“Of course, it’s always that way that people who have been robbed begin when they are in the presence of thieves; otherwise there would be no object in being a thief.”
“No, nor any pleasant excitement in being robbed! But those brave folks had no idea that it was an affair of robbery.”
“Of what, then?”
“Of a ghost. That wretched, most vigorous fellow was carrying the armor in front of him, holding his head at the height of the loins of said armor so effectively that he acquired gigantic proportions in the corridor where he passed. Add to this a clattering noise which the rascal made behind him, and you will appreciate the fright of the valets. But, unfortunately for him, he woke up the Seigneur of La Piroche, he who has fear of neither the dead nor the living, who easily, and all by himself, arrested the thief and handed him over, bound, to his well-deserved justice.”
“And his well-deserved justice?”
“The condemned man is to be hanged clothed in the armor.”
“Why that clause in the sentence?”
“Because the Seigneur of La Piroche is not only a brave captain, but a man of common sense and of spirit, who wished to draw from this just condemnation an example for others and an advantage for himself. Why, don’t you know that whatever touches a hanged man becomes a talisman for him who possesses it? So the Seigneur of La Piroche has ordered that the thief should be hanged dressed in his armor, so as to reclaim it when the man is dead and have a talisman to wear during our next wars.”
“That is very ingenious.”
“I should think so.”