om your infancy, without any knowledge of
right or wrong, left to your natural instinct, shut up for fifteen years
in the Bagne with the most desperate villains, assailed by want and
wretchedness, compelled by your own disgrace, and the opinion of honest
men, to continue to haunt the low dens infested by the vilest
malefactors, you have not only remained honest, but remorse for your
crime has outlived the expiation which human justice had inflicted upon
you."

This simple and noble language was a new source of astonishment for the
Chourineur; he contemplated Rodolph with respect, mingled with fear and
gratitude, but was still unable to convince himself that all he heard
was reality.

"What, M. Rodolph, because you beat me, because, thinking you a workman,
like myself, because you spoke 'slang' as if you had learned it from the
cradle, I told you my history over two bottles of wine, and afterwards I
saved you from being drowned,--you give me a house--money--I shall be
master! Say really, M. Rodolph, once more, is it possible?"

"Believing me like yourself, you told me your history naturally and
without concealment, without withholding either what was culpable or
generous. I have judged you, and judged you well, and I have resolved to
recompense you."

"But, M. Rodolph, it ought not to be; there are poor labourers who have
been honest all their lives, and who--"

"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