You would
have forgotten me, though you are kind-hearted, and I have some bills
to pay to-morrow. Buying and selling clothes, I am always short of
cash. Who is this at your heels? The gentleman looks very much put out
about something."
The dreadful Madame Nourrisson, at this moment so completely disguised
as to look like a respectable old body, rose to embrace Carabine, one
of the hundred and odd courtesans she had launched on their horrible
career of vice.
"He is an Othello who is not to be taken in, whom I have the honor of
introducing to you--Monsieur le Baron Montes de Montejanos."
"Oh! I have heard him talked about, and know his name.--You are
nicknamed Combabus, because you love but one woman, and in Paris, that
is the same as loving no one at all. And is it by chance the object of
your affections who is fretting you? Madame Marneffe, Crevel's woman?
I tell you what, my dear sir, you may bless your stars instead of
cursing them. She is a good-for-nothing baggage, is that little woman.
I know her tricks!"
"Get along," said Carabine, into whose hand Madame Nourrisson had
slipped a note while embracing her, "you do not know your Brazilians.
They are wrong-headed creatures that insist on being impaled through
the heart.
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