somer than the _Postillon de Longjumeau_," replied
the courtesan.

Cydalise took the Brazilian's hand, but he released it as politely as
he could.

"I came back for Madame Marneffe," the man went on where he had left
off, "but you do not know why I was three years thinking about it."

"No, savage!" said Carabine.

"Well, she had so repeatedly told me that she longed to live with me
alone in a desert--"

"Oh, ho! he is not a savage after all," cried Carabine, with a shout
of laughter. "He is of the highly-civilized tribe of Flats!"

"She had told me this so often," Montes went on, regardless of the
courtesan's mockery, "that I had a lovely house fitted up in the heart
of that vast estate. I came back to France to fetch Valerie, and the
first evening I saw her--"

"Saw her is very proper!" said Carabine. "I will remember it."

"She told me to wait till that wretched Marneffe was dead; and I
agreed, and forgave her for having admitted the attentions of Hulot.
Whether the devil had her in hand I don't know, but from that instant
that woman has humored my every whim, complied with all my demands
--never for one moment has she given me cause to suspect her!--"

"That is supremely clever!" said Carabine to Madame Nourrisson, who
nodded in sign of assent.

"My faith in that woman," said Montes, and he shed a tear, "was a
match for my love. Just now, I was ready to fight everybody at
table--"

"So I saw," said Carabine.

"And if I am cheated, if she is going to be married, if she is at this
moment in Steinbock's arms, she deserves a thousand deaths! I will
kill her as I would smash a fly--"

"And how about the gendarmes, my son?" said Madame Nourrisson, with a
smile that made your flesh creep.

"And the police agents, and the judges, and the assizes, and all the
set-out?" added Carabine.

"You are bragging, my dear fellow," said the old woman, who wanted to
know all the Brazilian's schemes of vengeance.

"I will kill her," he calmly repeated. "You called me a savage.--Do
you imagine that I am fool enough to go, like a Frenchman, and buy
poison at the chemist's shop?--During the time while we were driving
her, I thought out my means of revenge, if you should prove to be
right as concerns Valerie. One of my negroes has the most deadly of
animal poisons, and incurable anywhere but in Brazil. I will
administer it to Cydalise, who will give it to me; then by the time
when death is a certainty to Crevel and his w