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.

"