“Why should you fly these thoughts, my lord?  You are nineteen years of age, and hitherto all your youth has been spent in war and captivity.  Up to this time, you have remained as chaste as Gabriel, that young Christian priest, who accompanied us on our voyage.”

Though Faringhea did not at all depart from his respectful deference for the prince, the latter felt that there was something of irony in the tone of the half-caste, as he pronounced the word “chaste.”

Djalma said to him with a mixture of pride and severity:  “I do not wish to pass for a barbarian, as they call us, with these civilized people; therefore I glory in my chastity.”

“I do not understand, my lord.”

“I may perhaps love some woman, pure as was my mother when she married my father; and to ask for purity from a woman, a man must be chaste as she.”

At this, Faringhea could not refrain from a sardonic smile.

“Why do you laugh, slave?” said the young prince, imperiously.

“Among civilized people, as you call them, my lord, the man who married in the flower of his innocence would be mortally wounded with ridicule.”

“It is false, slave!  He would only be ridiculous if he married one that was not pure as himself.”

“Then, my lord, he would not only be wounded—­he would be killed outright, for he would be doubly and unmercifully laughed at.”

“It is false! it is false.  Where did you learn all this?”

“I have seen Parisian women at the Isle of France, and at Pondicherry, my lord.  Moreover, I learned a good deal during our voyage; I talked with a young officer, while you conversed with the young priest.”

“So, like the sultans of our harems, civilized men require of women the innocence they have themselves lost.”

“They require it the more, the less they have of it, my lord.”

“To require without any return, is to act as a master to his slave; by what right?”

“By the right of the strongest—­as it is among us, my lord.”

“And what do the women do?”

“They prevent the men from being too ridiculous, when they marry, in the eyes of the world.”

“But they kill a woman that is false?” said Djalma, raising himself abruptly, and fixing upon Faringhea a savage look, that sparkled with lurid fire.

“They kill her, my lord, as with us—­when they find her out.”

“Despots like ourselves!  Why then do these civilized men not shut up their women, to force them to a fidelity which they do not practise?”

“Because their civilization is barbarous, and their barbarism civilized, my lord.”

“All this is sad enough, if true,” observed Djalma, with a pensive air, adding, with a species of enthusiasm, employing, as usual, the mystic and figurative language familiar to the people of his country; “yes, your talk afflicts me, slave—­for two drops of dew blending in the cup of a flower are as hearts that mingle in a pure and virgin love; and two rays of light united in one inextinguishable flame, are as the burning and eternal joys of lovers joined in wedlock.”