Give me to
know this secret, and I will do what shall seem fitting in the
matter. But I am no blind Bayard, to take a leap in the dark
under the stroke of a pair of priestly spurs."
"My lord," said the holy man, throwing back his cowl and upper
vesture, and discovering under the latter a garment of goatskin,
and from beneath the former a visage so wildly wasted by climate,
fast, and penance, as to resemble rather the apparition of an
animated skeleton than a human face, "for twenty years have I
macerated this miserable body in the caverns of Engaddi, doing
penance for a great crime. Think you I, who am dead to the world,
would contrive a falsehood to endanger my own soul; or that one,
bound by the most sacred oaths to the contrary--one such as I,
who have but one longing wish connected with earth, to wit, the
rebuilding of our Christian Zion--would betray the secrets of the
confessional? Both are alike abhorrent to my very soul."
"So," answered the King, "thou art that hermit of whom men speak
so much? Thou art, I confess, like enough to those spirits which
walk in dry places; but Richard fears no hobgoblins.
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