"As a compliment to the fair lady the Señorita Concha, say to my uncle the capon, François!" said the lover.
"And as a compliment to yourself, my dear Brother Hilario, say to his lordship also the two Bordeaux pigeons!"
"And the pigeons, François!" quoth the latest addition to the brotherhood of Montblanch, with perfect seriousness.
CHAPTER VII
THE ABBOT'S DINNER
Rollo Blair kept his gasconnading promise. He dined with "his uncle," the abbot, that most wise, learned, and Christian prelate, Don Baltasar Varela.
The abbot of Montblanch was glad to see Milord of Castle Blair in the land of the Scots. It was not a Christian country, he had been informed.
"Then your venerability has been misinformed," cried Rollo, who thirsted for argument with the high ecclesiastic upon transubstantiation, consubstantiation, and all the other "ations" of his creed. But the Abbot parried him neatly at the very first assault, by an inquiry as to what he thought of transverberacion.
At this Rollo gasped, and found immediate occasion to change the subject to the famous wine of the Abbey, el Priorato, while the little Frenchman beamed appreciation of his uncle's ecclesiastical learning, and that wise prelate twirled his thumbs about each other and discoursed at large, his shrewd unfathomable grey eyes now fixed on one and now on another of the company, as though he were fathoming them severally with some infallible mental gauge, by which he could calculate their measure of capacity to a hair.