er
jewel? At my age love costs thirty thousand francs a year. It is through
your husband's experience that I know the price, and I love Celestine
too truly to be her ruin. When I saw you, at the first evening party
you gave in our honor, I wondered how that scoundrel Hulot could keep a
Jenny Cadine--you had the manner of an Empress. You do not look thirty,"
he went on. "To me, madame, you look young, and you are beautiful. On my
word of honor, that evening I was struck to the heart. I said to myself,
'If I had not Josepha, since old Hulot neglects his wife, she would fit
me like a glove.' Forgive me--it is a reminiscence of my old business.
The perfumer will crop up now and then, and that is what keeps me from
standing to be elected deputy.

"And then, when I was so abominably deceived by the Baron, for really
between old rips like us our friend's mistress should be sacred, I swore
I would have his wife. It is but justice. The Baron could say nothing;
we are certain of impunity. You showed me the door like a mangy dog at
the first words I uttered as to the state of my feelings; you only made
my passion--my obstinacy, if you will--twice as strong, and you shall be
mine."

"Indeed; how?"

"I do not know; but it will come to pass. You see, madame, an idiot of
a perfumer--retired from business--who has but one idea in his head, is
stronger than a clever fellow who has a thousand. I am smitten with
you, and you are the means of my revenge; it is like being in love twice
over. I am speaking to you quite frankly, as a man who knows what he
means. I speak coldly to you, just as you do to me, when you say, 'I
never will be yours,' In fact, as they say, I play the game with the
cards on the table. Yes, you shall be mine, sooner or later; if you were
fifty, you should still be my mistress. And it will be; for I expect
anything from your husband!"

Madame Hulot looked at this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare of
terror, that he thought she had gone mad, and he stopped.

"You insisted on it, you heaped me with scorn, you defied me--and I have
spoken," said he, feeling that he must justify the ferocity of his last
words.

"Oh, my daughter, my daughter," moaned the Baroness in a voice like a
dying woman's.

"Oh! I have forgotten all else," Crevel went on. "The day when I was
robbed of Josepha I was like a tigress robbed of her cubs; in short,
as you see me now.--Your daughter? Yes, I regard her as the means of
winning