"With all my heart! I don't want to bring on an attack of epilepsy. You see plainly enough that, as regards the common course of ordinary justice, our mutual precautions were quite sufficient to ensure our safety; but he who now holds us in his formidable power goes to work differently; he believes that cutting off the heads of criminals is not a sufficient reparation for the wrongs they have done. With the proofs he has against us, he might give you and myself up to the laws of our country; but what would be got by that? Merely a couple of dead bodies, to help to enrich the churchyard." "True, true! This prince, devil, or demon--whichever he is--requires tears, groans, wringings of the heart, ere he is satisfied. And yet 'tis strange he should work so much woe for me, who know him not, neither have ever done him the least harm. Why, then, is he so bitter against me?" "In the first place, because he professes to sympathise with the sufferings of other men, whom he calls, simply enough, his brethren; and, secondly, because he knows those you have injured, and he punishes you according to his ideas." "But what right has he to exercise any such power over me?" "Why, look you, Jacques! Between ourselves it is not worth while to question the right of a man who might legally consign us to a scaffold. But what would be the result? Your two only relations are both dead; consequently government would profit by your wealth, to the injury of those you have wronged. On the other hand, by making your fortune the price of your life, Morel (the father of the unhappy girl you dishonoured), with his numerous family, may be placed beyond the reach of want; Madame de Fermont, the sister of the pretended self-murderer, Renneville, will get back her one hundred thousand crowns; Germain, falsely accused by you of robbery, will be reinstated in life, and placed at the head of the 'Bank for distressed Workmen,' which you are compelled to found and endow as an expiation for your many offences against society. And, candidly looking at the thing in the same point of view as he who now holds us in his clutches, it must be owned that, though mankind would have gained nothing by your death, they will be considerably advantaged by your life." "And this it is excites my rage, that forms my greatest torture!"