"Why, my good friend," I said, looking at the cuirass, and without taking any immediate notice of his message, "that piece of leather will never keep out anything."
"It will keep out anything I want it to keep out," replied the man, looking up at me with a laugh.
"And what is that?" I demanded; "What is it you want it to keep out?"
"The wind," he replied; "for when the wind gets in between cold iron and an empty stomach, a man gets melancholy, and has no appetite for dry blows. But I know what you mean; that sword, or bullet, or spear would go through it as easily as a skewer through a cock of the Indies; but there's not much chance of any other bullet finding out that place again; and if it did, no great matter, for it would meet with its fellow here, just lying between the ribs, under my armpit, and that would stop it from going any farther."
"That is looking upon the matter rationally," I replied; "but now, my good friend, what is it that you wanted with me?"
"Why, simply this, seigneur," he replied; "finding that you are a soldier going to join the army, and having heard of your name a great many years ago as a very brave and gallant gentleman--"
"You must mean my father," I said, interrupting him: "my name you most likely have never heard."
"Ay, I dare say it was your father, now look at you," he replied, "for you couldn't be much out of your swaddling-clothes at the time I talk of. However, I was going to propose, that you, being travelling alone, or nearly so, and I alone, or what's somewhat worse than alone, having nothing but a bad beast with me, which trots me five miles an hour, and thinks itself a miracle--I was going to propose, I say, that we should join company; for in these days we may fall in with friends and acquaintances by the way, where we shall find two right hands better than one. Besides, we may chance to fall in with some booty, and two dogs will always kill more game than twice one dog."
On the very face of the matter, the proposal was somewhat impudent; for at least my clothing, my horses, and, I trust, my appearance altogether, were those of a man of high birth; but when I came to look my companion over more attentively by the twilight, which did not improve his appearance, it struck me as more impudent still. He was a person of about forty-five years of age, lean, long-limbed, thin-flanked, broad in the shoulders, with as unprepossessing a countenance as it was possible to imagine, and nothing on earth to redeem it from a sort of assassin-like expression, except a merry but somewhat sarcastic glance, which occasionally came into his eyes, or, rather, into one of them, for it was the right eye only which had any movement; and I afterward found that the left was made of glass, though a very good imitation of the other.
What might have been the original shape of his nose I do not know; but a large cut across the bridge and down one cheek seemed to indicate that its conformation had been somewhat violently changed into its present Socratic turn upward.