messenger informed me of the fruitlessness of his search for you, Nominoë. The revolt, of which you were one of the leaders, has provoked frightful reprisals. Brittany swims in blood. I decided to depart before to-morrow from this homicidal earth. I gave my last instructions to my old servitors. Under the pretext of contemplating a long voyage, I enclosed my testament in this casket." Mademoiselle Plouernel paused. Only then did she notice that Nominoë, who was seated in an attitude of deep meditation, with his forehead resting upon his hand, was writing with the other. Until that moment the casket had concealed from Bertha's eyes the motion of his hand. "Nominoë!" said Mademoiselle Plouernel in a tone of kind reproach, "I thought you were listening to my words--what are you writing there?" "I am writing down your words, Bertha." "Why so?" "To join them to this," and Nominoë held up the envelope which he had laid upon the table. "What does that package contain?" "It contains the account of our love, which we may both be proud of. It is the narrative of what has happened to us, dear Bertha." "And for whom do you destine that account?" "For the descendants of the Lebrenn family," answered Nominoë, reading from one of the pages of his manuscript: "Oh, sons of Joel--you who some day will read these lines traced by me, Nominoë Lebrenn, at this supreme hour, at the manor of Mezlean, under the eyes of Bertha of Plouernel--fail not to remember that angel of goodness and of concord, and, in her name, forget, pardon the injuries that her family has done to ours. Be merciful! Neither vengeance nor reprisals!" "Noble heart!" answered Bertha with eyes moist with tears, and contemplating Nominoë with an expression of boundless love. "Accordingly, you are resolved, like myself, firmly resolved, to leave this sad earth for another dwelling place?" "Even if an infamous death, from which only voluntary death could snatch me, did not await me to-morrow, my most ardent wish would be to accompany you, Bertha, upon this mysterious voyage." "But to whom are you going to deliver the story of your life? To your father's brother, Gildas Lebrenn, the leasehold farmer of Karnak?" "We dug the grave of Gildas, who was butchered by the King's soldiers on the staircase of the Castle of Plouernel." "Will you then bequeath it to the father of your bride, your mother's brother?" "Tankeru, the blacksmith, was arrested day before yesterday in his house, taken to Vannes, and broken alive on the wheel, along with Madok the miller. The inoffensive Paskou the Long, the 'Baz-valan' of my nuptials, was not spared either--he was hanged, like so many thousands of other insurgents!" Nominoë rose, took up and opened his traveling wallet, and drew from it the iron head of a heavy blacksmith's hammer. "Look at this, Bertha! This shall be joined to our family relics--sad and painful relics of a serf family."