"Of my soul?" said the Bohemian, with a hideous laugh. "Think ye a leprosy of twenty years can be cured in an instant? – If I have a soul, it hath been in such a course since I was ten years old and more, that it would take me one month to recall all my crimes, and another to tell them to the priest; – and were such space granted me, it is five to one I would employ it otherwise."
"Hardened wretch, blaspheme not! Tell me what thou hast to say, and I leave thee to thy fate," said Durward, with mingled pity and horror.
"I have a boon to ask," said Hayraddin, – "but first I will buy it of you; for your tribe, with all their professions of charity, give nought for nought."
"I could wellnigh say thy gifts perish with thee," answered Quentin, "but that thou art on the very verge of eternity. – Ask thy boon – reserve thy bounty – it can do me no good – I remember enough of your good offices of old."
"Why, I loved you," said Hayraddin, "for the matter that chanced on the banks of the Cher; and I would have helped you to a wealthy dame. You wore her scarf, which partly misled me; and indeed I thought that Hameline, with her portable wealth, was more for your market-penny than the other hen-sparrow, with her old roost at Bracquemont, which Charles has clutched, and is likely to keep his claws upon."
"Talk not so idly, unhappy man," said Quentin; "yonder officers become impatient."
"Give them ten gilders for ten minutes more," said the culprit, – who, like most in his situation, mixed with his hardihood a desire of procrastinating his fate, – "I tell thee it shall avail thee much."
"Use then well the minutes so purchased," said Durward, and easily made a new bargain with the Marshal's men.
This done, Hayraddin continued. – "Yes, I assure you I meant you well; and Hameline would have proved an easy and convenient spouse. Why, she has reconciled herself even with the Boar of Ardennes, though his mode of wooing was somewhat of the roughest, and lords it yonder in his sty, as if she had fed on mast-husks and acorns all her life."
"Cease this brutal and untimely jesting," said Quentin, "or, once more I tell you, I will leave you to your fate."