To his surprise again, she met his glance firmly, and her eyes seemed as irate as his own.
"You are mistaken," she replied, carelessly, as if the matter were of no consequence. "How can you expect those stalwart bullies to obey an old woman like me? They would have beaten me to a jelly if I had tried to shield you. Besides, my officer, I thought you had not a spark of life left in you after that beating."
"He shall pay for it—with the sword if worthy—with the stick if a plebeian."
"You need not believe he will ever meet you with the sword," said the hag, glad to have the dialogue turn on another head than her own in spite of her unconcern. "I am going to tell you all about one whom I hated by instinct and whom I find to be a hereditary enemy."
"What do you mean? He is but a boy and cannot have wronged you or yours."
"His father, major, murdered my loveliest daughter and interrupted her career of splendor! Alas! one that had a palace where kings were received and to whom princes often sued in vain!"
"Halloa! you, to have a daughter of that calibre!" and he laughed coarsely.
"You, who know everything, my officer, must at least have heard of the peerless Iza, the original of the most beautiful statue which—reproduced in the precious and the mean metals, in clay, in parian, in plaster—made the round of the civilized world? 'The Bather!' That was my daughter! She had her faults—even the truly lovely have mental flaws, though bodily they are perfect—but whilst she lived, her poor old mother dressed in silks and velvets—not in rags; she ate and drank delicately, not sour crusts and sourer wine; she slept on down and not in a cellar!"
Von Sendlingen shook his head; he was of the new generation and he preserved but a dim remembrance of the noted beauties—the stars of the living galaxy decorating the first cycle of the Bonapartist Restoration.
"I foresaw it all and I warned her; but she was so perverse! It is my duty to avenge her, and to see that the same blunder is not made by—no matter! Enough that my science—at which you smile, I see—points out to me that your greatest enemies and mine are in that house." She gestured toward the hotel, which the major had been studying.