"You strike a key-note, my friend."

"Someone has promised to pay you."

"No one has promised to pay me."

"You puzzle and confuse me, master. You're a stranger in Geneva, I'm told."

"It is true."

"I've lived about here half my life. I was born in Sierre. My father worked in the foundry, my mother in the fields. You are not a stranger in Sierre."

"I am a stranger there; I never visited the town."

"My father was born in Martigny. You knew my father."

"I did not know your father."

"My mother--her father once owned a vineyard. You knew her."