tter taste of poison
that caused him to suspect that the Sire de Bastarnay had given them
all their quietus. Before he had made this discovery Bertha had eaten.
Suddenly the monk pulled off the tablecloth and flung everything into
the fireplace, telling Bertha his suspicion. Bertha thanked the Virgin
that her son had been so taken up with his sport. Retaining his
presence of mind, Jehan, who had not forgotten the lesson he had
learned as a page, leaped into the courtyard, lifted his son from the
horse, sprang across it himself, and flew across the country with such
speed that you would have thought him a shooting-star if you had seen
him digging the spurs into the horse's bleeding flanks, and he was at
Loches in Fallotte's house in the same space of time that only the
devil could have done the journey. He stated the case to her in two
words, for the poison was already frying his marrow, and requested her
to give him an antidote.

"Alas," said the sorceress, "had I known that it was for you I was
giving this poison, I would have received in my breast the dagger's
point, with which I was threatened, and would have sacrificed my poor
life to save that of a man of God, and of the sweetest woman that ever
blossomed on this earth; for alas! my dear friend, I have only two
drops of the counter-poison that you see in this phial."

"Is there enough for her?"

"Yes, but go at once," said the old hag.

The monk came back more quickly that he went, so that the horse died
under him in the courtyard. He rushed into the room where Bertha,
believing her last hour to be come, was kissing her son, and writhing
like a lizard in the fire, uttering no cry for herself, but for the
child, left to the wrath of Bastarnay, forgetting her own agony at the
thought of his cruel future.

"Take this," said the monk; "my life is saved!"

Jehan had the great courage to say these words with an unmoved face,
although he felt the claws of death seizing his heart. Hardly had
Bertha drunk when the prior fell dead, not, however, without kissing
his son, and regarding his dear lady with an eye that changed not even
after his last sigh. This sight turned her as cold as marble, and
terrified her so much that she remained rigid before this dead man,
stretched at her feet, pressing the hand of her child, who wept,
although her own eye was as dry as the Red Sea when the Hebrews
crossed it under the leadership of Baron Moses, for it seemed to her
that she h