"I perfectly appreciate your delicacy; but a service like the one you have rendered me and my friend is an eternal bond. Take no heed of your future fortune, it is made."
"Pardon me, pardon me!" said Valentine, earnestly; "we do not understand one another at all; you mistake us. We are not men who expect to be paid for having acted as our hearts dictated. You owe us nothing."
"I do not propose or pretend to pay you, gentlemen. I only wish, in order to attach you to me, to propose to you to share my good or evil fortune; in a word, I offer myself to you as a brother."
"In that case we at once accede," said Louis, "and will endeavour to prove ourselves worthy of such an offer."
"I have no doubt you will. Only I beg you not to be misled by my words; the life I am leading at present is full of perils."
"I can suppose that," said Valentine, with a laugh. "The scene at which we have been present, and the denoûment of which we perhaps hastened, makes it pretty evident that your existence is not of the most peaceful nature."
"What you have as yet seen is nothing. Do you know nobody in this country?"
"Nobody."
"Your political opinions, then, are unformed?"
"As regards Chili, completely."