I dare not tell or even whisper it; but I swear to thee by my holy order, by the habit which I wear, by the blessed Elias, our founder, even him who was translated without suffering the ordinary pangs of mortality, that this youth hath divulged to me a secret, which, if I might confide it to thee, would utterly turn thee from thy bloody purpose in regard to him." "Good father," said Richard, "that I reverence the church, let the arms which I now wear for her sake bear witness.

Give me to know this secret, and I will do what shall seem fitting in the matter.

But I am no blind Bayard, to take a leap in the dark under the stroke of a pair of priestly spurs." "My lord," said the holy man, throwing back his cowl and upper vesture, and discovering under the latter a garment of goatskin, and from beneath the former a visage so wildly wasted by climate, fast, and penance, as to resemble rather the apparition of an animated skeleton than a human face, "for twenty years have I macerated this miserable body in the caverns of Engaddi, doing penance for a great crime.

Think you I, who am dead to the world, would contrive a falsehood to endanger my own soul; or that one, bound by the most sacred oaths to the contrary--one such as I, who have but one longing wish connected with earth, to wit, the rebuilding of our Christian Zion--would betray the secrets of the confessional?
Both are alike abhorrent to my very soul." "So," answered the King, "thou art that hermit of whom men speak so much?
Thou art, I confess, like enough to those spirits which walk in dry places; but Richard fears no hobgoblins.

And thou art he, too, as I bethink me, to whom the Christian princes sent this very criminal to open a communication with the Soldan, even while I, who ought to have been first consulted, lay on my sick-bed?
Thou and they may content themselves--I will not put my neck into the loop of a Carmelite's girdle.