Juliana detested the neighbors. She knew they made sport of her; that they mocked her, and called her old parchment; therefore she was resolved that it should not be through her they would know anything. They might burst with curiosity, for what she saw and heard she would keep to herself,—“to make use of when the occasion should offer,” as she angrily thought.
The tobacconist remained standing at her door, very much puzzled. Paula the furniture-dealer, who had seen her talking to Juliana, came up to her, shuffling his feet, encased in carpet slippers, along the ground.
“Has old parchment unbosomed herself to you?” he said.
“I have not been able to get a word out of her,” she answered.
Paula put his hands in his pockets, and said with a disgusted expression,—
“The wife of the engineer bribes her. It is she who carries messages, who opens the little door at night.”
“I cannot believe that!”
“Senhora Helena,” said Paula, looking at her with a superior air, “you are always in your shop; but I—I know what women of high society are, to the very tips of their fingers. They are a vicious lot!”
“That is all through the want of religion,” sighed the tobacconist.
“Religion,” said Paula, shrugging his shoulders, “is what it is, and the priests are what they are.” And he added with clenched fists, “The priests are a mass of living rottenness!”