“Why then, sir,” I cried with an eagerness I could not restrain, “we are as brothers in this matter. I also am on a quest of fortune.” My words seemed to jump with the humour of Sir Richard Pendragon. He looked at me long and curiously, with that side glance which I did not find altogether agreeable, stroked his beard as if sunk in deep thought, and said with the gravest air I had heard him use, “Oh, indeed, my son, is that the case! So you are on a quest of fortune, are you, my son? Well, she is a nice, a proper, and a valiant word.” “My father was ever the first to allow it,” said I. “She used him ill; his right hand was struck off in a battle at a tender age, but I never heard him complain about her.” “She hath ever been haughty and distant with old English Dick,” said my companion, sighing heavily; “but you will never hear that true mettle abuse the proud jade. Fortune,” he repeated and I saw his great hungry eyes begin to kindle until they shone like rubies--“oh, what a name is that! She is sweeter in the ears of us of England than is the nightingale. What have we not adventured in thy name, thou perfect one! Here is this Dick, this old red bully, with his dry throat and his sharp ears and his readily watering eye, what hath he not dared for thee, thou dear ungracious one! He has borne his point in every land, from the wall of China to the high Caucasian mountains; from the blessed isles of Britain to farthest Arabia. Who was it drove the Turk out of Vienna with a six-foot pole? Who was it beat the Preux Chevalier off his ground with a short sword? Who was it slew the sultan of the Moriscoes with his own incomparable hand? Who was it, and wherefore was it, my son?” In this exaltation of his temper he peered at me with his side glance, as though he would seek an answer to a question to which no answer was necessary. “Why do I handle,” he proceeded, “the sword, the broadsword, the short sword, the sword and buckler, and above all that exquisite invention of God, the nimble rapier of Ferrara steel, with the nice mastery of an old honest blade, but in thy service, thou sweet baggage with thy moist lip and thy enkindling eye?” “Ah! Sir Englishman,” cried I, feeling, in spite of his rough brogue, the music of his nature, “I love to hear you speak thus.” “Thirty years have I been at the trade, good Spaniard, and sooner than change it I would die. One hundred towns have I sacked; ten fortunes have I plundered. But by sack they came, and by sack they did depart. It is wonderful how a great nature has a love of sack. Yet I have but my nose to show for my passion. Do you observe its prominent hue, which by night is so luminous that it flames like a beacon to forewarn the honest mariner? Yet to Fortune will we wet our beards, good Spaniard, for we of England court her like a maiden with a dimple in her cheek.”