Then he added, with a sigh of dejection, full of bitterness:
"Such dissimulation! Such perfidy united to such beautiful genius! Oh, humanity! Oh, humanity!"
"Let me continue," replied the abbé. "You have already, by your unworthy weakness, deprived yourself of one of the three means by which you might have controlled this great cook, since, as he has had the effrontery to warn you beforehand, there are yet two others he intends to exact from you, and he counts on your deplorable readiness to yield, to obtain them. Now, this end once attained, he will laugh at you, and you will see him no more."
"Abbé, that is impossible."
"Why?"
"I tell you, abbé, such treason is impossible. You surely do not believe that men are ferocious beasts,—monsters."
"I believe, canon," replied the abbé, with a shrug of the shoulders, "I believe that a cook who gives gratis wines at one or two louis a bottle—"
"Wait, pray," interrupted Dom Diégo. "Neither one, nor two, nor six louis would pay the cost of such wines. They were nectar, abbé, they were ambrosia, I tell you!"
"All the more reason, canon; a cook who is so prodigal of such costly ambrosia has no need of hiring himself for wages, I imagine."
"I not only offered him wages, I offered him, also, my friendship,—think of it, abbé, I said to this perfidious monster, 'Friend, I will not be your master, I will be your admirer.'"