The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac. The griffin classics
there,” said Pere Leger.
“There are nights when my sleep is still illuminated by the eyes of Zena,” continued Schinner. “The husband was sixty-nine years of age, and jealous! not as a tiger, for they say of a tiger, ‘jealous as a Dalmatian’; and my man was worse than A Dalmatian, one Dalmatian, — he was three and a half Dalmatians at the very least; he was an Uscoque, tricoque, archicoque in a bicoque of a paltry little place like Zara — ”
“Horrid fellow, and ‘horrider bellow,’” put in Mistigris.
“Ha! good,” said Georges, laughing.
“After being a corsair, and probably a pirate, he thought no more of spitting a Christian on his dagger than I did of spitting on the ground,” continued Schinner. “So that was how the land lay. The old wretch had millions, and was hideous with the loss of an ear some pacha had cut off, and the want of an eye left I don’t know where. ‘Never,’ said the little Diafoirus, ‘never does he leave his wife, never for a second.’ ‘Perhaps she’ll want your services, and I could go in your clothes; that’s a trick that has great success in our theatres,’ I told him. Well, it would take too long to tell you all the delicious moments of that lifetime — to wit, three days — which I passed exchanging looks with Zena, and changing linen every day. It was all the more violently titillating because the slightest motion was significant and dangerous. At last it must have dawned upon Zena’s mind that none but a Frenchman and an artist was daring enough to make eyes at her in the midst of the perils by which she was surrounded; and as she hated her hideous pirate, she answered my glances with delightful ogles fit to raise a man to the summit of Paradise without pulleys. I attained to the height of Don Quixote; I rose to exaltation! and I cried: ‘The monster may kill me, but I’ll go, I’ll go!’ I gave up landscape and studied the ignoble dwelling of the Uscoque. That night, changed linen, and put on the most perfumed shirt I had; then I crossed the street, and entered — ”
“The house?” cried Oscar.
“The house?” echoed Georges.
“The house,” said Schinner.
“Well, you’re a bold dog,” cried farmer Leger. “I should have kept out of it myself.”
“Especially as you could never have got through the doorway,” replied Schinner. “So in I went,” he resumed, “and I found two hands stretched out to meet mine. I said nothing, for those hands, soft as the peel of an onion, enjoined me to silence. A whisper breathed into my ear, ‘He sleeps!’ Then, as we were sure that nobody would see us, we went to walk, Zena and I, upon the ramparts, but accompanied, if you please, by a duenna, as hideous as an old portress, who didn’t leave us any more than our shadow; and I couldn’t persuade Madame Pirate to send her away. The next night we did the same thing, and again I wanted to get rid of the old woman, but Zena resisted. As my sweet love spoke only Greek, and I Venetian, we couldn’t understand each other, and so we quarrelled. I said to myself, in changing linen, ‘As sure as fate, the next time there’ll be no old woman, and we can make it all up with the language of love.’ Instead of which, fate willed that that old woman should save my life! You’ll hear how. The weather was fine, and, not to create suspicion, I took a turn at landscape, — this was after our quarrel was made up, you understand. After walking along the ramparts for some time, I was coming tranquilly home with my hands in my pockets, when I saw the street crowded with people. Such a crowd! like that for an execution. It fell upon me; I was seized, garroted, gagged, and guarded by the police. Ah! you don’t know — and I hope you never may know — what it is to be taken for a murderer by a maddened populace which stones you and howls after you from end to end of the principal street of a town, shouting for your death! Ah! those eyes were so many flames, all mouths were a single curse, while from the volume of that burning hatred rose the fearful cry: ‘To death! to death! down with the murderer!’”
“So those Dalmatians spoke our language, did they?” said the count. “I observe you relate the scene as if it happened yesterday.”
Schinner was nonplussed.
“Riot has but one language,” said the astute statesman Mistigris.
“Well,” continued Schinner, “when I was brought into court in presence of the magistrates, I learned that the cursed corsair was dead, poisoned by Zena. I’d liked to have changed linen then. Give you my word, I knew nothing of that melodrama. It seems the Greek girl put opium (a great many poppies, as monsieur told us, grow about there) in the pirate’s grog, just to make him sleep soundly and leave her free for a little walk with me, and the old duenna, unfortunate creature, made a mistake and trebled the dose. The immense fortune of that cursed pirate was really the cause of all my Zena’s troubles. But she explained matters so ingenuously that I, for one, was released with an injunction from the mayor and the Austrian commissary of police to go back to Rome. Zena, who let the heirs of the Uscoque and the judges get most of the old villain’s wealth, was let off with two years’ seclusion in a convent, where she still is. I am going back there some day to paint her portrait; for in a few years, you know, all this will be forgotten. Such are the follies one commits at eighteen!”
“And you left me without a sou in the locanda at Venice,” said Mistigris. “And I had to get from Venice to Rome by painting portraits for five francs apiece, which they didn’t pay me. However, that was my halcyon time. I don’t regret it.”
“You can imagine the reflections that came to me in that Dalmatian prison, thrown there without protection, having to answer to Austrians and Dalmatians, and in danger of losing my head because I went twice to walk with a woman. There’s ill-luck, with a vengeance!”
“Did all that really happen to you?” said Oscar, naively.
“Why shouldn’t it happen to him, inasmuch as it had already happened during the French occupation of Illyria to one of our most gallant officers of artillery?” said the count, slyly.
“And you believed that artillery officer?” said Mistigris, as slyly to the count.
“Is that all?” asked Oscar.
“Of course he can’t tell you that they cut his head off, — how could he?” said Mistigris. “‘Dead schinners tell no tales.’”
“Monsieur, are there farms in that country?” asked Pere Leger. “What do they cultivate?”
“Maraschino,” replied Mistigris, — ”a plant that grows to the height of the lips, and produces a liqueur which goes by that name.”
“Ah!” said Pere Leger.
“I only stayed three days in the town and fifteen in prison,” said Schinner, “so I saw nothing; not even the fields where they grow the maraschino.”
“They are fooling you,” said Georges to the farmer. “Maraschino comes in cases.”
“‘Romances alter cases,’” remarked Mistigris.
CHAPTER V. THE DRAMA BEGINS
Pierrotin’s vehicle was now going down the steep incline of the valley of Saint-Brice to the inn which stands in the middle of the large village of that name, where Pierrotin was in the habit of stopping an hour to breathe his horses, give them their oats, and water them. It was now about half-past one o’clock.
“Ha! here’s Pere Leger,” cried the inn-keeper, when the coach pulled up before the door. “Do you breakfast?”
“Always once a day,” said the fat farmer; “and I’ll break a crust here and now.”
“Give us a good breakfast,” cried Georges, twirling his cane in a cavalier manner which excited the admiration of poor Oscar.
But that admiration was turned to jealousy when he saw the gay adventurer pull out from a side-pocket a small straw case, from which he selected a light-colored cigar, which he proceeded to smoke on the threshold of the inn door while waiting for breakfast.
“Do you smoke?” he