The landlord started as if shot.
"By all the saints and saintesses! Marquard!"
"Aye, Marquard it is; but not the Marquard you knew of old. It was an evil hour I ran away to sea."
"But why have you not returned these years?"
"Returned! He asks me why I did not return! I that—before I had been long enough aboard to be on good terms with my inner man—was captured by the Algerine! I that have been chained to an oar in the galley of Barbarossa every day of these years of which you speak! But pay no heed to what I say. There is news for which I burn. You that have lived humdrum can tell me of her, for whose coquetries I lost patience and exiled myself."
"She lives," murmured the landlord, in a half-hearted way, and he looked upon the floor.
"She lives! And what of my rival that I thought she preferred to me?"
"He lives, if you mean the Hungarian, whose name we could never pronounce, and whom we used to call Teremtette from his favourite oath."
"Come, tell more about them both."
The landlord cast a troubled eye upon him, and again looked down. He spoke with distinct embarrassment.