“What are you thinking of doing?” asked Quentin.
“Of denouncing him. I have not done so before on account of my older brother. I don’t want to bring shame to him in his last days. As for the other brother, I don’t mind; he is an egoist. When the Marquis dies, you’ll see what I shall do. If I die before he does, you will avenge me. Will you, Quentin?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all I want. Your word is enough. Ask me for whatever you want, and come to see me.”
Señora Patrocinio kissed Quentin’s cheek, and he left the house confounded.
“Now,” he murmured, “this woman turns out to be the sister of a marquis, married to a count, and my aunt. And she wants us to avenge ourselves. Why then let’s do so ... or let’s not. It’s all the same to me. You know your plan, Quentin,” he said to himself. “Who are you?” he asked himself, and immediately replied, “You are a man of action. Very good!”
CHAPTER XVII
“I AM A LITTLE CATILINE”
THE coterie was the most select in the Casino. Its members used to meet there in order to speak ill of everybody. There were young men who did nothing but ride horseback, try the strength of young bulls by prodding them with long pikes from horseback, and gamble their souls away; old men whose sole occupation was talking politics; and a great variety of persons who had made a business of amusing themselves—a fact which did not prevent one from reading a gloomy weariness in their expressions.
This meeting of aristocrats and plebeians, of rich men and poor men, of vagrants employed and unemployed, possessed a rare character, which was produced by a preponderance of aristocratic prejudices, mixed with a great simplicity.
In this coterie, so democratic in appearance, high and low had their say; even the waiters in the Casino mixed in the conversation. It possessed those characteristics, partly affable, partly coarse, that the Spanish aristocracy had had until foreign ideas and customs began to transform and polish it.