“It was given to me by one of her servants.”
“Why the devil do you tell me such lies?” exclaimed the young man in a fury; “it's some d——d practical joke in the most infernal bad taste, and, by God! I have a mind to shoot you.”
Castrillon was not given to the utterance of vain threats, and his anger was so great that the wretched Isidore, shaking, whining, and cursing, edged round the room with his back to the wall and his eyes fixed on his master.
“Stand still, will you?” continued the Marquis; “I want to hear a little more. How much were you paid for giving me this twaddle? Answer me that.”
“Two guineas!”
“Two? I'll bet you had twenty. Stand still, I tell you, or I'll kick you again. Do you expect me to believe that Mrs. Parflete's servant gave you twenty guineas?”
“No, I don't,” answered Isidore. “I don't expect you to believe anything. But if that isn't Madame Parflete's writing, whose writing is it?”
“That is just what I mean to find out,” replied Castrillon, “and that is why I won't shoot you till it suits my convenience.”
Isidore, who had a venomous attachment to the Marquis, burst into tears. For many generations their respective ancestors had stood in the relation, each to the other, of tyrant and dependent. Isidore's father had robbed, cheated, deceived, and adored Castrillon's father; the fathers of these two reprobates had observed the same measure of whippings and treacheries, and so it had been always from the first registered beginnings of the noble and the slavish house. But an Isidore had never been known to leave a Castrillon's service. The hereditary, easy-going forbearance, on the one hand, which found killing less tedious than a crude dismissal, and the hereditary guilty conscience, on the other, which had to recognise the justice of punishment, kept the connection rudely loyal.
“I detest you,” said Castrillon; “I hate the sight of you.”