I left not my hills without having felt a portion of the double vision with which their inhabitants are gifted, and I will give thee a proof of it, in exchange for thy specimen of palmistry.
Hayraddin, the danger which threatens me lies on the right bank of the river--I will avoid it by travelling to Liege on the left bank." The guide listened with an apathy, which, knowing the circumstances in which Maugrabin stood, Quentin could not by any means comprehend.
"If you accomplish your purpose," was the Bohemian's reply, "the dangerous crisis will be transferred from your lot to mine." "I thought," said Quentin, "that you said but now, that you could not presage your own fortune ?" "Not in the manner in which I have but now told you yours," answered Hayraddin, "but it requires little knowledge of Louis of Valois, to presage that he will hang your guide, because your pleasure was to deviate from the road which he recommended." "The attaining with safety the purpose of the journey, and ensuring its happy termination," said Quentin, "must atone for a deviation from the exact line of the prescribed route." "Ay," replied the Bohemian, "if you are sure that the King had in his own eye the same termination of the pilgrimage which he insinuated to you." "And of what other termination is it possible that he could have been meditating?
or why should you suppose he had any purpose in his thought, other than was avowed in his direction ?" inquired Quentin.
"Simply," replied the Zingaro, "that those who know aught of the Most Christian King, are aware that the purpose about which he is most anxious, is always that which he is least willing to declare.

Let our gracious Louis send twelve embassies, and I will forfeit my neck to the gallows a year before it is due, if in eleven of them there is not something at the bottom of the ink horn more than the pen has written in the letters of credence." "I regard not your foul suspicions," answered Quentin, "my duty is plain and peremptory--to convey these ladies in safety to Liege, and I take it on me to think that I best discharge that duty in changing our prescribed route, and keeping the left side of the river Maes.

It is likewise the direct road to Liege.

By crossing the river, we should lose time and incur fatigue to no purpose--wherefore should we do so ?" "Only because pilgrims, as they call themselves, destined for Cologne," said Hayraddin, "do not usually descend the Maes so low as Liege, and that the route of the ladies will be accounted contradictory of their professed destination." "If we are challenged on that account," said Quentin, "we will say that alarms of the wicked Duke of Gueldres, or of William de la Marck, or of the Ecorcheurs [flayers; a name given to bands of wandering troops on account of their cruelty] and lanzknechts, on the right side of the river, justify our holding by the left, instead of our intended route." "As you will, my good seignior," replied the Bohemian.

"I am, for my part, equally ready to guide you down the left as down the right side of the Maes.