“Don Luiz,” I said firmly, “I cannot leave the precincts of this castle until I have had audience of its master. I have journeyed expressly from the Asturias to speak with him, and I can assure you it is not my custom to permit anything to interpose between my mind and its declared intention.”
Yet, notwithstanding the importunity of my tone, it left Don Luiz quite impassive. Indeed ere long he undertook to show me another side to this affair. He summoned two or three of the soldiers that were marching up and down the patio, and in short terms ordered them to conduct me to the gate. And I think I should have been taken there in this ignominious fashion had not at this moment Sir Richard Pendragon, who all this while had been consumed with hilarity, addressed the portly gentleman-usher.
“Don Luiz,” said he, “I would have you pay no heed to this poor mad varlet that is my squire. You see, Don Luiz, this immoderate, raving squire of mine once travelled in my suite to the Asturias, and in those altitudes he beheld a maid of pedigree to whom his wayward fancy turned. And that matter deranged any little wit he did enjoy; for he kissed her in those altitudes underneath the moon, and since that evening he has been a babbler. His conversation is now composed of pedigrees, maidens, Asturias, and moonshine of a highly grievous nature. It is pitiful, Don Luiz, yet to my mind there is a kind of poetry in it also.”
Now Sir Richard Pendragon feigned this monstrous tale with such a simplicity of look, and recited it with such a proper voice, that Don Luiz was moved to credulity, and said, “How whimsical! Yet indeed, sir, it does not surprise me, for I could discern from his address that he had a maggot in his brain.”
“Faith, yes,” said Sir Richard, with a solemnity at which I marvelled, “and it twists his poor mind into such odd and strange devices as you would never believe. Why, if he sits at home at the castle, he either plays mumchance all day by the buttery door or devises some ridiculous melody upon the virginal that makes all the cook-maids shed tears, or, stranger than that, Don Luiz, he will sit for hours playing snapdragon with the wishbone of a fowl. And when I say to him, ‘Wherefore, Miguel, should this quaintness be your chief employ?’ says he, with his eyes full of tears, ‘Why, excellency, if I used my fingers it would be sure to burn my hand.’ Did you ever hear an honest Christian Spaniard speak the like, Don Luiz?”
“By my faith, sir, I did not,” said Don Luiz, betraying some tokens of impatiency. “Might I trouble you, sir, to the extent of asking your business?”
“To see your master, the duke, in audience.”
“Then, sir, my answer must, with all respect, hold the same with you as with your twisted and unhappy squire.”
“I am afeared, Don Luiz,” said my strange companion with a look of insolence that became him remarkably well, “your wits are so accompanied by sack and butter that you do not take me in this affair. I will see your master at once.”
“On Tuesday next, sir,” said the gentleman-usher. “Before then an audience is out of the question.”