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doubled our hope of gaining our liberty. That very night our renegade
returned and said he had learned that the Moor we had been told of lived
in that house, that his name was Hadji Morato, that he was enormously
rich, that he had one only daughter the heiress of all his wealth, and
that it was the general opinion throughout the city that she was the most
beautiful woman in Barbary, and that several of the viceroys who came
there had sought her for a wife, but that she had been always unwilling
to marry; and he had learned, moreover, that she had a Christian slave
who was now dead; all which agreed with the contents of the paper. We
immediately took counsel with the renegade as to what means would have to
be adopted in order to carry off the Moorish lady and bring us all to
Christian territory; and in the end it was agreed that for the present we
should wait for a second communication from Zoraida (for that was the
name of her who now desires to be called Maria), because we saw clearly
that she and no one else could find a way out of all these difficulties.
When we had decided upon this the renegade told us not to be uneasy, for
he would lose his life or restore us to liberty. For four days the bano