"Polyphème, you are a stupid oaf; do you believe that Her Grace the Duchess of Monmouth would come to applaud your last dance? Once more, Polyphème, you are tricking, you seek all sorts of evasions. You are afraid of being hanged, I tell you."
"So be it—yes, I am afraid of the gallows, I own it; let us speak no more of it. Put aside these probabilities, do not admit into our future this exaggerated fear. Zounds! one is not hanged for so little, while the prison is possible, not to say probable. Let us talk, then, of the prison.
"Well, how does the prison seem to you, Polyphème?
"Eh! eh! the prison is devilishly monotonous. I know well that I should have the resource of thinking of Blue Beard, but I shall think of her so much, I shall think of her even better in the peaceful solitude of the woods, in the calm of the paternal valley. The paternal valley! yes, decidedly, it is there that I would prefer to finish my days, dreaming of Blue Beard. Only, shall I ever find it again, this paternal valley? Alas! the mists of our Gavonne are so thick that I shall wander long, without doubt, before I find this dear valley again.
"Polyphème, you purposely wander from the subject; you wish to escape the prison as well as the gallows, in spite of your philosophical bombast.
"Well, yes, zounds! I do want to escape both; to whom should I avow it if not to myself? Who will comprehend me if not I, myself?
"That admitted, Polyphème, how will you evade the fate that threatens you?
"Just at present this road is hardly favorable for escape, I know; rocks on the right hand, on the left the sea, in front of and behind me the escort. My horse is not bad; if it was better than that of the good Chemerant, I might make a trial of swiftness with him.
"And then, Polyphème?
"And then I would leave good Chemerant on the road.