d mending. Left alone during her absence, I had the
curiosity to step upon a stool so as to look out of a high window that
opened upon the garden of the monastery. And what did I see? Or, rather,
what is it that I thought I saw? Because there are resemblances that are
so striking ... so extraordinary--"

"Well, what did you see in the garden?"

"I saw the abbess, distinguished by her high stature, walking between
two young nuns with an arm resting upon the shoulder of each."

"You talk as though our abbess were almost a hundred years old, like
Father Bonaik--she who rides like a warrior, who hunts with falcons, and
whose upper lip is shaded by a slight reddish moustache neither more nor
less than that of a youth of eighteen!"

"It surely was not out of feebleness but tenderness that the abbess
leaned upon the two nuns. One of them having stepped upon her robe, lost
her balance, tripped and turned her head ... and I recognized, or
believed I recognized ... guess whom ... Eleuthere!"

"Dressed like a nun?"

"Dressed like a nun."

"Go away!... You must have been dreaming."

"And yet," replied another and less incredulous slave, "that is quite
possible. Our comrade is not yet eighteen, and his chin is as innocent
of a beard as any young girl's."

"I maintain that if that nun is not Eleuthere, she is his sister ... if
he has one."

"I tell you," put in the old goldsmith with marked impatience, "I tell
you that you are ninnies, and that if you are anxious for a trip to the
whipping-post and to renew your acquaintance with the thongs of the
whip, all you have to do is to persevere in talks like that."

"But Father Bonaik--"

"I allow chattering at work; but when the words may translate themselves
into the strokes of a whip on your backs, then the subject seems to me
badly chosen. You know, as well as I, that the abbess--"

"Is hot-tempered and bedeviled, Father Bonaik."

"Are you anxious to have the flesh flayed off your backs, unhappy lads!
I order you to hold your tongues."

"And what are we to talk about if not of our masters and the abbess?"

"Here," said the old man anxious to have the subject drop, "I have often
promised you to tell you the story of the illustrious master of our
trade, the glory of the artisans of Gaul. Let us talk of that artist."

"About the good Eloi? The great and saintly Eloi, Father Bonaik, the
friend of the good King Dagobert?"

"Call him the 'good' Eloi, my boys; never was t