A Start in Life [33]
me that my neighbor was named Zena. Changed my linen. The husband, an
old villain, in order to marry Zena, paid three hundred thousand
francs to her father and mother, so celebrated was the beauty of that
beautiful creature, who was truly the most beautiful girl in all
Dalmatia, Illyria, Adriatica, and other places. In those parts they
buy their wives without seeing them--"
"I shall not go 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