"Yes, my pet," answered the Duke of Anjou to his minion; "to-day I am in a merciful mood. I shall practice the evangelical morality of Jesus our Savior; I shall return good for evil! I wish well to this haughty republican girl, worthy of the days of Sparta and Rome! I wish the brave girl so well that--here is my sentence: Pinion the virgin's arms firmly; have her watched carefully in order that she may not do away with herself; and then throw her to the common soldiers of the camp. By G.o.d's death! The gay fellows will have a dainty repast! Take away from my sight the immaculate virgin, who will not be a virgin much longer!"

"Oh! Mercy! Mercy! Death sooner! The most horrible death! Mercy!"

stammered Cornelia, aroused from her stupor; and dropping upon her knees at the feet of the Duke of Anjou, she raised to him her hands in supplication, and implored in heartrending accents: "Martyrdom! For mercy's sake, martyrdom!"

The Prince turned to his favorites: "Let the pretty heretic be taken to the garrison on the spot--on the spot, my pets. We shall follow and witness the sport of our soldiers."

Already was Cornelia being dragged away when Fra Herve suddenly interposed. The courtiers bowed low before the confessor of the Duke of Anjou.

"My son," said the Cordelier, stepping straight towards the Prince, "revoke the order you have given. The heretic should not be thrown to the soldiers."

"Father," broke in the Duke of Anjou with exasperation, "are you aware the girl tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate me?"

"I know it all--both the attempted crime and its failure. You shall revoke your order."

"G.o.d's blood! Reverend Father, seeing you know it all, I declare, notwithstanding my profound respect for you, that I insist upon my revenge. My orders shall be executed."

"My son, you are but a child," answered Fra Herve in a tone of disdainful superiority; and leaning towards the Prince the monk whispered in his ear, while Cornelia, now recognizing Fra Herve, shuddered from head to foot.

"I dreaded the clemency of the Prince--the monk's mercy terrifies me.

Oh, Lord G.o.d, my only hope lies in You!"

"As G.o.d lives, my reverend Father, you are right! I am but a child!"

cried the Duke of Anjou, beaming with infernal joy after listening to the confidential remarks whispered to him by the monk. He then again addressed his favorites: "Take the heretic girl to the reverend Father's cell. But, good Father, keep a watchful eye upon her. Her life is now as precious to you as to me."

Cornelia was led away upon the steps of the fratricidal monk.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE BILL IS PAID.

Fra Herve lived in the house of the Reservoir of the Font suburb in a sort of cellar that was vaulted, somber and damp as a cave, and which one time served as the direct communication to the aqueduct by means of a stone staircase, closed from above by a trap door. The monk's gloomy lodging was reached through a corridor that opened into one of the rooms situated on the ground floor, and, since the siege, transformed into a hall reserved for the officers of the Duke of Anjou.

The interior of Fra Herve's retreat revealed the austerity of the man's cen.o.bitic habits. A wooden box, filled with ashes and resembling a coffin, served him for bed. A stool stood before a rough hewn table on which were an hour-gla.s.s, a breviary, a skull and an iron lamp. The latter cast a pale light over the cave, in a corner of which a heavy trap door masked the now disused stone staircase, the entrance to which had been walled from within by the royalists, in order to prevent a surprise from that quarter, seeing the water was turned off.

Taken to the gloomy cell, Cornelia found herself alone with the monk.

She was aware there was no hope of escape or of mercy for her. The cell had no issue other than the corridor that connected with the hall of the Prince's officers of the guard, which was constantly crowded with the Prince's retinue. Fra Herve's face was emaciated. His forehead, over which a few locks of grey hair tumbled in disorder, was bony and l.u.s.trous as the skull upon his table. Except for the somber l.u.s.ter of his hollow eyes, one would at first sight take the scarred and fleshless head of the monk for that of a corpse. He was seated on the stool.

Cornelia, standing before him, shuddered with horror. She found herself alone with the monster who, at the battle of Roche-la-Belle, cut the throat of Odelin, the father of Antonicq, her betrothed. Fra Herve remained meditative for a moment, and then addressed the young girl in a hollow voice:

"You are aware of the fate that Monseigneur the Duke of Anjou reserved for you in punishment for your attempted murder? You were to be thrown to the soldiers of the garrison--"

"I am in your power--what do you want of me?" interrupted Cornelia.

"The salvation of your soul."

"My soul belongs to G.o.d. I have lived and I shall die in my faith, and in execration for the Catholic church."

"This is but another evidence of the impiousness of the Lebrenn family, a family of reprobates, of accursed people, to whom this poor creature was soon to be joined by even closer bonds than those that already join her to them!"

"What! You know--?"

"A Rochelois prisoner informed me that you were the betrothed of Antonicq, the son of him who was my brother."

"Monk, I shall not invoke to you the bonds of family--you have reddened your hands with your brother's blood. I shall not invoke your pity--you are pitiless. But, seeing that no heretics have been burnt for quite a while, I hope you will consent to cause me to be condemned to the pyre for a hardened heretic. I abhor the Pope, his Church and his priests! I abhor them as I do Kings. I execrate all monks, and the whole tonsured fraternity."

Cornelia calculated upon exasperating the Cordelier to fury, and thus to wrest from him the order to be taken to immediate execution--her only refuge from the threats of the Duke of Anjou. But the unfortunate girl deceived herself. Fra Herve listened to her impa.s.sively, and resumed:

"You are cunning. You aspire to martyrdom because death will protect you from the outrage that you fear. I am not your dupe. There will be no pyre for you!"

