"I know it, and it may be I have done for many others more than I am doing for you; but, if the man who lives honestly in the midst of honest men, encouraged by their esteem, deserves assistance and support, he who, in spite of the aversion of good men, remains honest amidst the most infamous associates on earth,--he, too, deserves assistance and support. This is not all; you saved my life, you saved the life of Murphy, the dearest friend I have; and what I do for you is as much the dictate of personal gratitude as it is the desire to withdraw from pollution a good and generous nature, which has been perverted, but not destroyed. And that is not all." "What else have I done, M. Rodolph?" Rodolph took his hand, and, shaking it heartily, said: "Filled with commiseration for the mischief which had befallen the very man who had tried just before to kill you, you even gave him an asylum in your humble dwelling,--No. 9, close to Notre Dame." "You knew, then, where I lived, M. Rodolph?" "If you forget the services you have done to me, I do not. When you left my house you were followed, and were seen to enter there with the Schoolmaster." "But M. Murphy told me that you did not know where I lived, M. Rodolph." "I was desirous of trying you still further; I wished to know if you had disinterestedness in your generosity, and I found that, after your courageous conduct, you returned to your hard daily labour, asking nothing, hoping for nothing, not even uttering a word of reproach for the apparent ingratitude with which I repaid your services; and when Murphy yesterday proposed to you employment a little more profitable than that of your habitual toil, you accepted it with joy, with gratitude." "Why, M. Rodolph, do you see, sir, four francs a day are always four francs a day. As to the service I rendered you, why, it is rather I who ought to thank you." "How so?" "Yes, yes, M. Rodolph," he added, with a saddened air, "I do not forget that, since I knew you, it was you who said to me those two words,'You have both heart and honour!' It is astonishing how I have thought of that. They are only two little words, and yet those two words had that effect. But, in truth, sow two small grains of anything in the soil, and they will put forth shoots." This comparison, just and almost poetical as it was, struck Rodolph. In sooth, two words, but two magic words for the heart that understood them, had almost suddenly developed the generous instincts which were inherent in this energetic nature. "You placed the Schoolmaster at St. Mandé?" said Rodolph. "Yes, M. Rodolph. He made me change his notes for gold, and buy a belt, which I sewed round his body, and in which I put his 'mopuses;' and then, good day! He boards for thirty sous a day with good people, to whom that sum is of much service. When I have time to leave my wood-piles, I shall go and see how he gets on." "Your wood-piles! You forget your shop, and that you are here at home!"