"_Poder de Dios!_ It is impossible!" he cried. "Malgares has told me of that gigantic peak and the sierra you crossed. It is not possible! The Sangre de Cristo, and in midwinter--afoot!" "Yet it is true, Your Excellency." Again his eye sought to pierce me with its suspicious stare. "Your party?" he demanded. "You have spoken of hunters. Who are they?--and where?" Having now some of the details of Pursley's adventures to copy, I told a connected tale of having accompanied some Osages from St. Louis to the Pawnee country, in search of the recreant Le Lande, when, learning of his flight to New Mexico, I had wandered westward with a small party of hunters to the Grand Peak and then southwest over the mountains, until we came to what was supposed to be the Red River, where my companions had stopped to hunt. At the end of my recital, he sat for some moments studying me. Then, with a most disconcerting suddenness: "Senor, you will honor me with your presence at table." He rose at the words, and leaving all the others gaping, conducted me down a corridor to his dining-room. It was now high noon, and we found the table already spread for the midday meal, which is the principal repast of the day among the Spaniards in Mexico. A plate was laid for myself opposite His Excellency's, and we sat down in civilized fashion to a meal which would have graced the table of the richest Spanish creole in all Louisiana. There were trout from the neighboring streams, a variety of meats and fowl, good wheaten bread altogether unlike the unappetizing corn _tortillas_ of the commonfolk, chocolate and _dulces_, fine raisins from the Paso del Norte, and a bottle or two of most excellent wine. Throughout our repast His Excellency addressed himself to me as one gentleman to another, so that I found myself continually in a stress of excitement between apprehension and hope. Our conversation was for the most part directed to European topics, dwelling much, as must every discussion of transatlantic affairs, upon the career of that most marvellous of men, the Emperor of the French. But with the wine and the _cigarros_, His Excellency seemed to recollect for the first time the small but none the less important affairs of our own personal concern. "I begin to be convinced, senor physician, that you are indeed a man of genteel breeding," he said. "If, however, you will pardon the remark, I have grave doubt whether a Frenchman of your education would commit so many errors in the use of his native language." I smiled. "_Mon Dieu!_ Your Excellency, we of St. Louis have not the facilities for visiting _la belle_ France possessed by our fellow creoles of New Orleans. It is a century or more since my ancestors came to the New World." "And you have dwelt much among the Anglo-Americans," he insinuated. "It is true," I replied with candor. "I obtained my diploma as a physician from the college of Columbia in the city of New York."