"Am I a savage then?"
"Yes."
"Be off, you are tiresome after a while! Look out that I don't set myself against you too?"
"I defy you to do it."
"Why so?"
"Because you know that I am the only person on earth who is just a little attached to you and devoted to you, in spite of all your shortcomings."
"You see! You admit now that Julien detests me."
"Make him love you; then you will have two friends instead of one."
"Ah! yes! you want me to redeem the house! Very good, when Julien is an orphan, I will look after him, on condition that he never mentions his mother to me."
"Perhaps you would like to have him kill her, would you? I tell you, uncle, you are mad, nothing more nor less. You are immeasurably vain, and you have the prejudices of the nobility in a more virulent form than any of the people who have ancestors. You were not in love with Mademoiselle de Meuil, I am sure; but her rank made you long to supplant your brother with her. You were frantically jealous of poor André, not because of that lovely and lovable young woman, but because of the parchments which she brought him with her dowry, and because of the sort of lustre that was reflected on him. In a word, you do not hate the nobles, you adore them, you envy them, you would give all your millions to have been born somebody, and your outbreaks of rage against them on every occasion are simply the spleen of a discarded lover, just as your hatred of my aunt is the spleen of a wounded and humiliated plebeian. That is your mania, my poor uncle; every man has his own, they say, but this one makes you cruel, and I am very sorry for you."