chances for escape?  But, pardieu! what use?  A man of sense will not dream such fool dreams.  This I know, there are three sentries yonder in the passageway, a good dozen more under arms in the guard-room beyond, with still others vigilantly pacing the deck above.  What use, I say, for did not poor Villere try it, and, before he had covered twenty feet, had three bullets in his brain?  Nay, Master Benteen, to endeavor running such a gantlet would only give me my fill of Spanish lead before the hour set, which, they tell me, comes with the sunrise.”

He arose languidly to his feet, paused a moment in front of the cracked mirror to recurl his long moustaches, and then, turning about, extended a white hand toward me, smiling pleasantly as he did so.

“Faith, I fear I shall not look my best when it is all over, but if so it will be the fault of the Dons—­they seem most careless as to requirements of the toilet.  Yet I would not have you deem me ungrateful, and I thank you heartily, Monsieur.  But if it be my turn to die, and I doubt it not,—­for who ever heard of mercy in the black heart of a Spaniard?—­then it is best I front it as becomes a gentleman of France, not with a bullet in my back, as though I fled from fate with the faint heart of a coward.  Nay, good friend, if death is to be my portion, I prefer meeting it with a smile, and thus prove, at the ending, worthy of my race.”

There was a certain dignified manliness in his speech and manner which for the moment caused me to doubt my earlier reading of his character.  There might be steel beneath the velvet glove of this fair courtier.

“Do you mean you deliberately choose to remain here, rather than accept the chance I offer you?”

“Sacre!  I have as yet heard of no chance,” he replied easily, sinking indolently back into his old seat against the wall.  “I shall be fairly comfortable here for the while, though I must say I have used a better grade of tobacco than this furnished me.”

For the moment I was in despair as to the outcome of my mission, nor did I accept the proffered hand of the prisoner.  Here was a totally different order of man from what had ever come my way before, nor did I know how best to meet him.  How much of his vain and reckless speech came from the heart, and how much of it was merely a mask with which to test my purpose, I could not determine, yet I remained resolute regarding my own duty, and accordingly sat coolly down upon the chest, determined to play out his own game with him to the bitter end.

“Quite true, Chevalier,” I said, smiling pleasantly, as if I entered fully into his reckless spirit.  “Doubtless you are right—­needs must when the devil drives.  Could you spare me a morsel of that same tobacco, until I test the quality of which you complain?” I produced a pipe from the recesses of my monk’s habit, knocking the ashes out carelessly against the chest.