The clairvoyante shook her stick at Wilhelm. "Leave us alone," she cried; "I want no interference."
When the door had closed Zara turned upon me like some wild thing, and I tell you, Franz, I wished myself at our little bower at Villa Huegel, playing dominoes with you or Mamma.
"Who art thou?" she cried. "So young, so gentle, so kind of aspect, yet I see thee in a haze of blood."
She walked around me in a circle, dragging her terrible crutch, the mice capering and vaulting.
"I can't make it out," she kept mumbling; "looks the German, but here men do the ruling, and her power for destruction—— Where does it come in?"
Of course I was too frightened to utter a word. I merely gazed upon my tormenter and trembled.
The soothsayer drew her garments around her bones and settled down on a low stool before the hearth. With her crutch she stirred the ashes, separating them from live coals and addressing each heap in turn as if they were human beings. As I perceived with horror, poor me was the subject of her monologue.
"Keep to your hell-hole, Mother Toffana," she muttered, sending a half-dead coal into the corner (I ought to tell you, Franz, that I have been reading Alexandre Dumas of late, otherwise I wouldn't have understood half the things she said). "Toffana, you are not in it with this child," she continued. "And Joanna of Naples, husband-killer and warrior, the number of men and women and children that died by you and for you is nothing compared with the hosts she will send to slaughter."
"Madame la Marquise de Brinvilliers," she said to a live coal, drawing it nearer, "come and feast your eyes on this girl. You did your work all right for undertakers, but were a pitiful slacker just the same."
She rose and bowed ceremoniously.