"Your fourth wife, Wisigarde, died a violent death at your hands. She did not receive priestly assistance at her death--her soul is in pain. She might come to torment you during the night in the shape of some frightful phantom until you will have drawn her poor soul from purgatory--"
"Through the holy mass and through the prayers of a priest of the Lord."
"Well, father, I wish you to make those prayers for the soul of the departed."
"I shall grant your request. For twenty years prayers shall be recited at the altar for the repose of the soul of Wisigarde, but only under condition that you pass over to me the corner of your woods that is separated from your domains by the stream--"
"Give again to your Church! Ever give! Ever!"
"Would you prefer to be tormented by nocturnal phantoms?"
The Frank looked at the bishop with an angry and defiant eye:
"Rapacious Gaul! You are seeking to pluck piece by piece from me the share of the conquests that our kings have presented to my family as our hereditary possessions. Endow the Church still more! I will sooner endow the devil! Yes, by all the horns of Lucifer!"
"Do! Endow him! Here he is!" came from a rude loud voice that seemed to issue from the center of the earth.
At the sound of the voice the hermit started from his seat; the bishop threw himself back and quickly crossed himself, but a reassuring thought flashed through his mind, and he said to himself aloud in Latin:
"It must be my good assistant who remained below--the trick is good!"
The count, however, struck with terror and believing himself pursued by the archfiend in person, screamed aloud and fled from the banquet hall distracted. So precipitate was his flight and headlong his bewilderment that he nearly upset the leude who, back at that moment from his errand to the count's burg, entered the hall pushing before him the young blonde slave whom he was sent in quest of:
"Here is the slave girl, Odille," said the leude.
The bishop started to run towards the poor lass, but at the very moment when he dashed forward to seize her, a vigorous hand that rose from the opening of the now again removed mosaic slab held the prelate back by the fold of his robe, and a voice shouted:
"A profligate you shall no longer be, holy man of God! That pretty lass is not for you!"