"Now, Gaspard is, to be sure and decidedly, thy own and thy sister's natural father, and filial love toward him is never to be set down against _thee_ as a fault; but if I chose to tell thee he was no bear, no rhinoceros, no werewolf or other kind of wolf, I should do it more from singular politeness than from any other cause. He snorted to me a good evening; so did I to him. Many men resemble glass,--smooth and slippery and flat so long as one does not break them, but _then_ cursedly cutting, and every splinter stings. The matter was laid before him with the accompanying frontispiece of the portrait. Wert thou more distantly related to him, I would let myself out on this subject; for his face was overspread with the northern light of grim fury; out of his eyes yellow wasps flew at me; straight lines shot up on his tempestuous brow like electrical lances, particularly two perpendicular lines of discomfort. But, as was said, thou art, to my knowledge, his son. 'My friend,' he thundered away, 'with what _right_ do you steal pictures, then?' 'That ought to be a hard question for me to answer,' replied I, gently; 'but I have an _inability_ to look at an unrighteous deception; I march right in.' 'Countess,' said he, gasping, 'in three minutes you shall know this _gentleman_ well enough.' O no, no! he used another word than _gentleman_, but I will one day clasp him to my breast for it, and though we stood on the highest steps of God's throne, and wrestled in the glory." "Schoppe!" said Albano. "Don't excite me!" replied Schoppe, and went on. "He rang; a servant flew in with a card; we all were silent. 'Indulgence, Countess,' said he, 'only for the space of one minute.' He thereupon gave her some miserable court-news, but she looked silently on the ground. Then came thy tall uncle, nodded sixteen times with his little head, for that he takes to be an obeisance, and stepped far off from me. 'Brother, simply say, what has this gentleman here done back of Valencia?' 'Murdered, murdered!' said he, rapidly. 'Under what circumstances?' asked thy father. Here he began to depose the minutest particulars of my shot of distress at the Baldhead with such an incomprehensible sharpness that I said, 'That is true!' and went on myself, and kept asking, 'Is it not so?' and he hurriedly nodded, till I had come to the end. Then I asked, 'But, Spaniard, tell me, by Heaven! whence have _you_, then, derived this knowledge?' 'From me!' answered a strange, hollow voice, exactly like the Baldhead's.