"Well, and my own heart aches even to bursting as I think of your fate and that of your children, while I recollect that I am powerless to help you. I seem always gay and merry; but don't you be deceived by appearances, Jeanne! I tell you what, I have two descriptions of gaiety, my gay gaiety, and my sad gaiety. I have neither the strength or the courage to indulge in envy, hatred, or malice, like the other prisoners; I never go beyond words, more or less droll as occasion requires. My cowardice and bodily weakness would never have allowed me to be worse than I am. And nothing but the opportunity presenting itself of robbing that poor little lone house, where there was neither a cat nor a dog to frighten one, would have drawn me into the scheme that brought me here. And then, again, by chance it was a brilliant moonlight night; for if ever there was a poor devil afraid of being alone in the dark it is me." "Ah, dear brother, I have always told you you are better than you yourself think! Well, I trust the judges will be of my opinion and deal mercifully with you." "Mercy! What, for me, a liberated convict? Don't reckon too much on that or you'll be disappointed. But, hang it, what care I? Here or elsewhere is all the same to me! Let my judges do as they will with me, I shall bear them no ill-will. For you are right; I am not a bad sort of fellow at heart; and those who are worse than myself I hate with all the hatred of a good man, and show my dislike by raillery of every sort. You can imagine, can you not, that, by dint of relating stories in which, to please my auditors, I always make those who wantonly torment others receive the reward of their wickedness in the end, I get into the habit of feeling all the indignation and virtuous desire for vengeance I relate?" "I should never have thought such persons as your prison companions would have been interested in such recitals!"