“What have I to do with thee, man with the long beard?  I did not see thee at the breach.”

It took some time after this amiable exordium to make the stranger understand the right a Capuchin had to interrogate him.

“Well,” he said, “what dost thou want?”

“I would know your name and your country.”

“I shall not tell my name; and as for my country, I have the air of a Spaniard, but perhaps am not one, for a Spaniard never acknowledges his country.”

Father Joseph, turning toward the two friends, said:  “Unless I deceive myself, I have heard his voice somewhere.  This man speaks French without an accent; but it seems he wishes to give us enigmas, as in the East.”

“The East? that is it,” said the prisoner.  “A Spaniard is a man from the East; he is a Catholic Turk; his blood either flags or boils; he is lazy or indefatigable; indolence makes him a slave, ardor a tyrant; immovable in his ignorance, ingenious in his superstition, he needs only a religious book and a tyrannical master; he obeys the law of the pyre; he commands by that of the poniard.  At night he falls asleep in his bloodthirsty misery, nurses fanaticism, and awakes to crime.  Who is this gentleman?  Is it the Spaniard or the Turk?  Guess!  Ah! you seem to think that I have wit, because I light upon analogy.”

“Truly, gentlemen, you do me honor; and yet the idea may be carried much further, if desired.  If I pass to the physical order, for example, may I not say to you, This man has long and serious features, a black and almond-shaped eye, rugged brows, a sad and mobile mouth, tawny, meagre, and wrinkled cheeks; his head is shaved, and he covers it with a black handkerchief in the form of a turban; he passes the whole day lying or standing under a burning sun, without motion, without utterance, smoking a pipe that intoxicates him.  Is this a Turk or a Spaniard?  Are you satisfied, gentlemen?  Truly, it would seem so; you laugh, and at what do you laugh?  I, who have presented this idea to you—­I have not laughed; see, my countenance is sad.  Ah! perhaps it is because the gloomy prisoner has suddenly become a gossip, and talks rapidly.  That is nothing!  I might tell you other things, and render you some service, my worthy friends.

“If I should relate anecdotes, for example; if I told you I knew a priest who ordered the death of some heretics before saying mass, and who, furious at being interrupted at the altar during the holy sacrifice, cried to those who asked for his orders, ’Kill them all! kill them all!’—­should you all laugh, gentlemen?  No, not all!  This gentleman here, for instance, would bite his lips and his beard.  Oh! it is true he might answer that he did wisely, and that they were wrong to interrupt his unsullied prayer.  But if I added that he concealed himself for an hour behind the curtain of your tent, Monsieur de Cinq-Mars, to listen while you talked, and that he came to betray you, and not to get me, what would he say?  Now, gentlemen, are you satisfied?  May I retire after this display?”