e is most devotedly attached, and has suffered more
for his sake than any mortal could endure.

_Barnstaple_. Most heroines generally do.

_Ansard_. I have had her into various dungeons for three or four years,
on black bread and a broken pitcher of water--she has been starved to
death--lain for months and months upon wet straw--had two brain fevers--
five times has she risked violation, and always has picked up, or found
in the belt of her infamous ravishers, a stiletto, which she has plunged
into their hearts, and they have expired with or without a groan.

_Barnstaple_. Excellent: and of course comes out of her dungeons each
time as fresh, as sweet, as lovely, as pure, as charming, and as
constant as ever.

_Ansard_. Exactly; nothing can equal her infinite variety of adventure,
and her imperishable beauty and unadhesive cleanliness of person; and,
as for lives, she has more than a thousand cats'. After nine months'
confinement in a dungeon, four feet square, when it is opened for her
release, the air is perfumed with the ambrosia which exhales from her
sweet person.

_Barnstaple_. Of course it does. The only question is, what ambrosia
smells like. But let me know something about your hero.

_Ansard_. He is a prince and a robber.

_Barnstaple_. The two professions are not at all incompatible. Go on.

_Ansard_. He is the chief of a band of robbers, and is here, there and
everywhere. He fills all Europe with terror, admiration, and love.

_Barnstaple_. Very good.

_Ansard_. His reasons for joining the robbers are, of course, a secret
(and upon my word they are equally a secret to myself); but it is
wonderful the implicit obedience of his men, and the many acts of
generosity of which he is guilty. I make him give away a great deal
more money than his whole band ever take, which is so far awkward, that
the query may arise in what way he keeps them together, and supplies
them with food and necessaries.

_Barnstaple_. Of course with _IOUs_ upon his princely domains.

_Ansard_. I have some very grand scenes, amazingly effective; for
instance, what do you think, at the moment after the holy mass has been
performed in Saint Peter's at Rome, just as the pope is about to put the
sacred wafer into his mouth and bless the whole world, I make him snatch
the wafer out of the pope's hand, and get clear off with it.

_Barnstaple_. What for, may I ask?

_Ansard_. That is a secret which I do not revea