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Updated: May 25, 2025
They laughed much, and as Hayraddin made a sign of skipping about, and ended by rubbing his shoulder with his hand, Durward had no doubt that he was relating the story of the bastinading which he had sustained previous to his escape from the convent. On a sudden, a whistle was again heard in the distance, which was once more answered by a low tone or two of Hayraddin's horn.
"I repeat that I heard nothing which could authorize me to say so," answered the young man, who, though internally convinced of the King's accession to the treachery of Hayraddin, yet held it contrary to his allegiance to bring forward his own suspicions on the subject; "and if I had heard such men make such an assertion, I again say that I would not have given their testimony weight against the instructions of the King himself."
Afraid, on his return to the monastery, of stumbling upon Hayraddin, he made a long detour, at the expense of traversing some very rough ground, and was thus enabled to return to his asylum on a different point from that by which he left it. On the route, he communed earnestly with himself concerning the safest plan to be pursued.
"You will find that foolhardy," said Hayraddin, "for besides that we ourselves count not much in fighting, this spark hath matched himself with the best knight in France, and come off with honour I have seen those who saw him press Dunois hard enough." "I am no more a coward than yourself," said Hayraddin "but my trade is not fighting.
But Durward saw the necessity of acting otherwise respecting the information communicated by Hayraddin, since the proposed sally of De la Marck, unless heedfully guarded against, might prove the destruction of the besieging army, so difficult was it, in the tumultuous warfare of those days, to recover from a nocturnal surprise.
When the executioners informed him that all was ready, Hayraddin, with much calmness, asked a single boon at their hands. "Anything, my son, consistent with our office," said Trois Eschelles. "That is," said Hayraddin, "anything but my life."
The Father Prior listened to these complaints for some time in silence, as struck with mute horror by their enormous atrocity. When the Sacristan had concluded, he rose up, descended to the court of the convent, and ordered the lay brethren, on pain of the worst consequences of spiritual disobedience, to beat Hayraddin out of the sacred precincts with their broom staves and cart whips.
"I thought," said Quentin, "that you said but now, that you could not presage your own fortune?" "Not in the manner in which I have but now told you yours," answered Hayraddin, "but it requires little knowledge of Louis of Valois, to presage that he will hang your guide, because your pleasure was to deviate from the road which he recommended."
He had formed the resolution, when he first heard Hayraddin avow his treachery, to put him to death so soon as the conference broke up, and his companions were at a sufficient distance, but when he heard the Bohemian express so much interest in saving his own life, he felt it would be ungrateful to execute upon him, in its rigour, the punishment his treachery had deserved.
This of course was impossible, if the Bohemian was lodged without the precincts of the convent at which they stopped, and Durward could not help thinking that Hayraddin was desirous of bringing about this latter arrangement for, instead of keeping himself still and quiet in the quarters allotted to him, his conversation, tricks, and songs were at the same time so entertaining to the novices and younger brethren, and so unedifying in the opinion of the seniors of the fraternity, that, in more cases than one, it required all the authority, supported by threats, which Quentin could exert over him, to restrain his irreverent and untimeous jocularity, and all the interest he could make with the Superiors, to prevent the heathen hound from being thrust out of the doors.
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