rmined to seize him. Then he understood that they wished to take
him alive, in order to proceed against his house, ruin his name, and
confiscate his property. The poor sire preferred rather to die and
save his family, and present the domains to his son. He defended
himself like the brave old lion that he was. In spite of their number,
these said soldiers, seeing three of their comrades fall, were obliged
to attack Bastarnay at the risk of killing him, and threw themselves
together upon him, after having laid low two of his equerries and a
page.

In this extreme danger an esquire wearing the arms of Rohan, fell upon
the assailants like a thunderbolt, and killed two of them, crying,
"God save the Bastarnays!" The third man-at-arms, who had already
seized old Bastarnay, was so hard pressed by this squire, that he was
obliged to leave the elder and turn against the younger, to whom he
gave a thrust with his dagger through a flaw in his armour. Bastarnay
was too good a comrade to fly without assisting the liberator of his
house, who was badly wounded. With a blow of his mace he killed the
man-at-arms, seized the squire, lifted him on to his horse, and gained
the open, accompanied by a guide, who led him to the castle of
Roche-Foucauld, which he entered by night, and found in the great room
Bertha de Rohan, who had arranged this retreat for him. But on
removing the helmet of his rescuer, he recognised the son of Jehan,
who expired upon the table, as by a final effort he kissed his mother,
and saying in a loud voice to her--

"Mother, we have paid the debt we owed him!"

Hearing these words, the mother clasped the body of her loved child to
her heart, and separated from him never again, for she died of grief,
without hearing or heeding the pardon and repentance of Bastarnay.

The strange calamity hastened the last day of the poor old man, who
did not live to see the coronation of King Louis the Eleventh. He
founded a daily mass in the Church of Roche-Foucauld, where in the
same grave he placed mother and son, with a large tombstone, upon
which their lives are much honoured in the Latin language.

The morals which any one can deduce from this history are the most
profitable for the conduct of life, since this shows how gentlemen
should be courteous with the dearly beloveds of their wives. Further,
it teaches us that all children are blessings sent by God Himself, and
over them fathers, whether true or false, have no right