During the next day the Count of Nullepart grew wonderfully better. Indeed, so favourable was his state that he celebrated it upon the flageolet as we halted in the shade at noon. Thus far, at the instance of a wonderful vigilance, in which Sir Richard Pendragon was accomplished beyond any person I have ever met, and by the further kind continuance of fortune, we were spared so much as even a trace of our enemies; and although our road was difficult and our progress slow, we began to make a sensible incursion upon the country of the King of Castile. On the next night of our adventures we lay in a great wood. We kindled a fire of faggots and cooked a turkey which Sir Richard had conveyed from a farmyard. It made excellent eating, for hunger is of all sauces the most delectable; yet I must confess to you, reader, I had at first set my mind against it, being determined not to partake of that which had not been come by in a lawful manner. But my scruples were not proof against a dreadfully sharpened appetite, which was also fortified by the Englishman’s plausibility. “Why, you poor soul,” said he, “we get nothing in this world save by enforcement. The farmer enforces the good turkey; one who is virtuous enforces the good farmer; and then comes hunger to enforce the one who is virtuous. And I ask you, my young son of the Spains, who is it, bethink, that enforces this veritable passion of hunger. Why, to be sure, it is the heavenly bodies who enforce the passion of hunger. And who is it that enforces the heavenly bodies? Why, you poor soul, to be sure it is Him who enforces the whole of the world.” I was fain to admit this was excellent philosophy, and the Count of Nullepart also admired it; and my belly being exceeding empty, and my resolve being weakened by this notorious subtlety, which you will believe had great weight with a natural philosopher such as myself, I was fain to eat of the turkey. And I cannot remember ever having eaten of anything more choice. It has been my hap since those distant days in my youth to sit with men of all sorts, in many countries, in many varieties of circumstance; but never with two more engaging in their diversity than these with whom my lot was cast upon this enterprise. The Count of Nullepart was so gay and graceful in address, so fortunate in his appearance, so debonair--to use a foreign idiom I have picked up in my travels; while Sir Richard Pendragon was all that his comrade was not, with a humour so sinister that it was hard to know how to receive it, one withal of barbarous ideas and a loose morality according to the tenets of a caballero of Spain. And yet beyond all things, and in whatever his merit might consist, this Englishman had a peculiar genius. He was a natural leader. For in every sort of action he discovered himself to be as wise as he was formidable; as full of knowledge as he was of sagacity; as little in ruth as he was bold in emprise.