Father Barnabas, whom we have seen before, no sooner found himself added to the suite of the ambassador, than he displayed all those qualities he well knew would make his society agreeable to the men-at-arms who had given him protection; and by many a jolly carouse, and many a licentious bacchanalian song, he soon won favour on all hands. Even the barber count himself, whose more sensual propensities were only restrained by his cunning, found no fault with the merry friar, whose sly and cutting jests, combined with the sleek and quiet look of stupidity which always accompanied them, found means to draw up even his lip into a smile, that might have been mistaken for a sneer. On one occasion he felt disposed to put some shrewd questions to worthy Father Barnabas as to his situation and pursuits, and even began to do so on the second night of their journey, as, occupying the best seat by the fire in the little hostelrie at which they lodged, he eyed the impenetrable fat countenance before him with the sort of curiosity one feels to pry into anything that we see will be difficult to discover.
But the monk was at least his match; and if the weapons with which they engaged in the keen contest of their wits were not precisely the same on both parts, the combat resembled that of the elephant and the rhinoceros; whenever Oliver the wicked strove to seize the monk and close with him, his antagonist ran under him and gored him. Thus, when, by some casual words, the envoy thought he had discovered that his companion was a native of Saarvelt, and suddenly put the question to him at once, the other replied, "No, no; I only remember it well, on account of a barber's boy who was there, and whose real name was--pho! I forget his real name; but he is a great man now-a-days, and has held a basin under the nose of a king."
The quiet, unconscious manner in which this was said, left Olivier le Dain, with all his cunning, in doubt whether the jolly friar really recognised in him the barber's boy of Saarvelt, or whether the allusion had been merely accidental; but he resolved not to interrogate any more a person of such a memory, and possibly determined to take care that the most effectual stop should be put to its exercise in future, if those plans regarding Ghent should prove successful, in the execution of which he was now engaged.