“You thick-witted clown,” said the captain, “we will take your word for it that your precious bag holds not the King’s majesty.”
“Wherefore should it hold the King’s majesty, excellency?” asked the Count of Nullepart in a very tolerable provincial Spanish.
“Have you not heard,” said the captain, “that his blessed majesty has been murdered during the night, and three of his guard also; that the royal body has been stolen, and that we are scouring all the countryside to find it?”
“Gentle saints in heaven!” cried the Count of Nullepart, settling himself more firmly upon the bag, while its royal occupant refrained scrupulously from making the least motion.
“Why then, brother Juan,” said I to the Count of Nullepart, “surely that is what all this blowing of trumpets and horns and beating of drums and strange pillaloo that we have heard all the forenoon has been concerned with. The gracious King murdered! His body stolen! Good Virgin Mary, what an age in which to live!”
“God save us all!” said the Count of Nullepart. “The gracious King murdered during the dark hours of the night! Did I not say to you, brother Pedro, that something was bound to occur? For did I not remark the sky last evening was blood red? And was I not so afeared at the sight of it that I crossed myself three times?”
“Well, at all events,” said the captain of the soldiers contemptuously, “the wisdom of you clodhoppers will not help us much. I have never seen a pair of stupider gabies outside the madhouse at Zaragoza.”
“O excellency,” said the Count of Nullepart, counterfeiting the accent of tears very skilfully, “I pray you not to say that! Our virtuous mother was mightily proud of us in our infancy. We were bred together, and right nobly did we suck. But was it a foray, do you suppose, from the duke’s castle that killed the King’s majesty?”
“Likely enough, you zany,” said the captain. “Although for that matter some there are who say it was the devil. For myself I can hardly credit it.”
“Who is there else to compass such a deed?” said the Count of Nullepart in a hushed voice.