"I am going to tell you all about one whom I hated by instinct and whom I find to be a hereditary enemy." "What do you mean?
He is but a boy and cannot have wronged you or yours." "His father, major, murdered my loveliest daughter and interrupted her career of splendor! Alas! one that had a palace where kings were received and to whom princes often sued in vain!" "Halloa! you, to have a daughter of that calibre!" and he laughed coarsely.
"You, who know everything, my officer, must at least have heard of the peerless Iza, the original of the most beautiful statue which--reproduced in the precious and the mean metals, in clay, in parian, in plaster--made the round of the civilized world?
'The Bather!' That was my daughter! She had her faults--even the truly lovely have mental flaws, though bodily they are perfect--but whilst she lived, her poor old mother dressed in silks and velvets--not in rags; she ate and drank delicately, not sour crusts and sourer wine; she slept on down and not in a cellar!" Von Sendlingen shook his head; he was of the new generation and he preserved but a dim remembrance of the noted beauties--the stars of the living galaxy decorating the first cycle of the Bonapartist Restoration.
"I foresaw it all and I warned her; but she was so perverse! It is my duty to avenge her, and to see that the same blunder is not made by--no matter! Enough that my science--at which you smile, I see--points out to me that your greatest enemies and mine are in that house." She gestured toward the hotel, which the major had been studying.
"Do you say enemies in the plural ?" he said, ceasing to curl his lip in mocking of the witch.
"In that house are the Jewish couple, father and daughter, who played at the Harmonista, La Belle Stamboulane and the Turkophonist Daniel, and the young man who belabored your excellency so that he almost died of the drubbing." "Hang you for being so profuse in your explanations! How do you know all this ?" "The servant-maid is a customer of mine.

I tell her fortune and she tells me all that goes on in her master's house.

The young man has been cared for there these five or six days, and they only await the chance to smuggle him out of the city.

Have him seized and secure him in prison, where he shall rot--for I declare to you, as surely as there are stars above, these letters of the divine volume in which soothsayers read, he will be your death in the end unless you are his." "I would not be contented with that.

I want to return him blow for blow--and yet you say I cannot fight him in duello." "Listen, my officer.