Here burst forth the long-repressed storm. “Do you hear the miscreant,—the old Pagan!” cried twenty shrill, discordant voices. “He would fain see one less man living, for the sake of the forty escalins that a dead body brings him.”
“And what if I would?” replied the keeper of the Spladgest. “Doesn’t our gracious king and master, Christian V.,—may Saint Hospitius bless him!—declare himself the natural guardian of all miners, so that when they die he may enrich his royal treasury with their paltry leavings?”
“You honor the king,” answered fisher Braal, “by comparing the royal treasury to the strong-box of your charnel-house, and him to yourself, Neighbor Spiagudry.”
“Neighbor, indeed!” said the keeper, shocked by such familiarity. “Your neighbor! say rather your host! since it may easily chance some day, my dear boat-dweller, that I shall have to lend you one of my six stone beds for a week. Besides,” he added, with a laugh, “if I spoke of that soldier’s death, it was merely from a desire to see the perpetuation of the custom of suicide for the sake of those great and tragic passions which ladies are wont to inspire.”
“Well, you tall corpse and keeper of corpses,” said the soldier, “what are you after, with your amiable grimace, which looks so much like the last smile of a man who has been hanged?”
“Capital, my valiant fellow!” replied Spiagudry. “I always felt that there was more wit beneath the helmet of Constable Thurn, who conquered the Devil with his sword and his tongue, than under the mitre of Bishop Isleif, who wrote the history of Iceland, or the square cap of Professor Shoenning, who described our cathedral.”
“In that case, if you will take my advice, my old bag of leather, you will give up the revenues of the charnel-house, and go and sell yourself to the viceroy’s museum of curiosities at Bergen. I swear to you, by Belphegor, that they pay their weight in gold there for rare beasts; but say, what do you want with me?”
“When the bodies brought here are found in the water, we have to give half the reward to the fisherman. I was going to ask you, therefore, illustrious heir to Constable Thurn, if you would persuade your unfortunate comrade not to drown himself, but to choose some other mode of death; it can’t matter much to him, and he would not wish to wrong the unhappy Christian who must entertain his corpse, if the loss of Guth should really drive him to that act of despair.”
“You are quite mistaken, my charitable and hospitable friend. My comrade will not have the pleasure of occupying an apartment in your tempting tavern with its six beds. Don’t you suppose he has already consoled himself with another Valkyria for the death of that girl? He had long been tired of your Guth, by my beard!”
At these words, the storm, which Spiagudry had for a moment drawn upon his own head, again burst more furiously than ever upon the luckless soldier.