but which however does not render the extremity necessary, that you should now immediately cause my head to be taken off, whereby I should become an entirely useless and slaughtered man."
"Be serious sir," replied the Intendant in the greatest anger, but with a calm exterior: "what took you to the mountains some time since? wherefore that disguise of which you yourself have complained?"
"Irrepressible curiosity, my noble Lord," said Vila, "as an inquisitive doctor, I also wished to thrust my nose for once into these spiritual monstrosities. In my youth, I knew only of four great and twelve lesser prophets of the bible, the thousand great, and twenty thousand lesser of our times seemed to me so little plausible, that I wished to see some examples of them in my proximity, and to examine myself their ascribed characters."
"And you persuaded your son and the young Edmond to accompany you there?"
The old man paused a while, and was
