swagger.'"

"And such a costume! pure Greek!" continued Schinner. "Conflagration
of soul! you understand? Well, I questioned my Diafoirus; and he told
me that my neighbor was named Zena. Changed my linen. The husband, an
old villain, in order to marry Zena, paid three hundred thousand
francs to her father and mother, so celebrated was the beauty of that
beautiful creature, who was truly the most beautiful girl in all
Dalmatia, Illyria, Adriatica, and other places. In those parts they
buy their wives without seeing them--"

"I shall not go _there_," said Pere Leger.

"There are nights when my sleep is still illuminated by the eyes of
Zena," continued Schinner. "The husband was sixty-nine years of age,
and jealous! not as a tiger, for they say of a tiger, 'jealous as a
Dalmatian'; and my man was worse than A Dalmatian, one Dalmatian,--he
was three and a half Dalmatians at the very least; he was an Uscoque,
tricoque, archicoque in a bicoque of a paltry little place like
Zara--"

"Horrid fellow, and 'horrider bellow,'" put in Mistigris.

"Ha! good," said Georges, laughing.

"After being a corsair, and probably a pirate, he thought no more of
spitting a Christian on his dagger than I did of spitting on the
ground," continued Schinner. "So that was how the land lay. The old
wretch had millions, and was hideous with the loss of an ear some
pacha had cut off, and the want of an eye left I don't know where.