"It was that cursed liquor of theirs," says he. "I have never drunk its like. We must have both dropped off like children in a cradle, and then they carried us out. I woke up God knows where, and but for these good fellows I might still be in the same place. Now we are going to teach the holy friars a lesson. Do you realise that they have got the woman and her jewels, and we must burn them out to recover them? Come along, my uncle. Here is an adventure that is only just beginning."
He seemed greatly pleased with himself, and rode jauntily enough, as though the event were greatly to his liking. My own wit had grown a little clearer by this time, and I could acquiesce in his determination to have it out with the monks. After all, they were not of our faith, and they had treated us very scurvily. The girl was no business of theirs, and even if the treasure had been looted, they had neither part nor lot in the affair. It was plainly our duty to teach them a lesson and to recover the property which the fortunes of war had bestowed upon us; and with this in our minds we rode up to the gate of the monastery and beat upon it insistently.
"No more of their liquor for me," says Léon, as he snapped a pistol in the lock of the great gate and then pulled their bell furiously. "We will give them a taste of our vintage and see if it goes to their heads. If it doesn't, I fancy that a prick from the point of a sword may well go somewhere else. Rest assured, dear uncle, we will have our pockets full of diamonds before the day breaks, and the girl upon my saddle-bow. Let us see what kind of a chant these holy men like best. Upon my word, they sleep like dogs after a hunting!"
Truly it was surprising that, after all the hullabaloo we had made, no one opened to us. The great monastery showed no light of any kind whatever. Both doors and windows were heavily barred as though against a ruthless invader, and listen as we might we could hear no sound within. The subterfuge merely angered Léon. He began to understand that even a squadron of hussars is powerless against a barrier of iron, and that for all we could do to the holy men within we might as well have been in Moscow. This, as I say, had not occurred to him before, and he now rode round and round the precincts as though there must be some loophole in the vast wall which defied us, some gate which the carbines of the company could force. We found none, and the men's chagrin was undisguised. They had been promised food and loot if they took the place, and yet they were as far from taking it as any child would have been.