"Where," L'Olonnais added, "you had a long conversation with Montbarts."
"Still," the monk said with a hesitation that was not exempt from terror, "I do not understand—"
"How I knew everything," L'Olonnais interrupted him laughingly, "then, you have not got to the end of your astonishment."
"What, I am not at the end?"
"Bah, Señor Padre, do you fancy that I should have taken the trouble to bother you about such a trifle? I know a good deal more."
"What do you say?" the monk exclaimed, recoiling instinctively from this man whom he was not indisposed to regard as a sorcerer, the more so because he was a Frenchman, and a buccaneer to boot, two peremptory reasons why Satan should nearly be master of his soul, if by chance he possessed one, which the worthy monk greatly doubted.
"Zounds!" the engagé resumed, "You suppose, I think, that I do not know the motive of your journey, the spot where you have come from, where you are going, and more than that, the person you are about to see."
"Oh, come, that is impossible," the monk said with a startled look.
Lepoletais laughed inwardly at the ill-disguised terror of the Spaniard.
"Take care, father," he whispered mysteriously in Fray Arsenio's ear, "that man knows everything; between ourselves, I believe him to be possessed by the demon."