Serra stared a moment, tore off the cloak with its heavy hood, clutched at the lighter summer mantilla of dark lace and silk. It ripped and tore vertically, and lo! as a butterfly issues from the chrysalis, forth stepped the Abbé John, clad in pale blue velvet from head to knee, as for a court reception. He bowed gracefully to the company, twisted his moustache, folded his arms, and waited. CHAPTER XXXIII. AND ONE WAS NOT! And this was how it chanced. All that was hidden from Serra, the fist-faced son of a Murcian witch, from Felieu, the querulous Esplugan, and from Andrés, the little ape with the bat's ears, shall be made clear. With one exception, the family of La Masane was resolved to go back to France, where, if the country was still disturbed, at least there was no Inquisition. "I," said the Professor, "know not whether I shall ever teach in my class-room again--not, at least, while the Leaguers bear rule in Paris. But I have a little money laid aside in a safe place, which will at least buy us a vineyard----" "And I," said the Miller-Alcalde, "have enough gold Henries, safe with Pereira, the Jew of Bayonne, to hire a mill or two. Good bread and well-ground wheat wherewith to make it, are the two things that man cannot do without. I can provide these, if no better." "And what better can there be?" cried Don Jordy. "I--I am learned in canon law, which is the same all the world over. I grieve to leave my good Bishop Onuphre. But since he cannot protect me--nay, goes as much in fear of the Holy Office as I myself--Brother Anatole must e'en hire me by the day in his vigne, or Jean-Marie there make me as dusty as himself in his mills." "And your mother, lads, have you forgotten her?" said Madame Amélie. "You are coming with us, mother," they cried, in chorus, "you and Claire. It is for you that we go!" "And pray you, who will care for my rabbits, my poultry, and the pigeons? All the _basse cour_ of La Masane?" cried the Señora. "That also will be arranged, mother," said Don Jordy. "I will put in a man who will care for all, till the better days come--a servant and favourite of Don Raphael. This inquisitioning and denouncing cannot last for ever--any more than Raphael our landlord or Philip our king." "Ah," said his mother, "but both of them are like to last beyond my time. And the fair white house to which your father brought me, a bride! And the sea--on which, being weary, I have so often looked out and been refreshed--the cattle and the vines and the goats I tended--am I to see them no more?" "Mother," said the Professor, taking her hand and drawing it away from her face, "here are we your three sons. We can neither stay nor leave you. They of the Inquisition would revenge on you all that we have cheated them of--taken out of their hands." "They are welcome to my old bones," said the Señora, with a gesture of discouragement.