At the moment of leaving, as he was putting the note, which he had not immediately taken, into his pocket, Lafcadio came upon his visiting-cards. Holding them out to the Count:
“Here is the whole packet,” said he.
“I trust you. Tear them up yourself. Good-bye.”
“He would have made the best of uncles,” thought Lafcadio, as he was walking back to the Quartier Latin; “and even,” he added, with the faintest touch of melancholy, “a little more into the bargain.—Pooh!”
He took the packet of cards, spread them out fan-wise and with a single easy movement tore them in half.
“I never had any confidence in drains,” murmured he, as he threw “Lafcadio” down a grating in the street; and it was not till two gratings further on that he threw down “de Baraglioul.”
“Never mind! Baraglioul or Wluiki, let’s set to work now to settle up our arrears.”
There was a jeweller’s shop in the Boulevard St. Germain before which Carola used to keep him standing every day. A day or two earlier, she had discovered a curious pair of sleeve-links in the flashy shop window; they were joined together two and two by a little gilt chain and were cut out of a peculiar kind of quartz—a sort of smoky agate, which was not transparent, though it looked as if it were—and made to represent four cats’ heads. Venitequa, as I have already said, was in the habit of wearing a tailormade coat and skirt and a man’s shirt with stiff cuffs, and as she had a taste for oddities, she coveted these sleeve-links.
They were more queer than attractive; Lafcadio thought them hideous; it would have irritated him to see his mistress wearing them; but now that he was going to leave her.... He went into the shop and paid a hundred and twenty francs for the links.
“A piece of writing-paper, please.” And leaning on the counter, he wrote on a sheet of note-paper which the shopman brought him, these words: