ed. "My mother has told me that that
couple deserve the worst torments--"

"The rack is out of date," said the old woman.

"You answer for the result?"

"Leave it all to me," said the woman; "your vengeance is simmering."

She looked at the clock; it was six.

"Your avenger is dressing; the fires are lighted at the _Rocher de
Cancale_; the horses are pawing the ground; my irons are getting
hot.--Oh, I know your Madame Marneffe by heart!--Everything is ready.
And there are some boluses in the rat-trap; I will tell you to-morrow
morning if the mouse is poisoned. I believe she will be; good evening,
my son."

"Good-bye, madame."

"Do you know English?"

"Yes."

"Well, my son, thou shalt be King. That is to say, you shall come into
your inheritance," said the dreadful old witch, foreseen by Shakespeare,
and who seemed to know her Shakespeare.

She left Hulot amazed at the door of his study.

"The consultation is for to-morrow!" said she, with the gracious air of
a regular client.

She saw two persons coming, and wished to pass in their eyes a pinchbeck
countess.

"What impudence!" thought Hulot, bowing to his pretended client.

Baron Montes de Montejanos was a _lion_, but a lion not accounted
for. Fashionable Paris, Paris of the turf and of the town, admired
the ineffable waistcoats of this foreign gentleman, his spotless
patent-leather boots, his incomparable sticks, his much-coveted horses,
and the negro servants who rode the horses and who were entirely slaves
and most consumedly thrashed.

His fortune was well known; he had a credit account up to seven hundred
thousand francs in the great banking house of du Tillet; but he was
always seen alone. When he went to "first nights," he was in a stall. He
frequented no drawing-rooms. He had never given his arm to a girl on the
streets. His name would not be coupled with that of any pretty woman
of the world. To pass his time he played whist at the Jockey-Club. The
world was reduced to calumny, or, which it thought funnier, to laughing
at his peculiarities; he went by the name of Combabus.

Bixiou, Leon de Lora, Lousteau, Florine, Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout,
and Nathan, supping one evening with the notorious Carabine, with a
large party of _lions_ and _lionesses_, had invented this name with an
excessively burlesque explanation. Massol, as being on the Council of
State, and Claude Vignon, erewhile Professor of Greek, had related to
the ignorant dam