“It would be wiser,” said Mistricolle.

For some moments past a young priest, stern of face, with a broad forehead and penetrating eye, had stood listening to the argument of the Haudriette sisters, and the pronouncements of the protonotary. He now silently parted the crowd, examined the “little wizard,” and stretched a hand over him. It was high time, for these pious old women were already licking their lips in anticipation of the “fine blazing fagots.”

“I adopt this child,” said the priest.

He wrapped it in his soutane and carried it off, the by-standers looking after him in speechless amazement. The next moment he had disappeared through the Porte Rouge, which led at that time from the church into the cloister.

The first shock of surprise over, Jehanne de la Tarme bent down and whispered in the ear of La Gaultière: “Did I not say to you, ma sæur, that that young cleric, M. Claude Frollo, was a sorcerer?”