“Do not juggle with balls which you do not know,” said Balsamo, eyeing him with curiosity as he frowned. “In grown men it is nonsense, in the young, rashness. Have pride but don’t be a fool. To resume, what have you done?”
“Nothing; so I return the money,” and he counted out minutely the notes on the table.
“He is honest,” mused the count, “not avaricious. He has wit; he has firmness. He is a man.”
“Now I want to account for the two louis I had.”
“Do not overdo it,” said the other: “it is handsome to restore a hundred thousand, but puerile to return fifty.”
“I was not going to return them, but I wanted to show how I spent them, for I need to borrow twenty thousand.”
“You do not mean any evil to the woman?”
“No, not to her father or her brother.”
“I know: but one may wound by dogging a person and annoying him.”
“Far from anything of that kind, I want to leave the country.”