After I had been properly registered, I asked the sergeant:
"What is the name of our captain?"
"Meyer."
"There are a good many Meyers in the world. Is the captain related to the Berg-Meyers?"
"You've guessed it the first time, my son! The captain's father lives in the Hamberger Berg, and is a well-known receiver of stolen goods. Rupert, the captain's brother, is a pander."
I dare say many a man in my place would have been frightened at this discovery; but I congratulated myself! If I were pursued—I argued—the officers of justice would seek for me everywhere else but in the company commanded by the brother of the murdered man; and if Captain Meyer ever discovered that it was I who had relieved him of the brother with whom he would have been obliged to share his inheritance, he certainly would not reproach me for it!
This, honored and high-born gentlemen, added Hugo in conclusion, is the true history of the homicide for which I am arraigned. I have not added to, or taken from it; but have related the events exactly as they occurred.
"Qui bene distinguit, bene docet!" observed the prince thoughtfully. "We call it murder, when the person committing the deed strikes what he knows to be a human being. But, if the man encounters a ferocious monster that he believes to be a moo-calf, and kills it as such, and it turns out to be a human being, 'murder' is certainly not the term to apply to the deed. Moreover, the person who is so devoid of sense and dignity, as to conceal his human form in the hide of an irrational beast, is himself responsible for whatever may happen to him! Therefore, this indictment may also be stricken from the register."
"Perhaps, your highness," observed the chair with a covert sneer, "would like to suggest a reward for the prisoner, for delivering the city of Hamburg from the terrorism of the moo-calf?"
The prince's reply made it obvious that he had not noticed the chair's sarcasm: