"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 invasion of Burgundy, she was taken to Languedoc as a slave. After the last siege of Narbonne by Charles, your mother was captured in the vicinity of the town together with other women. When the division of the booty took place, Rosen-Aer having fallen to the lot of your band was brought as far as here.... If still you should doubt, I shall give you one more token. That woman carries on her arm, like you, traced in indelible letters the two words: '_Brenn_' and '_Karnak_'.... Are these details accurate enough?" "Oh, my mother!" cried the unfortunate Berthoald casting upon the waters of the pond a look of most poignant pain.