of the Arabs at the time of their invas