Dissipating his hoards, sacrificing his last chattel, all that was now a blank. But his hoards, his chattels, were all that were now worth while, and the miser clamored for them, and them only. Vengeance, however, is an ironical bargainer. Vengeance kept her pay, and “abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate,” had dried and left a stranded soul, parched by avarice. Driscoll was moved by a pity half ashamed.
“Look here, Murgie,” he threatened terribly, “Do you say I stole your––By the Great Horn Spoon, I’ll––” He flung his hand to his revolver.
The counter-irritant had instant effect. All moisture died out of the rat eyes, leaving them two little horrible beads. The miser shrank, groveled, in mortal terror of some physical hurt.
496CHAPTER XXIII
The Contrariness of Jacqueline
“Much adoe there was, God wot;
He wold love, and she wold not.”
–Ballad of Phillida and Corydon.
Maximiliano I. of Mexico was dead. His dynasty and his Empire were the frippery of a past time. Yet there was his capital, still holding out against the Republic. Leonardo Marquez, the Leopard, spitefully refused to capitulate. But why he would not, no one knew, neither the starving City, nor the patient besieger outside. No one, unless it was Jacqueline. The very day of the triple execution she called on Escobedo, commander in chief at Querétaro. She desired to return to the capital, and she wanted a pass through the Republic’s lines there. She mentioned, in case it were any inducement, that the place would fall within twenty-four hours after her arrival. Jacqueline had difficulty to speak at all. She could not endure the general’s monstrous flaps of ears, his rabbinical beard, his cruel black eyes.
“María purísima,” he exclaimed, “you cannot mean, señorita, that you, all alone, will deliver the City of Mexico into our hands?”
“It will certainly be an incident of my stay there,” she replied.