“He stands before you,” answered the Emir; “take him, an ye can prevail upon him to return with you.”

The eyes of the envoys wandered hopelessly from one whiskered, turbaned, caftaned, and yataghaned figure to another.  They could not discover that any of the Paynim present looked more or less like a bishop than his fellows.

“Brethren,” said Gaddo, taking compassion on their bewilderment, “behold me!  I thank you for your kindly thought of me, but how to profit by it I see not.  I have become a Saracen.  I have pronounced the Mahometan confession.  I am circumcised.  I am known by the name of Mustapha.”

“We acknowledge the weight of your Lordship’s objections,” they said, “and do but venture to hint remotely that the times are hard, and that the Holy Father is grievously in want of money.”

“I have also taken a wife,” said Gaddo.

“A wife!” exclaimed they with one consent.  “If it had been a concubine!  Let us return instantly.”

They gathered up their garments and spat upon the ground.

“A bishop, then,” inquired Gaddo, “may be guilty of any enormity sooner than wedlock, which money itself cannot expiate?”

“Such,” they answered, “is the law and the prophets.”

“Unless,” added one of benignant aspect, “he sew the abomination up in a sack and cast her into the sea, then peradventure he may yet find place for repentance.”

“Miserable blasphemers!” exclaimed Gaddo.  “But why,” continued he, checking himself, “do I talk of what none will understand for five hundred years, which to understand myself I was obliged to become a Saracen?  Addo,” he pursued, addressing his dejected competitor, “bad as thou art, thou art good enough for the world as it is.  I spare thy life, restore thy dignity, and, to prove that the precepts of Christ may be practised under the garb of Mahomet, will not even exact eye for eye.  Yet, as a wholesome admonition to thee that treachery and cruelty escape not punishment even in this life, I will that thou do presently surrender to me thy left ear.  Restore my eye and I will return it immediately.  And ye,” addressing the envoys, “will for the future pay one hundred casks tribute, unless ye would see my father-in-law’s galleys on your coasts.”

So Addo returned to his bishopric, leaving his ear in Gaddo’s keeping.  The Lacrima was punctually remitted, and as punctually absorbed by the Emir and his son-in-law, with some little help from Ayesha.  Gaddo’s eye never came back, and Addo never regained his ear until, after the ex-prelate’s death in years and honour, he ransomed it from his representatives.  It became a relic, and is shown in Addo’s cathedral to this day in proof of his inveterate enmity to the misbelievers, and of the sufferings he underwent at their hands.  But Gaddo trumped him, the entry after his name in the episcopal register, “Fled to the Saracens,” having been altered into “Flayed by the Saracens” by a later bishop, jealous of the honour of the diocese.