"Señores," he said, "your frankness challenges mine; the generosity and grandeur of your reception compels me to make myself known. When a man comes to claim the support of men like yourselves he must keep nothing hidden from them. Yes, I am proscribed! Yes, I am banished! But I am so by my own will. I could return tomorrow, if I pleased, to the bosom of society, which has never repelled me, I make here neither allusions nor applications. I remain in the desert to accomplish a duty I have imposed on myself; I pursue a vengeance, an implacable vengeance, which nothing can completely satiate, not even the death of the last of my enemies! A vengeance which is only a wild dream, a horrible nightmare, but which I pursue, and shall pursue, at all hazards, until the supreme hour when, on the point of giving my last sigh, I shall die with regret at not having sufficiently avenged myself. Such is the object of my life, the cause which made me abandon the life of civilized men to take up with that of wild beasts--VENGEANCE! Now you know what I am; when I have told you my name you will be well acquainted with me." The old man's voice, at first calm and low, had gradually mounted to the diapason of the passions that agitated him, and had become sonorous and harsh. His hearers, involuntarily overpowered by his impassioned accents, listened with panting chests and, as it were hanging on his lips, to this strange man, who, by revealing the secret of his life, had stirred up their hearts, and caused the only sensitive fibre that still existed there to vibrate painfully. For they, too, had but one object left, a sole desire--vengeance on that society which had expelled them like impure scum. These men could comprehend such a powerful and vindictive nature, admire it, and even feel jealous of it, for it was more complete and more vigorously tempered than their own. When the Scalper had ceased speaking, all rose as if by common accord, and, leaning their quivering hands on the table, bent over to him, awaiting, with feverish impatience, the revelation of his name. But, by a strange revolution, the wounded man seemed to have forgotten what was taking place around him, and no longer to remember either where he was or what he had said. His head was bowed on his chest; with his forehead resting on his right hand and his eyes fixed on the ground, he tried in vain to overcome the flood of bitter recollections, the ever-bleeding wound which in a moment of excitement he had so imprudently revived. Sandoval regarded him for a moment with an expression of sadness and pity, and laid his hand on his shoulder. At this touch the old man, roughly recalled to a feeling of external things, drew himself up as if he had received an electric shock, and gazed wildly round him. "What do you want with me?" he asked, in a hoarse voice. "To tell you your name," the pirate answered, slowly. "Ah!" he said, "Then you know it?" "Ten minutes back I was ignorant of it."