Thanks to the barrel, which floated almost on a level with the window sill, the latter was easily scaled by the prisoner. His first movement upon stepping into the workshop was to throw himself on his mother's neck. Mother and son for a moment forgot their common danger and were holding each other in a passionate embrace when a rap was heard at the door. "Woe is us!" muttered one of the apprentices. "It is the abbess!" "Impossible!" said the goldsmith. "To ascend from the prison, pass the cloister, cross the courtyard, and come as far as our workshop she would need more than ten minutes." "Bonaik!" cried from the outside the rough voice of Ricarik, "open the door instantly." "Oh! what shall we do! The coal vault is too narrow to conceal Rosen-Aer and her son," muttered the old man; then raising his voice, he answered: "Seigneur intendant, we are just at the cast, we cannot leave it----" "That is the very operation I want to witness," cried back the intendant. "Open immediately." "You, Septimine, and your son remain near the window, lean out your heads; you will otherwise be suffocated," hastily said the old man to Rosen-Aer, taking a swift resolution. And pushing Amael, his mother and Septimine to the casement, he whispered to one of the apprentices: "Pour the full contents of the box of sulphur and bitumen upon the forge brasier.... We shall fill the workshop with smoke." The young slave obeyed mechanically. At the moment when Ricarik began again to knock at the door with redoubled force, a sulphurous and bituminous smoke began to spread in the workshop, and soon was so intense that one could hardly see his hand before his eyes. Thus, when the old man finally proceeded to open the door to the intendant, the latter, blinded and suffocated by a puff of the pungent and thick vapor, instead of stepping in, jumped back. "Walk in, seigneur intendant," said Bonaik, "this is the effect of the casting after the fashion of the great Eloi.... We could not open to you sooner out of fear of chilling the liquid metal, which we were pouring into the mold.... Step forward, seigneur intendant; come and see the casting." "Go to the devil!" answered Ricarik, coughing fit to strangle and stepping further away from the threshold. "I am suffocated ... blinded!" "It is the effect of the casting, dear seigneur," and watching the bunch of keys at the belt of the intendant, who was rubbing his smarting eyelids with both hands, Bonaik seized him by the throat and cried: "This way, boys! He has the keys of the gates!" At the call of the old man, the apprentices and Amael rushed forward, precipitated themselves upon the intendant and smothered his cries by holding his throat tight, while Bonaik, seizing the bunch of keys, said: "Drag this fellow into the workshop and throw him out of the window into the moat. That will settle him quickly, and he will no longer punish and kill poor slaves!"