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"That is a hard rule, master," said Morano. And Rodriguez was indignant, when he heard that, that anyone should thus blaspheme against an obvious law of chivalry: while Morano's only thought was upon the injustice of giving up the sweets of life for the sake of a frying-pan. Thus they were at cross-purposes.
Yet here, bobbing up like a cork, comes the name of Juan Rodriguez Cabezudo of Moguer, doubtless a good worthy soul, but, since he has been dead these four centuries and more, of no interest or importance to any human being; yet of whose life one trivial act, surviving the flood of time which has engulfed all else that he thought important, falls here to be recorded: that he did, towards midnight of a day late in December 1491 lend a mule to Friar Juan Perez.
There he stood motionless, having never felt magic before. And when the Professor had welcomed Rodriguez in a manner worthy of the dignity of the Chair that he held at Saragossa, he made an easy gesture and Morano was free again. "Master," said Morano to the Professor, as soon as he found he could move, "master, it looks like magic."
As soon as they woke they called loudly, but no one guarded that gate, no step but theirs stirred in the forest. Then, leaving Morano in the camp with its great gate that led nowhere, the two young men climbed up by branches and chains, and were soon on the other side of the gate and pressing on through the silence of the forest to find the cottage in which Rodriguez had slept.
"No one, Señor not a living soul." "Your secretary, for instance?" "Not even my secretary." "Some servant some member of your family?" "I tell you, Señor, not one person in all the world knew that combination except myself," Señor Rodriguez insisted. "Your secretary a servant some member of your family might have seen you unlock the safe some time, and thus learned the combination?"
I noted that when she did this Manuel Rodriguez painted fast. There fell a pause in their talk. Something differing from the subject of discourse, whatever in its fullness that might be, seemed to come into her mind. She sent her glance across the room. "Don Enrique de Cerda " The tone summoned. When he was before her, "It was in my mind," said the Queen, "to send for you within a day or two.
When he heard the sound of the bolts and chains again Rodriguez ceased to beat upon the door: once more it opened swiftly, and he saw mine host before him, eyeing him with those bad eyes; of too much girth, you might have said, to be nimble, yet somehow suggesting to the swift intuition of youth, as Rodriguez looked at him standing upon his door-step, the spirit and shape of a spider, who despite her ungainly build is agile enough in her way.
And it suited Rodriguez to loiter, for he thought thus to meet the King of Shadow Valley again or his green bowmen and learn the answers to innumerable questions about his castle which were wandering through his mind. They ate and slept at noon in the forest's glittering greenness.
Don Alderon tried to break that melancholy silence, saying that these ten bowmen did not know the whole world; but he could not cheer Rodriguez. For, sitting there in dejection on his log, thinking of all the assurance with which he had often spoken of his castle, there was one more thing to trouble him than Don Alderon knew.
He passes by the castle of Xavier without going to it. He arrives at Lisbon, and cures Rodriguez immediately after his coming. He is called to court. The manner of his life at Lisbon. He refuses to visit his uncle, the Duke of Navarre. The fruit of his evangelical labours. The reputation he acquired at Lisbon. They would retain him in Portugal.