"Alas! abbé, it is the loss of my appetite."
"Be it so, my brother, and who has caused the loss of your appetite?"
"That wretch!" cried the canon, irritated, "that infamous Captain Horace."
"That is true; well, I will always preach to you the forgiveness of injuries, my dear brother; but, too, I must recommend to you an inexorable severity against sacrilege."
"What sacrilege, abbé?"
"Have not Captain Horace and one of his sailors dared to leap over the sacred walls of the convent where you had shut up your niece? Have they not had the audacity to carry away the miserable girl, whom happily we have recaptured? This enormity in other times might have been punished with fire, and one day it will be punished with eternal fire."
"And this villain of a captain will only have what he deserves," cried Dom Diégo, ferociously; "yes, he will cook—he will roast on Satan's spit by a slow fire, all eternity, where he will be moistened with gravy of melted lead, after having been larded with red-hot iron. Such will be his punishment, I earnestly hope."
"So may it be, but while waiting this eternal expiation, why not punish him here below? Why have you had the culpable weakness to give up your demand for the arrest of this miscreant? I need not remind you that this man is the first cause of all that you call your ills,—that is, the loss of your appetite."
"That is true, he is a great criminal."
"Then, my brother, why, I ask again, have you been so weak as to renounce your pursuit of him? You do not reply, you seem to be embarrassed."