“You do not think I would let you go off with empty pockets? I would give you any thing you may ask.”
“Really?” cried the vagrant.
And looking at Jacques with a mingled expression of hope, surprise, and delight, he added,—
“You see I should want a good deal. Winter is long. I should want—let me see, I should want fifty Napoleons!”
“You shall have a hundred,” said Jacques.
Trumence’s eyes began to dance. He probably had a vision of those irresistible taverns at Rochefort, where he had led such a merry life. But he could not believe such happiness to be real.
“You are not making fun of me?” he asked timidly.
“Do you want the whole sum at once?” replied Jacques. “Wait.”
He drew from the drawer in his table a thousand-franc note. But, at the sight of the note, the vagrant drew back the hand which he had promptly stretched out to take the money.
“Oh! that kind? No! I know what that paper is worth: I have had some of them myself. But what could I do with one of them now? It would not be worth more to me than a leaf of a tree; for, at the first place I should want it changed, they would arrest me.”