Page:Christopher Wren--the wages of virtue.djvu/252

218 nine-tenths of the sorrows of mankind. But one could not do without them.… Suddenly Carmelita started back, and clapped her hands with a cry of glee. "The Holy Virgin be praised! I have it! I have it! Unless Légionnaire Jean Boule confesses his fault and begs my Luigi's pardon—out into the gutter goes his Russian mistress," and Carmelita pirouetted with joy.… Thank God! Thank God! Here was a solution, and she embraced her lover again and again. Luigi's face was wreathed in smiles. Excellente! That would do the trick admirably, and the thrice-accursed, and ten-times-too-clever English aristocratico should publicly apologise, if he wished to save his mistress.… Yes, that would be very much pleasanter than a mere stab-in-the-back revenge, as well as safer. There is always some slight risk, even in Sidi-bel-Abbès, about arranging a murder, and blackmail is always unpleasant—for the blackmailed. Ho-ho! Ho-ho! Only to think of the cold and haughty Englishman publicly apologising and begging Luigi, of his mercifulness, to cancel the duel. Corpo di Bacco, he should do it on his knees. "Rivoli the Coward," forsooth, and what of "Jean Boule the Coward," after this? … Yes; Jean Boule defeated, the Russian girl denounced when clear of Carmelita's Café, if Madame proved unkind, and denounced in the Café together with Carmelita if Madame accepted him. He himself need not appear personally in the matter at all. And when Carmelita was jailed or deported, and the Russian girl sent to Biribi, or turned into a figlia del reggimento, the Englishman should still get it in the back one dark night—and Signor Luigi Rivoli would wax fat behind Madame's bar, until his five years' service was com-