"Oh, do not say such things!" exclaimed she, making the sign of the cross over the spot to which Constantine pointed. And to smother such fearful words she shut his mouth with a long, fervent kiss.
"Child!" murmured the monster, and, taking his wife's head between his two hands, like a bear hugging the head of a lamb, he looked into her eyes. "Child! Does it not go against you to kiss my mouth? Do not the fumes of tobacco disgust you?"
With an innocent glance, she answered:
"I suppose every man's mouth emits the same smell of tobacco. I remember my father's did."
At these words the monster pressed her with such force to himself as though he would stifle her in his embrace.
"Oh, wondrous child! She knows neither the lies nor the flatteries of a court lady. She does not tell me that my breath is ambrosian. She only knows that it was so when her father kissed her, and therefore the lips of every man must be the same! Wife of mine, my father was as hideous as I am, and his wife loved him as dearly as you do me. And yet he was as repulsive as I."
"You cannot tell what you are like."
"Oh yes, I know. My mother used to tell me. She loved me best of all her children; spoiled me; allowed me my own way in everything. When my brothers and sisters used to complain about it, she would say, 'Let him alone. It is because he has his father's ugliness that I love him so.' But I am a bad man too, and that my father never was. True, he was hot-headed, and a blow was as quick as a word with him; but I am savage by instinct. I am bad because I like it."
"That is not true. Who says so?"
"I say it myself. Often when I come home with an inch of cane in my hand, having broken it on the backs of all who have come in my way, I feel as if I could break the rest of it on my own head." Here, for the first time noticing that the broken cane still hung from his wrist by the strap, he flung it hastily from him.