And, to the end of still further enlisting Elwig's confidence in me by seeming to take an interest in her vainglorious greed, I added: "But if your brother sees you decked with such magnificent ornaments, will he not take them away from you?" "No," she promptly answered with a strange and sinister look. "No, he will not take them!" "If Neroweg the Terrible Eagle is of as violent a temperament as you claim, if he came near cutting off your arm for having wished merely to touch part of his booty," I suggested, surprised at her answer, and anxious to fathom her thoughts, "what will prevent your brother from seizing the jewels?" Elwig held up to me her large knife with an expression of calm ferocity that made me shiver, as she answered: "When I shall have the treasure--to-night, I shall enter my brother's hut--I shall share his bed, as usual--and when he is asleep I shall kill him--" "Your own brother!" I cried with a shudder and hardly believing what I heard, although the insight that the priestess gave into the shocking immorality prevalent among the Franks was nothing new to me. "How! You share your own brother's bed?" The priestess seemed no wise disconcerted by my question, and answered with a somber mien: "I have shared my brother's bed since the day that he violated me. It is the fate of almost all the sisters of the Frankish kings who follow them in war. Did I not tell you that their wives, their sisters and their mothers are the first slaves of the warriors? What female slave is there who, willingly or unwillingly, does not share her master's bed?" "Hold your tongue, woman!" I cried interrupting her. "Hold your tongue! Your monstrous words might draw a thunderbolt upon our heads!" And without being able to add another word I contemplated the creature with horror. Such a mixture of debauchery, greed, barbarism and, withal, stupid frankness, seeing that Elwig unbosomed herself to me, a man whom she then saw for the first time in her life, upon her fratricidal intentions--that fratricide, preceded by incest, which this priestess of a sanguinary cult was subjected to and who shared her brother's bed while she at the same time surrendered herself to another man--all that filled me with horror, notwithstanding I had often heard accounts of the abominable morals of the barbarians beyond the Rhine. Elwig seemed not to concern herself about the cause of my silence nor of the evident disgust that she filled me with. She mumbled some unintelligible words, and counted the copper bracelets that her arms were loaded with. She presently said to me pensively: "Do you think I shall have nine fine bracelets studded with precious stones to replace these? Could they all go into a little bag that I shall keep concealed under my robe when I return to the hut of the king, my brother? Why do you not answer my questions?"