"Woe is me!" murmured the young girl, seeing her last hope dashed. "Woe is me! I am lost!"

"You are saved--if you will!" Fra Herve proceeded to say.

"What do I hear?" cried Cornelia perceiving a new glimmer of hope. "What must I do? Speak!"

"Publicly abjure your heresy! Renounce Satan and your father! Humbly implore our holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church to receive you into her bosom at her mercy and discretion. The soilure, now upon you, being washed off, you shall take the eternal vows and shall bury in the shadow of the cloister the criminal life you have led in the past. Choose: either immediate abjuration, or--to the soldiers. These pious Catholics will slake their amorousness upon you."

"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Cornelia, seized with terror, and her head reeling. "Am I awake? Am I dreaming? Can a man, a priest, outrage a woman's modesty to such an extent? A curse upon you, wretch!"

"What audacity! 'Outrage' a 'woman'!" put in Fra Herve with a wild and diabolical guffaw. "Is there such a thing as a heretic being a '_woman_'? No! A heretic is a female, like the she-wolf in the jungle.

Is there such a thing as outrage with a she-wolf?"

"Mercy!" stammered Cornelia in despair. "Have mercy upon me!"

"No mercy!" answered Fra Herve sententiously. "You shall enter a cloister, or--you shall be given over to the l.u.s.t of the soldiers. It shall be so! And now, keep your eyes upon this hour-gla.s.s," added the monk, pointing to the instrument for marking time that stood near the dead man's skull. "Should you, when the water is run down, not have decided instantly to abjure and to depart this very night to a convent, you shall be delivered to the Catholic soldiers!"

And the monk, resting his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand, remained silent as he looked with fixed eyes at the running of the water from the upper into the lower bulb of the clepsydra, while fondling his heavy chaplet with the hand that remained free.

"What am I to do?" the Protestant girl asked herself. "What am I to do in this extremity? Almighty G.o.d, have mercy upon me!"

"One-half of the water has run down!" observed Fra Herve in his sepulchral voice. "Decide! There is still time!"

At the lugubrious announcement Cornelia's mind began to wander; still, one lucid thought rose clear above the growing vertigo that obsessed the young girl's thoughts--the thought of putting an end to her life. Her bewildered eyes sought to penetrate here and there the dark recesses of the cell, which the dim light of the lamp threw heavily into the shade.

They sought mechanically for some article that she might use as a weapon with which to inflict death upon herself. Suddenly Cornelia's eyes bulged out in amazement. She held her breath and remained petrified, thinking herself the sport of a vision. Fra Herve, because of his eyes being fixed upon the hour-gla.s.s and his back turned to the trap door that masked the stone stairs leading to the aqueduct, could not take in what was happening. But Cornelia saw the trap door rise noiselessly, inexplicably; presently, in the measure that it rose, the two hands and then the two arms that raised it heaved in sight; simultaneously there appeared the top of an iron casque, and an instant later the face under the casque--and Cornelia recognized Antonicq--her betrothed, Antonicq Lebrenn!

"The water will run out before you have time to say an _Ave_," warned the Cordelier in a hollow voice, without removing his eyes from the clepsydra, and he added: "Heretic! Heretic! Make haste! Abjure your idolatry! If not you shall be thrown to the soldiers, you shall be given to the good Catholics of the whole army!"

The imminence of the danger and the prospect of safety restored the young girl's presence of mind. The instant her eyes discovered her betrothed she became silent, motionless, watchful. The last threats of the monk reached Antonicq's ears at the moment when he had completely raised the trap door, and wrung from him despite himself an exclamation of fury. Fra Herve turned sharply around and bounded from his seat in bewilderment at the sight of the young man leaping into the room from underground. Cornelia, in full control of herself, and remembering that the monk's cell was separated from the hall of the officers of the guard by a short corridor of only about twenty paces, ran back to the door that opened on the corridor intending to close it, and bolt it from within. Fra Herve divined the young girl's purpose, and, meaning to prevent it, precipitated himself upon her. That instant Antonicq reached his betrothed, disengaged her from the clutches of the monk, seized him by the shoulders and flung him back violently. Free once more, Cornelia quickly carried out her purpose. She closed the door gently, and bolted and barred it from within, thus shielding herself and Antonicq behind a barrier that the officers of the Duke of Anjou would consume considerable time before they could succeed in breaking down. At the very moment that Cornelia closed the door Fra Herve sounded the alarm in a sufficiently penetrating voice to be heard in the hall of the guards:

"Help! Treason! To arms! Help! The Huguenots!"

But instantly the Cordelier's voice expired upon his lips. A vigorous hand seized him by the throat, the blade of a dagger shone in the air and twice plunged into the fratricide's breast. He fell over backward, bathed in his own blood, straightened himself for an instant, foamed at the mouth, and breathed his last;--and a m.u.f.fled voice cried "_Twenty-five_--the bill is paid. Now I can die in peace. My sister and her daughter are avenged! The ransom of the crime is paid in full."

The Franc-Taupin had emerged from under ground after Antonicq, and preceded Captain Mirant, who rushed to his daughter's embrace while the Franc-Taupin stabbed the fratricidal monk to death.