"Glory to the judgment of the Lord!" cried the leudes in chorus, struck with admiration. "Glory to Christ!" "Did I not tell you so?" remarked the count complacently. "The two thieves were both in the plot to steal my silver dish. The ears of both shall be cropped to-morrow, and they shall be both put on the rack until they reveal the place where they hid the dish--" "Hold your tongue, count!" cried Justin roaring with pain and rage. "The only thieves and plunderers around are yourself and your men. Had I stolen the dish, I would only have robbed a thief--but I did not take it--as truly as I here renounce the infamous religion that wrongly finds me guilty!" "Wretch! Blasphemer of our holy religion! I order in the name of God--" "Hold your tongue, too, priest--you shall no longer dupe me. Your alleged religion is but a lie and a fraud; it bears false witness against the innocent. Oh, how I suffer--how I suffer!" "Your sufferings are but foretastes of the tortures that you will undergo in hell, where you will burn everlastingly, you sacrilegious thief! Oh, seigneur count, if this impious and audacious wretch continues to blaspheme, we shall not be able to conjure away the misfortunes that he will draw upon your house." Terrified at the sacrilegious utterances of the Gallic slave; pale, trembling and shuddering at the thought that, attracted by the dreadful blasphemies of the condemned man, the devil might suddenly appear in person, take possession of the malefactor and carry him straight to hell, Neroweg thundered to the blacksmith at the stove: "Are the tongs still in the brasier and red-hot?" "Yes, seigneur, to command." "The accursed fellow shall no longer blaspheme and place my burg in danger of being visited by the devil. Let the sacrilegious criminal be seized, and his tongue be burned out with the red-hot tongs. Tell me, clerk, do you believe the Lord will be pacified if I inflict that punishment upon the slave?" "I believe, seigneur count, that there is no punishment too terrible for this accursed man who has renounced his religion, and called its holy priests impostors." "Clerk, shall I have him quartered in order to be all the surer that the devils will be conjured away from my burg?" "The first punishment that you mentioned will suffice--the accursed man will have been punished in the member that sinned--his criminal and blasphemous tongue; it will thereafter utter no more blasphemies." The tongue of the Gallic slave was burned and pulled out with red-hot tongs. The count went back to the banquet hall with his leudes, and there proceeded to drink himself drunk before retiring to his wife in the women's apartment. CHAPTER III. THE SPECTRE OF WISIGARDE.