“Nay, indeed,” said Carabine in a low voice; “but if, on the contrary, you are shamefully betrayed, cheated, tricked by Valerie, if I should give you the proof in an hour, in my own house, what then?”

“I cannot tell you before all these Iagos,” said the Brazilian.

Carabine understood him to say magots (baboons).

“Well, well, say no more!” she replied, smiling.  “Do not make yourself a laughing-stock for all the wittiest men in Paris; come to my house, we will talk it over.”

Montes was crushed.  “Proofs,” he stammered, “consider—­”

“Only too many,” replied Carabine; “and if the mere suspicion hits you so hard, I fear for your reason.”

“Is this creature obstinate, I ask you?  He is worse than the late lamented King of Holland!—­I say, Lousteau, Bixiou, Massol, all the crew of you, are you not invited to breakfast with Madame Marneffe the day after to-morrow?” said Leon de Lora.

“Ya,” said du Tillet; “I have the honor of assuring you, Baron, that if you had by any chance thought of marrying Madame Marneffe, you are thrown out like a bill in Parliament, beaten by a blackball called Crevel.  My friend, my old comrade Crevel, has eighty thousand francs a year; and you, I suppose, did not show such a good hand, for if you had, you, I imagine, would have been preferred.”

Montes listened with a half-absent, half-smiling expression, which struck them all with terror.

At this moment the head-waiter came to whisper to Carabine that a lady, a relation of hers, was in the drawing-room and wished to speak to her.

Carabine rose and went out to find Madame Nourrisson, decently veiled with black lace.

“Well, child, am I to go to your house?  Has he taken the hook?”

“Yes, mother; and the pistol is so fully loaded, that my only fear is that it will burst,” said Carabine.

About an hour later, Montes, Cydalise, and Carabine, returning from the Rocher de Cancale, entered Carabine’s little sitting-room in the Rue Saint-Georges.  Madame Nourrisson was sitting in an armchair by the fire.

“Here is my worthy old aunt,” said Carabine.

“Yes, child, I came in person to fetch my little allowance.  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!”