“No, but we are going to steal Dubarry’s coach.”
“Steal her coach?”
“And not only her coach, but her gown and her hairdresser.”
“Are you serious?” said Rochefort.
“Perfectly. Is it not a splendid plan? It is all to take place at the last moment—that is to say, at six o’clock to-morrow, or rather, to-day, for it is now after midnight. Look you, this is the way of it.”
Camus, bursting with laughter, made a sketch of what he proposed to do. “I shall want five men at my back,” said he, “I have four; will you be the fifth?”
Rochefort made no reply for a moment. Then he said:
“You know I am no friend of the Dubarrys, and that I would give a good deal to see this shop-girl in her proper place. Yet what you propose to me does not seem a work I would care to put my hand to. I would carry off the Comtesse with pleasure, but to steal her carriage—well—to that I can only reply, I am not a thief.”
Camus withdrew his arm from that of Rochefort. He knew Rochefort as a man who cared absolutely nothing for consequences—as a gambler, a drinker, and a fighter who could have given points to most men and beaten them at those amusements. He had failed to take into his calculations the fact that Rochefort was a man of honour. This desperado of a Rochefort had mired his clothes with all sorts of filth, but his skin was clean. He always fought fair, and he never cheated at play. Even in love, though his record was bad enough, he played the game without any of those tricks with which men cheat women of their honour.
Camus, absolutely without scruple and with the soul of a footman, despite the power of his mind and personality, had utterly failed to read Rochefort aright, simply because, being blind to honour himself, he could not see it in others. One may say of a man like Camus that he may be clever as Lucifer, but he can never be a genius in affairs, simply because of that partial blindness which is one of the adjuncts of evil.