Thus muttering to himself, Mazurec continued sharpening his fork. He had become a hideous sight. Having lost his right eye since the judicial combat with the knight of Chaumontel, the now hollow, quivering and half closed eyelids on that side of his face exposed a blood-clotted cavity. His crushed nose is a mass of scars, purplish like his torn-up upper lip which exposes his broken teeth. His long matted hair falls upon the ragged goat-skin jacket which he wears and from which protrude his nervy, but now haggard arms. Attaching upon her husband a beseeching look, Aveline said to him in a weak and sad voice: "Mazurec, if I give birth to a child before dying ... promise me not to kill it!... Answer me ... I beseech you in God's name.... Have mercy on the innocent creature." "I promise nothing," answered the vassal in a hollow voice without stopping from his work; "we shall see what's to be done." "He will kill the innocent child, Dame Alison!" cried Aveline weeping and hiding her head. "Keep still!" replied Mazurec with the mien of a tiger that rendered his face still more frightful; "Keep still, or I may believe you are proud of having a child of your seigneur." Aveline answered with a hysterical sob, while Alison cried indignantly: "Wretch, you will yet be the cause of your wife's death!" "I had as lief she was dead as alive ... as to the child she now carries ... he shall not live ... I shall smother the noble whelp." "Well, then, why don't you kill both mother and child. That would be less cruel than to kill Aveline by little and little as you are doing!" And looking at Mazurec with eyes of angry reproach, Alison added: "Oh, Mazurec the Lambkin, the unfortunate girl whose death you now wish, once made your heart bound with joy when you passed the door at which she used to spin!" At these words which recalled to Mazurec the spring-tide of his love, days that were sweet even to the wretched serf, the young man broke down in tears, threw the fork aside, and closely embracing his wife, whose pale face he covered with kisses, he said: "Pardon me, my poor Aveline!... Oh, my blood has turned to gall ... I have suffered so much.... I still suffer so much.... Pardon me, my dear wife!"