“Will you be good to her?  Will you make her a home?” asked Carabine.  “A girl of such beauty is well worth a house and a carriage!  It would be a monstrous shame to leave her to walk the streets.  And besides —­she is in debt.—­How much do you owe?” asked Carabine, nipping Cydalise’s arm.

“She is worth all she can get,” said the old woman.  “The point is that she can find a buyer.”

“Listen!” cried Montes, fully aware at last of this masterpiece of womankind “you will show me Valerie—­”

“And Count Steinbock.—­Certainly!” said Madame Nourrisson.

For the past ten minutes the old woman had been watching the Brazilian; she saw that he was an instrument tuned up to the murderous pitch she needed; and, above all, so effectually blinded, that he would never heed who had led him on to it, and she spoke:—­

“Cydalise, my Brazilian jewel, is my niece, so her concerns are partly mine.  All this catastrophe will be the work of a few minutes, for a friend of mine lets the furnished room to Count Steinbock where Valerie is at this moment taking coffee—­a queer sort of coffee, but she calls it her coffee.  So let us understand each other, Brazil!—­I like Brazil, it is a hot country.—­What is to become of my niece?”

“You old ostrich,” said Montes, the plumes in the woman’s bonnet catching his eye, “you interrupted me.—­If you show me—­if I see Valerie and that artist together—­”

“As you would wish to be—­” said Carabine; “that is understood.”

“Then I will take this girl and carry her away—­”

“Where?” asked Carabine.

“To Brazil,” replied the Baron.  “I will make her my wife.  My uncle left me ten leagues square of entailed estate; that is how I still have that house and home.  I have a hundred negroes—­nothing but negroes and negresses and negro brats, all bought by my uncle—­”

“Nephew to a nigger-driver,” said Carabine, with a grimace.  “That needs some consideration.—­Cydalise, child, are you fond of the blacks?”

“Pooh!  Carabine, no nonsense,” said the old woman.  “The deuce is in it!  Monsieur and I are doing business.”

“If I take up another Frenchwoman, I mean to have her to myself,” the Brazilian went on.  “I warn you, mademoiselle, I am king there, and not a constitutional king.  I am Czar; my subjects are mine by purchase, and no one can escape from my kingdom, which is a hundred leagues from any human settlement, hemmed in by savages on the interior, and divided from the sea by a wilderness as wide as France.”

“I should prefer a garret here.”

“So thought I,” said Montes, “since I sold all my land and possessions at Rio to come back to Madame Marneffe.”

“A man does not make such a voyage for nothing,” remarked Madame Nourrisson.  “You have a right to look for love for your own sake, particularly being so good-looking.—­Oh, he is very handsome!” said she to Carabine.