“You have the right.”
“No, it would be abominable! It would be monstrous!”
Don Luis went up to him and, tapping him on the shoulder, said, gravely:
“You surely don’t believe that I should stand here, urging you to kill that man, if he were your father?”
Patrice looked at him wildly:
“Do you know something? Do you know something for certain? Oh, for Heaven’s sake . . . !”
Don Luis continued:
“Do you believe that I would even encourage you to hate him, if he were your father?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Patrice. “Do you mean that he’s not my father?”
“Of course he’s not!” cried Don Luis, with irresistible conviction and increasing eagerness. “Your father indeed! Why, look at him! Look at that scoundrelly head. Every sort of vice and violence is written on the brute’s face. Throughout this adventure, from the first day to the last, there was not a crime committed but was his handiwork: not one, do you follow me? There were not two criminals, as we thought, not Essarès, to begin the hellish business, and old Siméon, to finish it. There was only one criminal, one, do you understand, Patrice? Before killing Coralie and Ya-Bon and Vacherot the porter and the woman who was his own accomplice, he killed others! He killed one other in particular, one whose flesh and blood you are, the man whose dying cries you heard over the telephone, the man who called you Patrice and who only lived for you! He killed that man; and that man was your father, Patrice; he was Armand Belval! Now do you understand?”