"That's just what we are about to ascertain," replied the bailiff; and, while one of his men bound the hands of Peter the Lame without his offering the slightest resistance, another took from a pouch suspended from his belt some touch-wood, a tinderbox and a sulphurated wick, which he lighted. Garin the Serf-eater, turning to Peter the Lame, who, at the sight of these preparations began to grow pale, said: "They will place this lighted wick between your two thumbs; if you have a hiding place where you bury your deniers, your pain will make you speak. Go ahead."

The serf answered not a word. His teeth chattered with fear. He fell upon his knees before the bailiff, stretching out to him his two bound hands in supplication. Suddenly a young girl jumped out of the group of the villagers. Her feet were bare, and for only cover she had a coarse skirt on. She was called Pierrine the Goat because, like her sheep, she was savage and fond of rugged solitudes. Her thick black hair half hid her savage face, burnt by the sun. Approaching the bailiff without lowering her eyes, she said bluntly to him: "I am the daughter of Peter the Lame; if you want to torture someone, leave my father and take me."

"The wick!" impatiently called out Garin the Serf-eater to his men, without either looking at or listening to Pierrine the Goat. "The wick! And hurry up! Night approaches." Peter the Lame, despite his cries, despite the heart-rending entreaties of his daughter, was thrown upon the ground and held down by the men of the bailiff. The torture of the serf was conducted in sight of his companions in misery, who were brutified with terror, and by the habit of serfdom. Peter uttered fearful imprecations; Pierrine the Goat no longer screamed, no longer implored the tormentors of her father. Motionless, pale, sombre, her eyes fixed and drowned with tears, she alternately bit her fists in mute rage, and murmured: "If I only knew where his hiding-place was, I would tell it."

At last, Peter the Lame, vanquished by pain, said to his daughter in a broken voice: "Take the hoe, run to our field; rake up the earth at the foot of the large elm; you will there find nine deniers in a piece of hollow wood." Then, casting upon the bailiff a look of despair, the serf added: "That's my whole treasure, Sire Garin; I'm now ruined!"

"Oh, I was certain that you had a hiding place"; and turning to his men: "Stop the torture; one of you follow this girl and bring back the money. Let her not be lost sight of."

Pierrine the Goat went off quickly, followed by one of the men-at-arms, after having cast upon Garin a furtive and ferocious look. The serfs, terrified, silent, hardly dared to look at one another, while Peter, uttering plaintive moans, despite his punishment having ceased, murmured while he wept hot tears: "Oh, how shall I be able to till the ground with my poor hands wounded and sore!"

Accidentally the bailiff caught sight of the blind serf, mutilated of his four limbs. Pointing at the unhappy being, he cried out in a threatening voice:

"Profit by that example, ye people of the glebe! Behold how they are treated who dare rebel against their lords. Are you, or are you not subject to taille at the pleasure and mercy of your lord?"

"Oh, yes, we are serfs, Master Garin," replied the wretches, "we are serfs at the mercy of our master!"

"Seeing you are serfs, you and your race, why always stingying, cheating and pilfering on the taxes? How often have I not caught you in fraud and at fault. The one sharpens his plow-share without notifying me, that he may purloin the denier due to the seigniory every time he sharpens his sock; the other pretends he is free from the horn-dues under the false claim that he owns no horned cattle; others carry their audacity to the point of marrying in a neighboring seigniory; and so on, any number of enormities! Must you, then, miserable fellows, be reminded that you belong to your lord in life and death, body and goods? Must it be repeated to you that all there is of you belongs to him – the hair on your heads, the nails on your fingers, the skin on your vile carcasses, everything, including the virginity of your daughters?"

"Oh, good Master Garin," an old serf, named by reason of his subtlety, Martin the Prudent, ventured without daring to raise his eyes, "oh, we know it; the priests repeat to us incessantly that we belong, soul, body and goods, to the lords whom the will of God sets over us. But there are those who say … oh, it is not we who dare to say aught … things contrary to these declarations."

"And who is it dares contradict our holy priests? Give me the name of the infidel, the rashling."

"It is Fergan the Quarryman."

"Where is that knave, that miscreant? Why is he not here among you?"

"He must have remained cutting stone at his quarry," put in a timid voice; "he never quits work until dark."

"And what is it that Fergan the Quarryman says? Let's see how far his audacity goes," replied the bailiff.

"Master Garin," the old serf went on to say, "Fergan recognizes that we are serfs of our lord, that we are compelled to cultivate for his benefit the fields where it has pleased him to settle us forever, us and our children. Fergan says that we are bound to labor, to plant, to gather in the harvests on the lands of the castle, to mount guard at the strongholds of the seigniory and to defend it."

"We know the rights of the seigniory. But what else does Fergan say?"

"Fergan pretends that the taxes imposed upon us increase unceasingly, and that, after having paid our dues in products, the little we can draw from our harvests is insufficient to satisfy the ever new demands of our lord. Oh, dear Master Garin, we drink water, we are clad in rags, for only nourishment we have chestnuts, berries, and, when in luck, a little bread of barley or oats."

