"Hum! hum!" coughed the old man, as if swallowing a disagreeable dose.
"So he is a miser? He must be rich then?"
"I don't know, but one may be as avaricious with a small fortune as with a great one; and if we are to measure M. Ramon's wealth by his parsimony, he must be a triple millionaire—such a wretched old miser!" continued Louis, contemptuously, biting into his bread with a sort of frenzy.
"Had you been brought up in luxury and abundance, I might understand your recriminations against this old miser—as you call him," rejoined old Richard, testily, "but we have always lived in such poverty that, however miserly M. Ramon may be, you must have found but little difference between his manner of existence and our own."
"But you don't understand me, father. M. Ramon keeps two servants, and we have none; he occupies a whole house and we live in one attic room; he has three or four dishes for his dinner, while we eat anything we may chance to have. And yet, we live a hundred times better than this greedy personage!"
"I really don't understand you, my child," returned the father, more and more annoyed at his son's opinion of his late host. "There can certainly be no comparison between that gentleman's luxury and our poverty."
"My dear father, we are veritably poor, at least! We cheerfully endure our privations; and if in my days of ambition, I have sometimes dreamed of a more comfortable existence, it was not for myself, you may rest assured, for I am perfectly satisfied with my fate."
"I know your kind heart, my dear boy, as well as your love for me; and my only consolation in our poverty is to know that you do not complain of your condition."
"Complain! do you not share it with me? and then, after all, what more could we want?"
"We might want a little more comfort."
"Upon my word, I don't see it in that light, father. We don't eat stuffed chicken, it is true; but we eat all we want and with appetite—witness this empty paper and the disappearance of the four-pound loaf between us. Our clothes are shabby and worn, but they are warm; our room is up five nights of stairs, but it shelters us; we earn from sixteen to eighteen hundred francs per annum between us—the sum is not enormous, but it suffices; we have no debts! Ah! my dear father, may heaven never send us worse days, and I shall never complain."