"Yes; after their purpose is attained, after your ruin is accomplished, the seigneurs will crush the people just as you are doing now. After the first explosion of its rage is over, the unhappy people will resume its old yoke with docility--because the time has not yet arrived for their liberation! But what does that matter! Such a revolt at this time, in the very heart of your kingdom, when your most implacable enemy threatens your frontiers, at an hour when treason surrounds you at every turn--such a revolt would to-day mean your utter annihilation--it would deliver you and your kingdoms to your ferocious enemy, Fredegonde's son!" At the sound of that name Brunhild trembled with rage. With her head inclined and her eyes fixed upon the ground, the Queen seemed to listen with increased attention to the words of Loysik, who continued with bitter disdain: "Behold, then, that Queen, the audacity of whose policy has rendered her so famous! In order to cement her empire she has perpetrated crimes that will one day cause the veracity of history to be doubted. And she is about to endanger her kingdom, aye, her very life, out of hatred for a handful of inoffensive people! Did these people at all injure her? No; they were unknown to her until now; her attention was drawn to them by the cupidity of a bishop who coveted their goods. Are the people whom she wishes to drive to the heroism of despair, perchance, dangerous enemies to her? No; they only ask to be allowed to continue to live in freedom, peace and industry; if they can ever become dangerous it could only be by the example of their resistance--not unlikely, their martyrdom will provoke uprisings of which she herself will be the first and leading victim. And yet this woman would rouse them to acts of despair! She meditates punishing them on the ground that their freedom is guaranteed by a king who has lain nearly half a century in his grave! Oh, vertigo of crime! With what joy would I not see this woman throw herself headlong into the abyss of her own digging were it not that her feet must slide over the blood of my brothers!" "Monk--it is an annoying circumstance that your age is that of a man who is about to die. I would have made you the councillor to whose words I would have given greatest weight. I shall follow your advice. Your valley shall be spared--for the present. You speak truly. At this hour when war threatens, when my grandees but await the opportune moment to rebel against me--at such a time to drive the inhabitants of your valley to despair, to martyrdom, would be an act of folly on my part." Loysik promptly replied: