"My brother, my brother!" cried the abbé, interrupting this appetising enumeration, "your words savour of materialism, pantheism, heresy! You are not in a state of mind to listen to me as I refute these impious, abominable systems which lead directly to paganism. But there is one indisputable fact, which is, that you suffer, my brother, you suffer cruelly; it is for us to bind up your wounds, my tender brother, it is for us to comfort them with balm and honey." At these words the canon made an involuntary grimace, because, in his gastronomic monomania, the idea of honey and balm was especially distasteful. The abbé continued: "Let us see, my dear brother, let us return to the cause of all your ills." "Alas! abbé, it is the loss of my appetite." "Be it so, my brother, and who has caused the loss of your appetite?" "That wretch!" cried the canon, irritated, "that infamous Captain Horace." "That is true; well, I will always preach to you the forgiveness of injuries, my dear brother; but, too, I must recommend to you an inexorable severity against sacrilege." "What sacrilege, abbé?" "Have not Captain Horace and one of his sailors dared to leap over the sacred walls of the convent where you had shut up your niece? Have they not had the audacity to carry away the miserable girl, whom happily we have recaptured? This enormity in other times might have been punished with fire, and one day it will be punished with eternal fire." "And this villain of a captain will only have what he deserves," cried Dom Diégo, ferociously; "yes, he will cook--he will roast on Satan's spit by a slow fire, all eternity, where he will be moistened with gravy of melted lead, after having been larded with red-hot iron. Such will be his punishment, I earnestly hope." "So may it be, but while waiting this eternal expiation, why not punish him here below? Why have you had the culpable weakness to give up your demand for the arrest of this miscreant? I need not remind you that this man is the first cause of all that you call your ills,--that is, the loss of your appetite." "That is true, he is a great criminal." "Then, my brother, why, I ask again, have you been so weak as to renounce your pursuit of him? You do not reply, you seem to be embarrassed." "It is that--" "It is what?" "Alas, abbé, you are going to scold me, to lecture me again." "Explain yourself, my brother." "What shall I say? It is his fault, for, since he has disappeared, all my thoughts come from him and return to him." "Who, he?" "This angel or this demon." "What angel--what demon?" "The cook." "Again the cook?" "Always!" "Come," said the abbé, shrugging his shoulders, "do explain yourself, my brother." "Well, then, abbé, know that the day after the fatal day when I breakfasted as I shall never breakfast again, alas! when my despair was at its height, I received a mysterious note." "And what did this contain, my brother?" "Here it is." "You have kept it."