Array The griffin classics - The Collected Works of Honore de Balzac

“Yes, that’s it,” said the rapin; “‘your money or your strife.’”

“Well, you have only eight hundred now to get,” remarked the count, who considered this moan, addressed to Pere Leger, a sort of letter of credit drawn upon himself.

“True,” said Pierrotin. “Xi! xi! Rougeot!”

“You must have seen many fine ceilings in Venice,” resumed the count, addressing Schinner.

“I was too much in love to take any notice of what seemed to me then mere trifles,” replied Schinner. “But I was soon cured of that folly, for it was in the Venetian states — in Dalmatia — that I received a cruel lesson.”

“Can it be told?” asked Georges. “I know Dalmatia very well.”

“Well, if you have been there, you know that all the people at that end of the Adriatic are pirates, rovers, corsairs retired from business, as they haven’t been hanged — ”

“Uscoques,” said Georges.

Hearing the right name given, the count, who had been sent by Napoleon on one occasion to the Illyrian provinces, turned his head and looked at Georges, so surprised was he.

“The affair happened in that town where they make maraschino,” continued Schinner, seeming to search for a name.

“Zara,” said Georges. “I’ve been there; it is on the coast.”

“You are right,” said the painter. “I had gone there to look at the country, for I adore scenery. I’ve longed a score of times to paint landscape, which no one, as I think, understands but Mistigris, who will some day reproduce Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorrain, Poussin, and others.”

“But,” exclaimed the count, “if he reproduces one of them won’t that be enough?”

“If you persist in interrupting, monsieur,” said Oscar, “we shall never get on.”

“And Monsieur Schinner was not addressing himself to you in particular,” added Georges.

“‘Tisn’t polite to interrupt,” said Mistigris, sententiously, “but we all do it, and conversation would lose a great deal if we didn’t scatter little condiments while exchanging our reflections. Therefore, continue, agreeable old gentleman, to lecture us, if you like. It is done in the best society, and you know the proverb: ‘we must ‘owl with the wolves.’”

“I had heard marvellous things of Dalmatia,” resumed Schinner, “so I went there, leaving Mistigris in Venice at an inn — ”

“‘Locanda,’” interposed Mistigris; “keep to the local color.”

“Zara is what is called a country town — ”

“Yes,” said Georges; “but it is fortified.”

“Parbleu!” said Schinner; “the fortifications count for much in my adventure. At Zara there are a great many apothecaries. I lodged with one. In foreign countries everybody makes a principal business of letting lodgings; all other trades are accessory. In the evening, linen changed, I sat in my balcony. In the opposite balcony I saw a woman; oh! such a woman! Greek, — that tells all ! The most beautiful creature in the town; almond eyes, lids that dropped like curtains, lashes like a paint-brush, a face with an oval to drive Raffaelle mad, a skin of the most delicious coloring, tints well-blended, velvety! and hands, oh! — ”

“They weren’t made of butter like those of the David school,” put in Mistigris.

“You are always lugging in your painting,” cried Georges.

“La, la!” retorted Mistigris; “‘an ounce o’ paint is worth a pound of swagger.’”

“And such a costume! pure Greek!” continued Schinner. “Conflagration of soul! you understand? Well, I questioned my Diafoirus; and he told me that my neighbor was named Zena. Changed my linen. The husband, an old villain, in order to marry Zena, paid three hundred thousand francs to her father and mother, so celebrated was the beauty of that beautiful creature, who was truly the most beautiful girl in all Dalmatia, Illyria, Adriatica, and other places. In those parts they buy their wives without seeing them — ”

“I shall not go there ,” said Pere Leger.

“There are nights when my sleep is still illuminated by the eyes of Zena,” continued Schinner. “The husband was sixty-nine years of age, and jealous! not as a tiger, for they say of a tiger, ‘jealous as a Dalmatian’; and my man was worse than A Dalmatian, one Dalmatian, — he was three and a half Dalmatians at the very least; he was an Uscoque, tricoque, archicoque in a bicoque of a paltry little place like Zara — ”

“Horrid fellow, and ‘horrider bellow,’” put in Mistigris.

“Ha! good,” said Georges, laughing.

“After being a corsair, and probably a pirate, he thought no more of spitting a Christian on his dagger than I did of spitting on the ground,” continued Schinner. “So that was how the land lay. The old wretch had millions, and was hideous with the loss of an ear some pacha had cut off, and the want of an eye left I don’t know where. ‘Never,’ said the little Diafoirus, ‘never does he leave his wife, never for a second.’ ‘Perhaps she’ll want your services, and I could go in your clothes; that’s a trick that has great success in our theatres,’ I told him. Well, it would take too long to tell you all the delicious moments of that lifetime — to wit, three days — which I passed exchanging looks with Zena, and changing linen every day. It was all the more violently titillating because the slightest motion was significant and dangerous. At last it must have dawned upon Zena’s mind that none but a Frenchman and an artist was daring enough to make eyes at her in the midst of the perils by which she was surrounded; and as she hated her hideous pirate, she answered my glances with delightful ogles fit to raise a man to the summit of Paradise without pulleys. I attained to the height of Don Quixote; I rose to exaltation! and I cried: ‘The monster may kill me, but I’ll go, I’ll go!’ I gave up landscape and studied the ignoble dwelling of the Uscoque. That night, changed linen, and put on the most perfumed shirt I had; then I crossed the street, and entered — ”

“The house?” cried Oscar.

“The house?” echoed Georges.

“The house,” said Schinner.

“Well, you’re a bold dog,” cried farmer Leger. “I should have kept out of it myself.”

“Especially as you could never have got through the doorway,” replied Schinner. “So in I went,” he resumed, “and I found two hands stretched out to meet mine. I said nothing, for those hands, soft as the peel of an onion, enjoined me to silence. A whisper breathed into my ear, ‘He sleeps!’ Then, as we were sure that nobody would see us, we went to walk, Zena and I, upon the ramparts, but accompanied, if you please, by a duenna, as hideous as an old portress, who didn’t leave us any more than our shadow; and I couldn’t persuade Madame Pirate to send her away. The next night we did the same thing, and again I wanted to get rid of the old woman, but Zena resisted. As my sweet love spoke only Greek, and I Venetian, we couldn’t understand each other, and so we quarrelled. I said to myself, in changing linen, ‘As sure as fate, the next time there’ll be no old woman, and we can make it all up with the language of love.’ Instead of which, fate willed that that old woman should save my life! You’ll hear how. The weather was fine, and, not to create suspicion, I took a turn at landscape, — this was after our quarrel was made up, you understand. After walking along the ramparts for some time, I was coming tranquilly home with my hands in my pockets, when I saw the street crowded with people. Such a crowd! like that for an execution. It fell upon me; I was seized, garroted, gagged, and guarded by the police. Ah! you don’t know — and I 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!’”