Bruno had been wholly absorbed in one of these visionary reveries for nearly an hour beside the bed of the wounded lad, when the latter awoke from a species of lethargy into which he had been plunged, opened his eyes, looked round him with a wandering gaze, and at last fixed his eyes upon the man who had saved him, but unconscious whether he saw in him a friend or an enemy. During this examination, and by an indefinite instinct of self-defence, he put his hand to his waist In search of his faithful yataghan; but not finding it there, he heaved a deep sigh, and again closed his eyes.
“Are you in pain?” said Bruno to him, making use of the Lingua Franca, a language so well understood on the coast of the Mediterranean, from Marseilles to Alexandria, from Constantinople to Algiers, and by means of which you may travel over the whole of the old world.
“Who are you?” asked the boy.
“A friend,” replied Pascal.
“I am not a prisoner then?” said the boy.
“No,” answered Pascal.
“Then how came I here?” asked the boy.
Pascal told him all that had happened; to which the boy listened attentively, and when he had finished his tale, he fixed his eyes gratefully upon Pascal, and said, “Then, since you have saved my life, you will be a father to me?”
“Yes,” said Bruno, “I will.”
“Father,” said the wounded boy, “thy son’s name is Ali; what is yours?”