“Messieurs!” cried the abused husband, “I have said it, and I will keep my word. If I have the pleasure of meeting you here again, I will see that you are presented with her wig.”
Here ensued a pandemonium of laughter and shouts of applause, but the Frenchman did not for a moment relax his tragic scowl.
“But if you find a Spaniard in the house?” some one asked.
“I shall then throw him out of the window,” he responded.
“But if there are a number there?”
“All the world out of the window.”
“But you will make a scandal; the neighbors will run in, the police, and the people.”
“And I,” cried the terrible man, striking his hand on his chest, “I will throw the neighbors, the police, the people, and the whole city out of the window if it is necessary.”
And he went on in this vein, swaggering about and gesticulating with the letter in one hand and the scissors in the other, in the midst of the convulsive laughter of the tourists.
Vivir para ver (Live and see), says the Spanish proverb; and it ought rather to say viager (travel), for it seems that only in hotels and on the train does one fall in with such originals. Who knows how it all came out in the end?