bad!" Carlotta was over eighty; her face was like tanned leather, her
skin loose and shriveled; a handful of gray hair grew on the top of
her head, and was twisted up with a silver pin. Brigitta was also of a
goodly age, but younger than Carlotta, fat and portly, and round as
a barrel. She was pitted by the small-pox, and had but one eye; but,
being a widow, and well-to-do in the world, is not without certain
pretensions. She wears a yellow petticoat and a jacket trimmed with
black lace. In her hair, black and frizzly as a negro's, a rose
is stuck on one side.--The hair had been dressed that morning by a
barber, to whom she paid five francs a month for this adornment.--Some
rows of dirty seed-pearl are fastened round her fat throat; long gold
ear-rings bob in her ears, and in her hand is a bright paper fan, with
which she never ceases fanning herself.

"She's never spent so much as a penny at my shop," Carlotta goes on to
say. "Not a penny. She'd not spare a flask of wine to a beggar
dying at her door. Stuck-up old devil! But she's ruined, ruined with
lawsuits. Ruined, I say. Ha! ha! Her time will come."

Finding Carlotta wearisome, Brigitta's one eye has again wandered off
to the man with the red waistcoat. Carlotta sees this, watching her
out of her deep-set, glassy eyes. Speak Carlotta will, and Brigitta
shall listen, she was determined.

"I could tell you things"--she lowers her voice and speaks into the
other's ear--"things--horrors--about Casa Guinigi!"

Brigitta starts. "Gracious! You frighten me! What things?"

"Ah, things that would make your hair stand on end. It is I who say