“Have you some incurable disease?”
“Yes, father.”
“Ah! now we come to the point. What is it?”
“Poverty.”
The priest looked at Lucien. “The diamond does not know its own value,” he said, and there was an inexpressible charm, and a touch of something like irony in his smile.
“None but a priest could flatter a poor man about to die,” exclaimed Lucien.
“You are not going to die,” the Spaniard returned authoritatively.
“I have heard many times of men that were robbed on the highroad, but I have never yet heard of one that found a fortune there,” said Lucien.
“You will hear of one now,” said the priest, glancing towards the carriage to measure the time still left for their walk together. “Listen to me,” he continued, with his cigar between his teeth; “if you are poor, that is no reason why you should die. I need a secretary, for mine has just died at Barcelona. I am in the same position as the famous Baron Goërtz, minister of Charles XII. He was traveling toward Sweden (just as I am going to Paris), and in some little town or other he chanced upon the son of a goldsmith, a young man of remarkable good looks, though they could scarcely equal yours. . . . Baron Goërtz discerned intelligence in the young man (just as I see poetry on your brow); he took him into his traveling carriage, as I shall take you very shortly; and of a boy condemned to spend his days in burnishing spoons and forks and making trinkets in some little town like Angoulême, he made a favorite, as you shall be mine.
“Arrived at Stockholm, he installed his secretary and overwhelmed him with work. The young man spent his nights in writing, and, like all great workers, he contracted a bad habit, a trick—he took to chewing paper. The late M. de Malesherbes use to rap people over the knuckles; and he did this once, by the by, to somebody or other whose suit depended upon him. The handsome young secretary began by chewing blank paper, found it insipid for a while, and acquired a taste for manuscript as having more flavor. People did not smoke as yet in those days. At last, from flavor to flavor, he began to chew parchment and swallow it. Now, at that time a treaty was being negotiated between Russia and Sweden. The States-General insisted that Charles XII. should make peace (much as they tried in France to make Napoleon treat for peace in 1814) and the basis of these negotiations was the treaty between the two powers with regard to Finland. Goërtz gave the original into his secretary’s keeping; but when the time came for laying the draft before the States-General, a trifling difficulty arose; the treaty was not to be found. The States-General believed that the Minister, pandering to the King’s wishes, had taken it into his head to get rid of the document. Baron Goërtz was, in fact, accused of this, and the secretary owned that he had eaten the treaty. He was tried and convicted and condemned to death.—But you have not come to that yet, so take a cigar and smoke till we reach the calèche.”