"Hunger? I had a hundred and twenty francs when they arrested me--the change of a thousand-franc note, without counting that the protector of whom I have spoken, who does not know that I am here, will never let me want anything. But since I have spoken to you of my protector, you ought to believe that I am speaking the truth, because before him it is like going down on your knees. The torrent of blows I rained down on Bones is a fashion of his, which I copied after nature. The idea of the robbery, on account of him, came into my head. In fine, if you are here, instead of being strangled by Skeleton, thanks to him." "But this protector?" "Is yours also." "Mine?" "Yes! M. Rudolph protects you; when I say Monsieur, it is his highness that I ought to say, for he is a prince; but I am accustomed to call him M. Rudolph, and he allows it." "You mistake," said Germain, more and more surprise; "I do not know any prince." "Yes, but he knows you; you do not doubt it? It is possible--it is his way. He hears there is a good man in trouble--slap! the good man is relieved, and he is neither seen nor known. I perplex you; for him happiness falls from the clouds like a tile on the head. Thus, patience! some day or other you will receive your tile." "Truly, what you say confounds me." "You will have a great deal more of the same! To return to my protector: some time since, after a service which he pretended I had rendered him, he procured me a slap-up situation. I have no need to tell you what--it would be too long; in a word, he sent me to Marseilles, to embark for my place. I left Paris contented as a beggar! Good! But soon that changed. A supposition: let us say that I left on a fine sunny day. Well! the next day is cloudy; the day after very cloudy, and every succeeding day more and more so, until, at length, it became as black as the devil. Do you comprehend?" "Not exactly." "Well, let us see. Did you ever keep a pup?" "What a singular question!" "Have you had a dog that loved you well, and that was lost?" "No." "Then I will tell you at once, that when at a distance from M. Rudolph, I was restless, uneasy, alarmed, like a dog that had lost his master. It was brutish, but the dogs also are brutes, and this does not prevent them from being attached to their masters, and remembering quite as much the good mouthfuls as the kickings they are accustomed to receive; and M. Rudolph had given me better than good mouthfuls, for, do you see, for me M. Rudolph is all in all. From a wicked, brutal, savage, and riotous rascal, he made me a kind of honest man, by saying only two words to me; but those words were like magic." "And those words, what are they? What did he say to you?"