"What!" exclaimed the bailiff in a threatening voice, "you have all the good things, and yet you dare complain!"

"No, no, Master Garin," replied the frightened serfs; "no, we do not complain! We are on the road to Paradise!"

"If, occasionally, we suffer a little, it is all the better for our salvation, as the parish priest tells us. We shall enjoy the pleasures of the next world."

"We do not complain. It is only Fergan who spoke that way the other day. We listened to him, but without approving his words."

"And we even found great fault with him for holding such language," added old Martin the Prudent, all in a tremble. "We are satisfied with our lot. We venerate, we love our lord, Neroweg VI, and also his helpful bailiff, Garin. May God preserve them long."

"Yes, yes," exclaimed the serfs in chorus, "that's the truth, the pure truth!"

"Vile slaves!" roared the bailiff in a rage mixed with disdain, "cowardly knaves! You basely lick the hand that scourges you. Don't I know that, among yourselves, you call the noble Lord Neroweg VI 'Worse than a Wolf,' and me, his helpful bailiff, 'Serf-eater!' These are our nick-names."

"Upon our eternal salvation, Master Garin, it is not we who have given you that nick-name, Master Garin."

"By my beard! We propose to deserve our surnames. Yes, Neroweg VI will be 'worse than a wolf' to you, you pack of idlers, thieves and traitors! And, as for me, I will eat you to the bone, villeins or serfs, if you try to cheat your lord of his rights. As to Fergan, that smooth talker, I'll come across him some other day, and I feel it in my bones that he will yet make acquaintance with the gibbet of the seigniory of Plouernel. He will be hanged high and dry!"

"And we will not pity him, dear and good Master Garin. Let Fergan be accursed, if he has dared to speak ill of you and of our venerated lord!" answered the frightened serfs.

At this moment, Pierrine the Goat returned, accompanied by the man-at-arms, who had been charged by the bailiff to disinter the treasure of Peter the Lame. The young serf had a somberer and wilder look, her tears had dried, but her eyes shot lightning. Twice she threw her thick black hair back from her forehead with her left hand, as she held her right hand behind her. She drew nearer to the bailiff step by step, while the man-at-arms, delivering to Garin a round piece of hollow wood, said: "It contains nine copper deniers, but four of them are not of the mintage of our Lord Neroweg VI."

"Foreign coin in the seigniory! And yet I have forbidden you to accept any under penalty of the whip!"

"Oh, Master Garin," explained Peter the Lame, still lying on the ground, and crying at the sight of his lacerated hands, "the foreign merchants who pass, and who occasionally buy a pig, a calf or a sheep, frequently have none but coin minted in other seigniories. What are we to do? If we refuse to sell the little we have, where are we to find the money to pay the taxes with?"

The bailiff placed the deniers of Peter the Lame in a large leather pouch, and answered the serf: "You owe six deniers; among these nine pieces there are four of foreign coinage; I confiscate them. There remain five deniers of this seigniory. I take them on account. You will give me the sixth when you pay the next taxes. If you don't, look out!"

"I propose to pay now!" shrieked Pierrine the Goat, striking the bailiff full in the face with a large stone that she had picked up on the road. Garin lost his balance with the violence of the blow, and the blood ran down his face; but he promptly recovered from the shock, and, rushing furiously upon the young serf, threw her down, trampled her under foot, and, half drawing his sword, was on the point of dispatching her, when, recollecting himself, he said to his men: "Bind her fast; take her to the castle; her eyes will be put out to-night; and, at dawn to-morrow, she shall be hanged from the patibulary forks."

"The punishment of Pierrine the Goat will be well merited," exclaimed the serfs, hoping to turn away from themselves the wrath of Garin the Serf-eater. "Bad luck to the accursed girl! She has spilled the blood of the good bailiff of our glorious seigneur! Let her be punished as she deserves!"

"You are a set of cowards!" cried Pierrine the Goat, her face and breast bruised and bleeding from the blows that Garin had given her while trampling on her. Then, turning to Peter the Lame, who was sobbing but dared not defend his daughter, or raise his voice to implore mercy for her, she said: "Adieu; to-morrow you will see ravens circling on the side of the seigniorial gibbet; they will be the living shroud of your daughter"; and showing her fists to the dismayed serfs, she went on: "Cowards! you are three hundred, and you are afraid of six men-at-arms! There is among you all but one man truly brave; that's Fergan!"

"Oh!" yelled the bailiff, exasperated by the bold words of Pierrine the Goat, and staunching the blood that flowed from his face, "if I meet that Fergan on my route, he shall be your gibbet mate, the infamous blasphemer!" With that, Garin the Serf-eater remounted, and followed by his men, together with the serfs whom he had arrested, Pierrine the Goat among them, was soon lost to sight, leaving the inhabitants of the village struck with such terror, that on that evening they forgot to carry away the poor blind and mutilated old man, who was left to spend the night in the open.