A Servant of Satan: Romantic Career of Prado the Assassin — page 197: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A SERVANT OF SATAN, 189 who were nothing but vulgar sharpers, had got into bad re- pute with the jewnesse doree, who cautiously avoided going there, he one fine morning gave the slip to his army of creditors, and, abandoning Dolores without a cent of money, started alone for Paris. The unfortunate woman, when she discovered that she had been deserted, nearly went out of her mind with grief and despair. But nothing could destroy her love for Fred- erick, and she resolved to discover his hiding-place and to - entreat him to let her live with him, if only as his servant. Women are singularly illogical. The whole world may be against a man, but the woman who loves him will stand _ boldly forward as hischampion. No matter how vile a man “may be, if a woman loves him she exalts him to the rank of a demi-god and refuses to see the clay feet of her idol. When he is forsaken by all, she still clings to him. When all others frown, she still smiles on him, and when he dies, she adores and reverences his memory as that of a martyr of circumstances. God help the man who in time of trouble has not a true and loving woman to stand by his side and help him through lfe’s bitter struggle! However, Dolores, being penniless, had to leave her little house and to seek refuge at the lodgings of her old nurse, who lived in a narrow, dark street in the slums of Madrid. Old Carmen loved her, and, although the good woman was poor herself (her husband having, before he departed from this life, managed to drink up every penny), she took the unfortunate Dolores in and tended her through a violent fit of illness, brought on by sorrow and privation. Dolores’ home was now in a dark lane which glowed like a furnace during the hot months of the Spanish summer. She tried to earn some money by doing a little plain needle- work,,but often as she sat by the open casemeni of the small window which looked out into a dirty, ill-smelling alley, where ragged children played all day long in the dried-up m 2») comicbooks.co