Donna Felicidade complained that these mental agitations disturbed her digestion. The drive down the Chiado restored her good-humor, however. Dark groups, gesticulating violently, stood out in bold relief against the brightly illuminated doorways of the Havaneira. In front of the Riding Academy carriages passed rapidly, the white capes of the drivers lighted up by the shifting gleams of the lamps. Donna Felicidade, a smile on her countenance, enjoyed the exhilaration produced by the winter air, and the brightness of the numerous gas-lights, and it was with a sense of satisfaction, when the carriage stopped, that she saw the porter of the Hotel Gibraltar open the door and stand waiting their orders, cap in hand.
Luiza gave him a message for Jorge.
They gazed in silence at the staircase of the hotel, on which the shaded lamps diffused a soft light. Donna Felicidade, curious to know something of hotel life, observed attentively the laundress, who was just then entering with a basket of clothes; then a lady who descended the staircase in evening dress, her feet encased in white satin slippers; and she smiled as she saw the passers-by cast curious glances at them through the open window of the carriage.
“They are dying to know who we are,” she said.
Luiza pressed her bouquet between her hands in silence. Jorge at last made his appearance at the head of the stairs, speaking with great energy to a very lean individual with his hat on one side of his head, his hands in the pockets of his narrow trousers, and an enormous cigar in his mouth. They stopped, gesticulated, whispered. Finally the lean individual pressed Jorge’s hand, whispered something in his ear, laughed under his breath, and turning back, clapped him on the shoulder, and obliged him to take another cigar. Then he pulled his hat still more to one side and went to speak to the porter.
Jorge ran out, smiling, to the carriage-door.
“What follies are these?” he said. “Theatres! Suppers! I shall apply for a divorce!”
He seemed to be in a very good humor. All he regretted, he said, was that he was not in evening dress, but he would remain in the background, in the box. And in order not to crush their gowns he took a seat outside.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE FATE OF THE SCORPION.
AT nine o’clock Sebastião left his house, and braving the sharp northeast wind that made the gas-jets flicker inside the globes, went slowly to the house of Vicente Azurara, a cousin of his, who was a commissary of police. An elderly female servant in shabby attire took him to the bachelor’s den where the Senhor Commissary was sweating away a severe cold. He found him enveloped in a great-coat, his feet and legs wrapped in a blanket, sipping hot grog, and reading “O Homem dos tres calções.” When Sebastião entered he took his eye-glass off his nose and raising his watery eyes, exclaimed,—