You showed me the door like a
mangy dog at the first words I uttered as to the state of my feelings;
you only made my passion--my obstinacy, if you will--twice as strong,
and you shall be mine."
"Indeed; how?"
"I do not know; but it will come to pass. You see, madame, an idiot of
a perfumer--retired from business--who has but one idea in his head,
is stronger than a clever fellow who has a thousand. I am smitten with
you, and you are the means of my revenge; it is like being in love
twice over. I am speaking to you quite frankly, as a man who knows
what he means. I speak coldly to you, just as you do to me, when you
say, 'I never will be yours,' In fact, as they say, I play the game
with the cards on the table. Yes, you shall be mine, sooner or later;
if you were fifty, you should still be my mistress. And it will be;
for I expect anything from your husband!"
Madame Hulot looked at this vulgar intriguer with such a fixed stare
of terror, that he thought she had gone mad, and he stopped.
"You insisted on it, you heaped me with scorn, you defied me--and I
have spoken," said he, feeling that he must justify the ferocity of
his last words.
"Oh, my daughter, my daughter," moaned the Baroness in a voice like a
dying woman's.
"Oh! I have forgotten all else," Crevel went on. "The day when I was
robbed of Josepha I was like a tigress robbed of her cubs; in short,
as you see me now.--Your daughter? Yes, I regard her as the means of
winning you.
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