y apothecaries. I lodged with
one. In foreign countries everybody makes a principal business of
letting lodgings; all other trades are accessory. In the evening, linen
changed, I sat in my balcony. In the opposite balcony I saw a woman; oh!
such a woman! Greek,--_that tells all_! The most beautiful creature in
the town; almond eyes, lids that dropped like curtains, lashes like a
paint-brush, a face with an oval to drive Raffaelle mad, a skin of the
most delicious coloring, tints well-blended, velvety! and hands, oh!--"

"They weren't made of butter like those of the David school," put in
Mistigris.

"You are always lugging in your painting," cried Georges.

"La, la!" retorted Mistigris; "'an ounce o' paint is worth a pound of
swagger.'"

"And such a costume! pure Greek!" continued Schinner. "Conflagration of
soul! you understand? Well, I questioned my Diafoirus; and he told 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