"Take your revenge some other way."
"How then, pray? Shall I strike you? That wouldn't make us square; I should still be your debtor, and I prefer not to owe you anything."
"Very well, pay your debt, if you choose, as you are so proud and obstinate," said the marquis, losing patience. "You are blind and cruel, as you don't see how I suffer. You would be sufficiently revenged if you understood; but you desire a brutal, cruel revenge. You insist upon reducing yourself to destitution and upon wearing yourself out with fatigue in order to make me blush and weep all the days of my life."
"If you take it that way—" said Jean, half-conquered; "no, I am not a bad man, and I can forgive you for a young man's folly. The devil! your head is still hot and your hand quick. What did it mean? However, let us say no more about it; once more, I forgive you."
"You consent to work for me?"
"At half price. Let us arrange it that way to settle the question."
"There is no comparison between my position and yours. There would be still less between your work and your wages. Be generous; that is the noblest and most perfect revenge. Come and work for me as you work for other people; forget that I did you a service which my purse never so much as discovered, and thus force me to be your debtor, since you will accept, in satisfaction of an irreparable outrage, the most paltry of reparations—money."
"I can't understand a word when you twist it about that way. However, we will see if we can get along together. But suppose I go to your house and my face makes you angry? Come, can't you tell what you have had against me all these years? You surely owe me that. It must be that, without knowing it, I resemble somebody who has injured you. It can't be hereabout: for I don't know of anybody except the curé of Cuzion's old horse that I look anything like."
"Ask me no questions; it is impossible for me to answer. Admit that I am subject to these outbreaks of madness, and love me through pity, as I cannot be loved otherwise."
"Monsieur de Boisguilbault," said the carpenter warmly, "you mustn't talk like that; you don't do yourself justice. You have faults, it is true, crotchets, fits of temper that are a little violent; but you know well that everybody is obliged to respect you in his heart, because you are a just man, because you love to do good and have never made any one about you unhappy; and then you have ideas, which you haven't got from books simply, ideas that rich men don't often have, and that would make the world happy if the world chose to think the same as you do. To have these ideas it isn't enough to be well-educated and sensible, but one must love everybody in the world and not have a stone in place of a heart; that is why it is necessary that God should have a hand in it. So don't talk about loving you through pity; you would have only to put out your hand to be loved, and you wouldn't have to change much to succeed."