"Good-bye, madame."
"Do you know English?"
"Yes."
"Well, my son, thou shalt be King. That is to say, you shall come into your inheritance," said the dreadful old witch, foreseen by Shakespeare, and who seemed to know her Shakespeare.
She left Hulot amazed at the door of his study.
"The consultation is for to-morrow!" said she, with the gracious air of a regular client.
She saw two persons coming, and wished to pass in their eyes a pinchbeck countess.
"What impudence!" thought Hulot, bowing to his pretended client.
Baron Montes de Montejanos was a lion, but a lion not accounted for. Fashionable Paris, Paris of the turf and of the town, admired the ineffable waistcoats of this foreign gentleman, his spotless patent-leather boots, his incomparable sticks, his much-coveted horses, and the negro servants who rode the horses and who were entirely slaves and most consumedly thrashed.
His fortune was well known; he had a credit account up to seven hundred thousand francs in the great banking house of du Tillet; but he was always seen alone. When he went to "first nights," he was in a stall. He frequented no drawing-rooms. He had never given his arm to a girl on the streets. His name would not be coupled with that of any pretty woman of the world. To pass his time he played whist at the Jockey-Club. The world was reduced to calumny, or, which it thought funnier, to laughing at his peculiarities; he went by the name of Combabus.