"Well, my boys, I love my trade.... I shall have no further opportunities to exercise it during the remaining days of my life.... I preserved my two best burins.... I mean to chisel this crosier so nicely that by working upon it a little every day I shall consume the rest of my life at it. It will be the masterpiece of my long career." "You congratulated us upon our foresight, Master Bonaik, because we thought of the pouch of wine and the provisions. But we must admit that your foresight exceeds ours." "Good father, and you, my friends," said Amael, addressing himself to the goldsmith and his apprentices, "please draw near; I wish you to hear what I have to say to my mother. I have committed a wrong, I should now have courage to make a public confession ... and beseech forgiveness." Rosen-Aer sighed and listened with sad and severe curiosity to her son's account of his conduct and career since she saw him as a boy. Looking at her with a surprised face Septimine seemed to beseech the indulgence of the mother, of this Gallic mother who felt so justly and so painfully mortified at her son. "From the moment that all peril to me was over," Amael began, "my mother has not spoken to me during this long journey, either by day or night; she has refused the support of my arm, preferring that of this poor girl, who saved her life. My mother's severity is just, I cannot complain of it, though it pains me.... May the truthful account of my faults, the confession of my errors, and my sincere repentance merit her pardon." "A mother always forgives," said Septimine timidly, looking at Rosen-Aer, but the latter answered in a tremulous and grave voice, without deigning to look at Amael: "My son's abandonment has torn my heart; a prey to unceasing and ever renewing anxieties on his behalf, I gave myself up alternately to despair and to insane hope.... These torments have lasted long years. I can pardon my son for having caused them; but what is not in my power to pardon is his criminal alliance with the oppressors of our race, with those accursed Franks, who enslaved our fathers, outraged our mothers, and who continue to hold our children in bondage!" "My crime is great. But I swear to you, mother, that long before I saw you again remorse gnawed at my heart. It is ten years since I left the valley of Charolles, where I lived happily with my family. But I yielded to curiosity, to an overpowering thirst for adventure. I believed that beyond our own confines I was to see an entirely new world. One evening I left, but not without shedding many a tear, not without turning more than once to take a parting look at our valley." "In my youth," said the old man, "my father often told me how Karadeucq, one of our ancestors, also left his family to run what then was called the 'Bagaudy'--to tramp free through the woods and lie in ambush for our oppressors. May, Rosen-Aer, the remembrance of our ancestor soften your heart towards your son."