Mazurec was uttering these words when suddenly the species of air-hole above the well was almost wholly obstructed with large stones that were being rolled about by the men of the bailiff of Nointel, and the bailiff himself, applying his mouth as closely as he could to the little opening that was left, shouted down into the cavity: "All of you, vassals of the parish of Cramoisy and neighboring villages, you are taxed, as your quota of the ransom of our very noble, very high, very dear and very powerful seigneur, the sum of one thousand florins; the other parishes of the seigniory shall be similarly taxed. Rummage around your purses quickly so that you meet the sum demanded. You have hiding places where you bury your valuables. Choose quickly between death and your money. If within the time it shall take me to utter a 'pater'[5] and an 'ave,'[6] one of you does not come out with the money, you will all be smoked to death like so many foxes in their burrow, after which the corpses will be rifled." The bailiff stopped; the air-hole was tightly closed with clods of earth; and the cavern was plunged into utter darkness. "Oh, my God! What's going to happen? Leave me not Mazurec," cried Aveline in a tremor and throwing her arms around her husband who jumped up the better to hear the announcement made by the bailiff, and which, repeated from mouth to mouth by the vassals, left them steeped in gloomy silence. The unhappy serfs clung all the more tightly to their little coin, their last resource, the only fruits left to them of their crushing labors and homicidal privations, seeing that they had succeeded in saving it from the rapacity of their seigneurs only by dint of untold privations and nameless devices, often struggling against the torture itself that was frequently inflicted upon them in the hope of wringing from them the disclosure of the hiding places where they kept their little treasure buried. The first shock being over, cries of indignation and revolt resounded in the cavern. The noise increased more and more. "We leave our homes to live in holes like wild beasts, and we are hunted down even here!" "To be pillaged by the English, and be forced besides to pay for the ransom of our seigneurs!" "No! No! Let them choke us with smoke, let them burn us, let them massacre us.... They shall get not one denier from us!" "We shall throw our few remaining sous into the well, sooner than deliver them to our butcher!"