The prisoner had uttered this with the rapidity of a quack vending his wares, and in so loud a voice that Joseph was quite confounded.  He arose indignantly at last, and, addressing himself to Cinq-Mars, said: 

“How can you suffer a prisoner who should have been hanged to speak to you thus, Monsieur?”

The Spaniard, without deigning to notice him any further, leaned toward D’Effiat, and whispered in his ear: 

“I can be of no further use to you; give me my liberty.  I might ere this have taken it; but I would not do so without your consent.  Give it me, or have me killed.”

“Go, if you will!” said Cinq-Mars to him.  “I assure you I shall be very glad;” and he told his people to retire with the soldier, whom he wished to keep in his service.

This was the affair of a moment.  No one remained any longer in the tent with the two friends, except the abashed Joseph and the Spaniard.  The latter, taking off his hat, showed a French but savage countenance.  He laughed, and seemed to respire more air into his broad chest.

“Yes, I am a Frenchman,” he said to Joseph.  “But I hate France, because she gave birth to my father, who is a monster, and to me, who have become one, and who once struck him.  I hate her inhabitants, because they have robbed me of my whole fortune at play, and because I have robbed them and killed them.  I have been two years in Spain in order to kill more Frenchmen; but now I hate Spain still more.  No one will know the reason why.  Adieu!  I must live henceforth without a nation; all men are my enemies.  Go on, Joseph, and you will soon be as good as I. Yes, you have seen me once before,” he continued, violently striking him in the breast and throwing him down.  “I am Jacques de Laubardemont, the son of your worthy friend.”

With these words, quickly leaving the tent, he disappeared like an apparition.  De Thou and the servants, who ran to the entrance, saw him, with two bounds, spring over a surprised and disarmed soldier, and run toward the mountains with the swiftness of a deer, despite various musket-shots.  Joseph took advantage of the disorder to slip away, stammering a few words of politeness, and left the two friends laughing at his adventure and his disappointment, as two schoolboys laugh at seeing the spectacles of their pedagogue fall off.  At last they prepared to seek a rest of which they both stood in need, and which they soon found-=the wounded man in his bed, and the young counsellor in his chair.

As for the Capuchin, he walked toward his tent, meditating how he should turn all this so as to take the greatest possible revenge, when he met Laubardemont dragging the young mad-woman by her two hands.  They recounted to each other their mutual and horrible adventures.

Joseph had no small pleasure in turning the poniard in the wound of his friend’s heart, by telling him of the fate of his son.

“You are not exactly happy in your domestic relations,” he added.  “I advise you to shut up your niece and hang your son, if you are fortunate enough to find him.”