“As thou.”
“Picaro! Only last night thou didst absolve me, and, by the Palmerins, I have just told my beads!”
“I think I have heard of the Palmerins,” said the priest, gravely; “indeed, I am certain of it; but I never heard of them as things to swear by before. Hast thou a license as coiner of oaths?”
“Cierto, father, thou dost remind me of my first purpose; which was to test thy knowledge of matters, both ancient and serious, outside of what thou callest the sermons of the schoolmen. And I will not take thee at disadvantage. O no! If I would play fairly with the vilest heathen, and slay him with none but an honest trick of the sword, surely I cannot less with thee.”
“Slay me!”
“That will I,—in a bout at dialectics. I will be fair, I say. I will begin by taking thee in a field which every knight hath traversed, if, perchance, he hath advanced so far in clerkliness as to read,—a field divided between heralds, troubadours, and poets, and not forbidden to monks; with which thou shouldst be well acquainted, seeing that, of late days at least, thou hast been more prone to knightly than saintly association!”
“Santa Maria!” said Olmedo, crossing himself. “It is our nature to be prone to things sinful.”
“I smell the cloister in thy words. Have at thee! Stay thy steps.”
The two had been pacing the roof of the palace during the foregoing passage. Both stopped now, and Alvarado said, “Firstly,—nay, I will none of that; numbering the heads of a discourse is a priestly trick. To begin, by my conscience!—ho, father, that oath offends thee not, for it is the Señor Hernan’s, and by him thou art thyself always ready to swear.”
“If thou wouldst not get lost in a confusion of ideas, to thy purpose quickly.”