FOR a moment he said nothing more. And then: “M. Ferminard?”
“Yes, M. de Rochefort?”
“I have been a very great fool, it seems to me, for I did not in the least consider the fact, when I played that deception upon you, that it was an unworthy one. You believed in me. You had formed an opinion of me. You paid me the compliment of never imagining that I would deceive you. Well, honestly and as between man and man, I looked on the matter more in the light of a joke. I said to myself, ‘How he will stare when he finds I have outwitted him.’ It was the trick of a child, for it seems to me one grows childish in prison. Give me that big sou, M. Ferminard.”
Ferminard passed the coin through the hole and Rochefort, rising, opened it, put the little saw in, closed it, and returned it to the other.
“And here is the rope,” said he. “I have no more use for it.”
“But, monsieur,” said Ferminard. He paused, and for a moment said nothing more. Ferminard was, in fact, covered with confusion. Rochefort’s unworthy trick had struck him on the cheek, so to say, and left it burning. He felt ashamed. Ashamed of Rochefort for playing the trick and ashamed of himself for having found it out, and ashamed of Rochefort knowing that he—Ferminard—thought less of him. Then, breaking silence:
“It is nothing, M. de Rochefort. If you are tired of prison why should you remain? It is true that there may be danger for you from M. de Choiseul, but one does nothing without danger threatening one in this world, it seems to me. Why, even walking across the street one may be run over by a carriage, as a friend of mine was some time ago.”
“My good Ferminard,” said Rochefort, dropping for the first time the prefix “monsieur,” “you are talking for the sake of talking, and for the kind reason that you wish to hide from yourself and me what you are thinking. And you are thinking that the Comte de Rochefort is a man whom you trusted, but whom you do not trust any longer.”
“Monsieur—monsieur!”
“Let me finish. If that is not what you are thinking you must be a fool, and as you are not a fool that is what is in your mind. Well, you are right and wrong. I do not know my own character entirely, but I do know that when I stop to think I am sometimes at a loss to imagine why I have committed certain actions; some of these actions that startle me are good, and some are bad; but they are not committed by the Comte de Rochefort so much as by something that urges the Comte de Rochefort to commit them. I fancy that some men always think before they act, and other men frequently act before they think, but I do know this, that once I am propelled on a course of action I don’t stop to think at all till the business is over one way or another.