h! you seem to think
that I have wit, because I light upon analogy."

"Truly, gentlemen, you do me honor; and yet the idea may be carried much
further, if desired. If I pass to the physical order, for example, may
I not say to you, This man has long and serious features, a black and
almond-shaped eye, rugged brows, a sad and mobile mouth, tawny, meagre,
and wrinkled cheeks; his head is shaved, and he covers it with a black
handkerchief in the form of a turban; he passes the whole day lying or
standing under a burning sun, without motion, without utterance, smoking
a pipe that intoxicates him. Is this a Turk or a Spaniard? Are you
satisfied, gentlemen? Truly, it would seem so; you laugh, and at what do
you laugh? I, who have presented this idea to you--I have not laughed;
see, my countenance is sad. Ah! perhaps it is because the gloomy
prisoner has suddenly become a gossip, and talks rapidly. That is
nothing! I might tell you other things, and render you some service, my
worthy friends.

"If I should relate anecdotes, for example; if I told you I knew a
priest who ordered the death of some heretics before saying mass,
and who, furious at being interrupted at the altar during the holy
sacrifice, cried to those who asked for his orders, 'Kill them all! kill
them all!'--should you all laugh, gentlemen? No, not all! This gentleman
here, for instance, would bite his lips and his beard. Oh! it is true he
might answer that he did wisely, and that they were wrong to interrupt
his unsullied prayer. But if I added that he concealed himself for an
hour behind the curtain of your tent, Monsieur de Cinq-Mars, to listen
while you talked, and that he came to betray you, and not to get me,
what would he say? Now, gentlemen, are you satisfied? May I retire after
this display?"

The prisoner had uttered this with the rapidity of a quack vending his
wares, and in so loud a voice that Joseph was quite confounded. He arose
indignantly at last, and, addressing himself to Cinq-Mars, said:

"How can you suffer a prisoner who should have been hanged to speak to
you thus, Monsieur?"

The Spaniard, without deigning to notice him any further, leaned toward
D'Effiat, and whispered in his ear:

"I can be of no further use to you; give me my liberty. I might ere this
have taken it; but I would not do so without your consent. Give it me,
or have me killed."

"Go, if you will!" said Cinq-Mars to him. "I assure you I shall be very
glad;" and he