"Oh, helpful champion! If you gain my process I shall give you three florins. It would not be paying too much for the pleasure of seeing the scamp of a Simon the Hirsute brought to grief!" "Agreed! If I gain your process you will give me three florins and a smacking kiss for good measure, if you like!... Agreed?" "Oh, Sir, such things are not said." "Well, then, I shall give you the smacking kiss, seeing the other plan embarrasses you. But by all the devils, your forehead remains troubled. Why so? You needed a champion, and heaven--as you said--sends you one who is impatient to sail into the thief, and yet your pretty forehead keeps its wrinkles!" "I should be satisfied, and yet my heart is heavy. I want to tell you all about it." "Have you, perchance, some other process, or some unfaithful lover? You may speak freely to me." Alison remained for a moment sad and silent, whereupon she resumed with painful voice. "Sir champion, you come from Paris; you must be very learned. Perhaps you may render a service to a poor lad who is much to be pitied, and who also must himself do battle to-day in a judicial duel, but under very sad circumstances." "Explain yourself. What is the matter?" "In this country of Nointel, when a female serf or bourgeois marries, the seigneur, if it please him, is entitled to ... the first night of his female vassal. They call it the 'right of first fruits.' ... At least do not laugh!" "Laugh! Not by the devil!" answered Jocelyn, whose face suddenly overspread with somberness. "Oh, you recall to my mind a melancholy affair. A short while ago I had to plead a case on the arena near Amiens. Crossing a village, I saw a gathering of serfs. Upon inquiry I learned that one of the peasants of the group, a butcher attached to the fief of the bishopric, had married that very morning a handsome girl of the parish. The bishop, in the exercise of his right, sent for the bride to take her to his bed. The serf answered the episcopal bailiff, charged with the mission: 'My wife is in my hut, I shall bring her out to you'; and coming back a few instants later said to him: 'My wife is a little bashful, she does not like to come out, go in and bring her out yourself.' The bailiff went into the hut, and what does he find? The unhappy girl lying in a pool of blood; she was dead." "Good God! What a shocking story!" "In order to ransom her from dishonor, her husband had killed her with a blow of his axe." At these words, William Caillet, who until then had remained indifferent to the conversation between Alison and Jocelyn, shook convulsively, raised his savage face and listened, while, tears streaming from her eyes, Alison cried: "Oh, poor woman! To be thus killed! What a terrible resolution must not have seized her husband to resort to such a frightful extreme!" "Resolute men are rare." "Alas, Sir champion. Those who, degraded by serfdom, remain indifferent to such ignominy are perhaps less to be pitied than those who resent it."