These men had asked for a private room, that they might be alone. One of them was still young, and pretty well dressed. But the disorder in his clothes, his loose cravat, his shirt spotted with wine, his dishevelled hair, his look of fatigue, his marble complexion, his bloodshot eyes, announced that a night of debauch had preceded this morning; whilst his abrupt and heavy gesture, his hoarse voice, his look, sometimes brilliant, and sometimes stupid, proved that to the last fumes of the intoxication of the night before, were joined the first attacks of a new state of drunkenness. The companion of this man said to him, as he touched his glass with his own: “Your health, my boy!”
“Yours!” answered the young man; “though you look to me like the devil.”
“I!—the devil?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“How did you come to know me?”
“Do you repent that you ever knew me?”
“Who told you that I was a prisoner at Sainte-Pelagie?”
“Didn’t I take you out of prison?”
“Why did you take me out?”