"You told me that the moment was favorable to obtain favors from the King--promise me that you will ask him to enfranchise a few slaves of the royal fisc, and to send them to me to the monastery of the Valley of Charolles." "Ah, my father in Christ! I knew full well that our conversation would not be done without your making some demand of enfranchisement." "Roccon, you have a wife and children--the accidents of war are changeable. Brunhild is now vanquished and a prisoner; but, if that implacable Queen, who has emerged so often victorious from the field of battle, had not been betrayed by her own army and her auxiliaries--had she, on the contrary, vanquished Clotaire, what would your lot have been, what the lot of all the seigneurs of Burgundy, who took the side of the King? What would have become of your wife, of your daughters?" "Brunhild would have ordered my head cut off; she would have delivered my wife and daughters to the savage tribes of the other side of the Rhine as slaves!--Malediction! My two daughters Bathilde and Hermangarde, slaves!--The perspiration gathers on my temples at the bare thought of such a thing--let us not speak of it!" "On the contrary, do let us speak of it! Who knows but that among those unknown slaves, whose freedom I am asking, there may be some with daughters whom they love as much as you love yours.--Judge of the joy that their deliverance would give them by the joy that you and your children would feel if, having become slaves, you were to be set free. Roccon, it is in your power to afford such ineffable joy to some captives.--Keep your dear daughters in mind." "Very well my dear father in Christ, I promise you ten slaves. Clotaire will not refuse them to me as my share of the booty of this war." "Seigneur duke," said a servant who hurried into the tent, "the promenade of the camel is about to begin." "Oh! Oh! It is to be one of the best spectacles of the feast.--Come, my father in Christ!" "Oh!" cried the aged man horrified. "I do not wish to stay an instant longer in this horrible place.--Adieu, Roccon!" "Adieu, good father, you will pray to God for me, in order that I may have a good part of paradise." "Man finds paradise in his own heart when he acts justly: the priests who promise heaven are knaves. I shall pray to God that He may inspire you to perform charitable deeds.--Adieu."