Again, without avail, the hapless Chasseur pleaded for his life; but the more powerful conqueror heard him to an end, and then laughed exultingly.
"I am guiltless of all, of everything but doing my duty," he urged.
"Duty!" repeated the other; "shall I tell you of our pillaged altars and desecrated churches, of ruined cities and desolated villages; shall I tell you of our slaughtered brethren, our outraged wives, sisters, and ladies of the holy orders, some of whom have been bound to gun-carriages, stripped, and exposed in the common streets and plazas? Par Dios! these things are enough to call down Heaven's thunder on the head of your accursed Corsican!"
"Ah, morbleu!" gasped the Frenchman, "what a devil of a savage it is! Peste! I assure you, monsieur, I have never touched even the tip of a woman's hand since I had the misfortune to cross the Pyrenees. Tudieu! the Emperor finds us other work and other things to think of."
By a violent wrench the Spaniard now got his right hand free, and in an instant, like a gleam of light, his long knife glittered as he upheld it at arm's length above the poor young Frenchman, whose pale face and dark eyes assumed a most despairing aspect.
Quentin could no longer look on unmoved.
"Hold—hold!" he exclaimed, and sprang towards them threateningly.
"Oho, amigo mio," said the Spaniard, looking round with a saturnine smile; "'tis my friend of the laurel bushes—the spit that looked like a sword."
"Hold, I say, Spaniard—would you murder him in cold blood?"
"Demonio, yes; and you, too, if you would protect a soldier of the false Corsican. Begone, and leave us, or it may be worse for you."