"Not in the face of bullets, anyhow!"
"Oh! bullets only kill, when all is said."
He began to laugh.
"I am indeed," he went on, "as timid as I say, to a point you would not believe possible.... For instance, I know M. Charles Nodier."
"You know Charles Nodier?"
"Yes, and quite sufficiently well to have asked him for an introduction to you, or to M. Hugo, or anybody else, but I never dared ask him for one."
"You did wrong: Nodier is a capital fellow, and would most certainly have given you such an introduction."
"I am well aware of it ... although I began by wanting to kill him; but, as afterwards I prevented him from being killed, we are quits."
"What the deuce are you telling me?"