The young pipe-bearer said to his master: "An idea strikes me. Thou hast one officer dead, another absent, and a third wounded. Put up their places for competition. Promise us that those who shall tell of the best way to avenge thee, shall succeed Sophocles, the Corfuan, and Vasile." Hadgi-Stavros smiled complacently at this stratagem. He stroked the young boy's chin and said to him: "Thou art ambitious, my little man! All in good time! Ambition is the result of courage. Agreed, for a competition! It is a modern idea, a European idea, that pleases me. To reward thee, thou shalt give thy advice, first; and if thou findest something very good, Vasile shall have no other heir but thee." "I would," said the child, "pull out some of my lord's teeth, put a bit in his mouth, and make him run, bridled, till he dropped from fatigue." "His feet are too sore; he would fall down at the first step. And you others? Tambouris, Moustakas, Coltzida, Milotia, speak, I am listening." "I," said Coltzida, "I would break boiling hot eggs under his arm-pits. I tried it on a woman of Magara, and I had much fun." "I," said Tambouris, "I would put him on the ground with a rock weighing five hundred pounds on his chest. It thrusts out one's tongue and makes one spit blood; it is fine!" "I," said Milotia, "I would put vinegar in his nostrils, and drive thorns under every nail. One sneezes violently and one does not know what to do with one's hands." Moustakas was one of the cooks of the band. He proposed to cook me in front of a small fire. The King's face expanded. The monk assisted at the conference, and let them talk without giving his advice. He, however, took pity on me, according to the measure of his sensibility, and helped me as far as his intelligence permitted. "Moustakas," he said, "is too wicked. One can torture milord finely without burning him alive. If you will give him salt meat without allowing him to drink he will live a long time, he will suffer a great deal, and the King will satisfy his vengeance without interfering with God's vengeance. It is my disinterested advice which I give you; I shall make nothing by it; but I wish everyone to be pleased, since the monastery has received its tithe." "Halt, there!" interrupted the coffee-bearer. "Good old man, I have an idea which is better than thine. I condemn milord to die of hunger. The others will do any evil to him which pleases them; I will not hinder them. But I would place a sentinel before his mouth, and I would take care that he had neither a drop of water nor a crumb of bread. Weakness would redouble his hunger; his wounds would increase his thirst, and the tortures of the others would finally finish him to my profit. What dost thou say, Sire? Is it not well reasoned and will it not give me Vasile's place?"