All this catastrophe will be the work of a few minutes, for a
friend of mine lets the furnished room to Count Steinbock where
Valerie is at this moment taking coffee--a queer sort of coffee, but
she calls it her coffee. So let us understand each other, Brazil!--I
like Brazil, it is a hot country.--What is to become of my niece?"
"You old ostrich," said Montes, the plumes in the woman's bonnet
catching his eye, "you interrupted me.--If you show me--if I see
Valerie and that artist together--"
"As you would wish to be--" said Carabine; "that is understood."
"Then I will take this girl and carry her away--"
"Where?" asked Carabine.
"To Brazil," replied the Baron. "I will make her my wife. My uncle
left me ten leagues square of entailed estate; that is how I still
have that house and home. I have a hundred negroes--nothing but
negroes and negresses and negro brats, all bought by my uncle--"
"Nephew to a nigger-driver," said Carabine, with a grimace. "That
needs some consideration.--Cydalise, child, are you fond of the
blacks?"
"Pooh! Carabine, no nonsense," said the old woman. "The deuce is in
it! Monsieur and I are doing business."
"If I take up another Frenchwoman, I mean to have her to myself," the
Brazilian went on. "I warn you, mademoiselle, I am king there, and not
a constitutional king. I am Czar; my subjects are mine by purchase,
and no one can escape from my kingdom, which is a hundred leagues from
any human settlement, hemmed in by savages on the interior, and
divided from the sea by a wilderness as wide as France.
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