"What, M. Rodolph, because you beat me, because, thinking you a workman, like myself, because you spoke 'slang' as if you had learned it from the cradle, I told you my history over two bottles of wine, and afterwards I saved you from being drowned,—you give me a house—money—I shall be master! Say really, M. Rodolph, once more, is it possible?"
"Believing me like yourself, you told me your history naturally and without concealment, without withholding either what was culpable or generous. I have judged you, and judged you well, and I have resolved to recompense you."
"But, M. Rodolph, it ought not to be; there are poor labourers who have been honest all their lives, and who—"
"I know it, and it may be I have done for many others more than I am doing for you; but, if the man who lives honestly in the midst of honest men, encouraged by their esteem, deserves assistance and support, he who, in spite of the aversion of good men, remains honest amidst the most infamous associates on earth,—he, too, deserves assistance and support. This is not all; you saved my life, you saved the life of Murphy, the dearest friend I have; and what I do for you is as much the dictate of personal gratitude as it is the desire to withdraw from pollution a good and generous nature, which has been perverted, but not destroyed. And that is not all."
"What else have I done, M. Rodolph?"
Rodolph took his hand, and, shaking it heartily, said:
"Filled with commiseration for the mischief which had befallen the very man who had tried just before to kill you, you even gave him an asylum in your humble dwelling,—No. 9, close to Notre Dame."
"You knew, then, where I lived, M. Rodolph?"
"If you forget the services you have done to me, I do not. When you left my house you were followed, and were seen to enter there with the Schoolmaster."
"But M. Murphy told me that you did not know where I lived, M. Rodolph."