“You master here!” shouted Manassa. “Then who am I? Who am I, sir?”
Clarine interposed: “You are only a servant, Manassa.”
“Am I a servant, Clarine? That boy is getting impudent, extremely impudent! I must bring him down a bit.” He shook his staff in Pascal’s face, again saying:
“I say he shall come. Do you hear?”
“There, there,” said Clarine, soothingly, “you are too old to get angry. A man a hundred years old ought to know better.”
“Old, hey! What if I am a hundred years old? Every day I live I learn something new. Who is this man that Vivienne wants to come to the party? Is he a Corsican?”
“No,” said Clarine, “he is a stranger—an Englishman—a sailor.”
“A sailor! They are good, true men. Speaking of sailors, I remember that soon after Manuel Della Coscia, the murderer and coward, ran away from Corsica, taking his son with him, I had a dream. I thought that the vessel in which he sailed, while on its way to Marseilles, was becalmed, and as it drifted there, helplessly, the devil came up out of the sea and, grasping the old Della Coscia and the young one, dragged them down with him—and I have liked the devil a little ever since.”
Even Pascal could not help smiling at this exhibition of devotion on the part of an old servant, but he did not propose to be further humiliated.
“Manassa,” he said, sternly, “we have had enough of this. Go to your own room.”