"An old man of good appearance attracts my attention there," said Leandro Perez; "who, and what, is he?" The Devil replied: "He is a barber, of Guipuscoa, who is about to return to Biscay after a captivity of forty years. When he fell into the hands of a corsair, in going from Valencia to the island of Sardinia, he had a wife, two sons, and a daughter. Of all these, one son alone remains; and he, more lucky than his father, has been to Peru, whence he has safely returned with immense wealth to his native province, in which he has recently purchased two handsome estates." "What pleasure!" exclaimed the Student, "what delight awaits this happy son, to behold again his long-lost parent, and to be enabled to render his declining years peaceful and agreeable!"
"You," replied the Cripple, "speak like a child whom tenderness and duty prompt; the son of the Biscayan barber is of a sterner mould: the unlooked-for coming of his sire to him will bring more grief than joy. Instead of welcoming him to his mansion at Guipuscoa, and sparing nothing to mark the bliss he feels at pressing him once more to his bosom, he will probably be filial enough to make him steward of one of his estates.
"Behind this captive, whose good looks you admire so much, is another as like an old baboon as are two drops of water to each other: he is a little Aragonese physician. He has not been a fortnight in Algiers; for as soon as the Turks knew what was his profession, they resolved, rather than suffer him to remain among them, to place him without ransom in the hands of the fathers of Mercy, who would certainly never have purchased him, and who bring him back with compunction to Spain.
"You who feel so sensibly the woes of others, ah! how would you grieve for that other slave, he who wears upon his head that little cap of brown cloth, did you but know the ills he has endured during twelve years, in the house of an English renegade, his patron." "And who is this unhappy captive?" asked Zambullo. "He is a cordelier of Navarre," replied the Demon. "I must own, however, that for myself, I rejoice that he has suffered so severely; since, by his eternal preaching, he has prevented more than a hundred Christian slaves from adopting the turban."