"After all, that is something to be proud of, my dear duke. It is very flattering to make a man tremble who has killed tigers as our sportsmen kill partridges."
"You know very well why I am still sufficiently a child to tremble before you, Marianne," murmured José. "At my age, it is folly; but I am as superstitious as gamblers—or sailors, those other gamblers, who stake their lives, and I have never met you without feeling that I was about to suffer."
"To suffer from what?"
"To suffer through you," said the duke. "Do you know that if I had never met you, it is probable that I should never have seen all those countries of which I spoke just now, and that I should have been married long ago, at Madrid or at Toledo?"
"And I prevented you?—"
Rosas interrupted Marianne, saying abruptly, and smiling almost sadly:
"Ah! my dear one, if you only knew—you have prevented many things."
"If I have prevented you from being unhappy, I am delighted. Besides, it is evident that you have never had a very determined inclination for marriage, seeing that you have preferred to trot around the world."
"Like Don Quixote, eh? Do you know, moreover, since we are talking of all these things, that you have saved me from dying in the corner like an abandoned dog?"
"I?" said Marianne.