Placed between the provost and the mother, both threatening, the soldiers hesitated for a moment, then took their resolution, and advanced towards the Rat-Hole.
When the recluse saw this, she rose abruptly on her knees, flung aside her hair from her face, then let her thin flayed hands fall by her side. Then great tears fell, one by one, from her eyes; they flowed down her cheeks through a furrow, like a torrent through a bed which it has hollowed for itself.
At the same time she began to speak, but in a voice so supplicating, so gentle, so submissive, so heartrending, that more than one old convict-warder around Tristan who must have devoured human flesh wiped his eyes.
“Messeigneurs! messieurs the sergeants, one word. There is one thing which I