“Saints of Heaven!” exclaimed De Bracy, “he must have escaped in the monk’s garments!”

“Fiends of hell!” echoed Front-de-Boeuf, “it was then the boar of Rotherwood whom I ushered to the postern, and dismissed with my own hands!⁠—And thou,” he said to Wamba, “whose folly could overreach the wisdom of idiots yet more gross than thyself⁠—I will give thee holy orders⁠—I will shave thy crown for thee!⁠—Here, let them tear the scalp from his head, and then pitch him headlong from the battlements⁠—Thy trade is to jest, canst thou jest now?”

“You deal with me better than your word, noble knight,” whimpered forth poor Wamba, whose habits of buffoonery were not to be overcome even by the immediate prospect of death; “if you give me the red cap you propose, out of a simple monk you will make a cardinal.”