"Yes, I hear," said Marie quietly, "but I beg of you to change your mind. We are badly off, I allow, yet somehow or other we can always rub along, and this poor child is in worse plight than we are."
"Worse? Nonsense. No one can be worse off than I am. Denounced, executed, for I assure you I felt that bullet go through my brain, saved just by the hair of my head—"
"Such a mercy!" breathed the wife.
"A mercy, yes—but you who can go and come and amuse yourself, never think what this life must be to me, cooped up like a rat in his hole. There are times when I believe I should do better to give myself up."
"For the sake of Heaven, Jean—!"
"At any rate," said Jean, descending from his heights, "I will not have that imbécile here. You understand?"
Marie looked at him indulgently. "Yes, my friend, I understand."
"I'll lay a wager you never got that journal from old Plon-Plon?"
"He had not finished with it."
"Of course not. Then I shall go to sleep, for there is nothing else for me to do."