When the last man of the escort had disappeared, Hadgi-Stavros took me to one side and said to me: "Eh, well! we have then made some mistake!"
"Alas! Yes, we were not clever."
"This ransom is not paid. Will it be? I believe so. These English women seem to be friendly to you."
"Be not uneasy: within three days I shall be far from Parnassus."
"All right, so much the better. I have great need of money, as you know. Our bad luck on Monday will tax our income heavily. We must make up our personal and material losses."
"You can complain with good grace. You have obtained a hundred thousand francs at one stroke!"
"No, ninety! the monk has already taken his tithe. Of that sum, which seems enormous to you, there will be only twenty thousand for me. Our expenses are considerable; there are heavy charges. What would be done if the company of stock-holders should decide to build a Hotel des Invalides, as has been talked of? There are always pensions to be paid to the widows and orphans of the band. Fever and bullets yearly relieve us of thirty men, and you can see where that places us. Our expenses would scarcely be met; I should have to pay money out of my own pocket, my dear sir!"
"Have you never happened to lose more than once?"
"Once, only. I had received fifty thousand francs on account, of the society. One of my secretaries, whom I afterward hung, fled to Thessaly with the sum. I had to make up the deficit: I was responsible. My share amounted to seven thousand francs; I lost, then, forty-three thousand. But the knave who stole from me paid dearly. I punished him according to the Persian mode. Before hanging him, his teeth were pulled, one after the other, and they were driven, with a mallet, into his cranium—for a good example, you understand. I am not wicked, but I suffer no one to put me in the wrong."
It rejoiced my heart that the old Palikar, who was not wicked, should lose the eighty thousand francs of Mrs. Simons' ransom, and that he would receive the news when my cranium and my teeth were not in his camp. He put his arm through mine, and said familiarly: