is only
equaled by her greed. All the gold of two Indies passed through the
hands of Spain, and now she has nothing left. There is no country in
the world where poison is so little in request as in Italy, no country
where manners are easier or more gentle. As for the Spaniard, he has
traded largely on the reputation of the Moor.

As the Canon of Toledo returned to the caleche, he had spoken a word
to the post-boy. "Drive post-haste," he said, "and there will be three
francs for drink-money for you." Then, seeing that Lucien hesitated,
"Come! come!" he exclaimed, and Lucien took his place again, telling
himself that he meant to try the effect of the _argumentum ad hominem_.

"Father," he began, "after pouring out, with all the coolness in the
world, a series of maxims which the vulgar would consider profoundly
immoral----"

"And so they are," said the priest; "that is why Jesus Christ said
that it must needs be that offences come, my son; and that is why the
world displays such horror of offences."

"A man of your stamp will not be surprised by the question which I am
about to ask?"

"Indeed, my son, you do not know me," said Carlos Herrera. "Do you
suppose that I should engage a secretary unless I knew that I could
depend upon his principles sufficiently to be sure that he would not
rob me? I like you. You are as innocent in every way as a
twenty-year-old suicide. Your question?"

"Why do you take an interest in me? What price do you set on my
obedience? Why should you give me everything? What is your share?"

The Spaniard looked at Lucien, and a smile came over his face.

"Let us wait till we come to the next hill; we can walk up and talk
out in the open. The back seat of a traveling carriage is not the
place for confidences."

They traveled in silence for sometime; the rapidity of the movement
seemed to increase Lucien's moral intoxication.

"Here is a hill, father," he said at last awakening from a kind of
dream.

"Very well, we will walk." The Abbe called to the postilion to stop,
and the two sprang out upon the road.

"You child," said the Spaniard, taking Lucien by the arm, "have you
ever thought over Otway's _Venice Preserved_? Did you understand the
profound friendship between man and man which binds Pierre and Jaffier
each to each so closely that a woman is as nothing in comparison, and
all social conditions are changed?--Well, so much for the poet."

"So the canon knows something of the drama,