And in response to a gesture of surprise on the part of Nominoë, Bertha added:
"I am acquainted with a part of your family legend."
"You, mademoiselle! You are acquainted with our plebeian legends!"
"Yes; thanks to a manuscript left to us by Colonel Plouernel, one of my ancestors."
"Does that manuscript date back to the last century?" inquired Nominoë, struck by a sudden recollection. "Colonel Plouernel, a Huguenot, intended those pages for his son. Yes, indeed, our family narrative mentions the fact."
"My mother discovered the manuscript in the library of the castle. My mother suffered a great deal, Monsieur Lebrenn; she was a woman of great understanding and of a large heart. Therefore, so far from embittering her disposition, her sufferings rendered her still more generous. Herself acquainted with sorrow, she sympathized all the more with the sorrows of others. A victim of iniquity, she felt tender compassion for the victims of all iniquity, and a vigorous hatred for all oppression. Although she was of patrician origin, and although the wife of the Count of Plouernel, my mother, ripened by misfortune and by reflection, being instructed by the revelations contained in your family narratives, embraced the convictions of the Huguenot colonel who was the friend of your ancestor Odelin Lebrenn, the armorer of La Rochelle. Oh, I have not forgotten a single incident of that interesting narrative."
"What, mademoiselle! You remember that obscure name?"
"That obscure name was the name of an honorable man and one of the brave soldiers of Admiral Coligny, wrote Colonel Plouernel in the pages that he destined for his son. You seem surprised at the accuracy of my memory, Monsieur Lebrenn," added Bertha with a melancholy smile; "and yet my recollections are not circumscribed to that incident alone. At this moment there is present to my memory the name of another of your ancestors--Den-Brao the mason, who, assisted by other serfs, cut the underground gallery, one of the issues of which you can see yonder." With these words the young girl pointed to the orifice of the vault cut in the rock, and added, with a shiver, "It is a mournful history, that history of your ancestor Den-Brao! He was starved to death in the passage his own hands had built."