"Good! Alexis; good Mich—good Alexis! To yourself you give satisfaction. You are a fine rascal!—the prince of rascals! So decent; so quiet; so like the curé of a convent. Who would believe that you had sold the lives of thirty men for a few hundred roubles?"
"And who," interrupted the courier, "would believe that you, bluff, honest Conrad Ferrate, had run away with all the money those thirty men had collected during ten years of labor, for rescuing their country from the Russian?"
"That was good, Alexis, was it not? I never was so rich in my life as then; I loved—I gamed—I drank on the patriots' money."
"For how long? Three years?"
"More—and now have none left. Ah! Times change, Alexis; behold me." And the guard touched his buttons and belt, the badges of his office. "Never mind—here's my good friend, the bottle—let us embrace—the only friend that is always true—if he does not gladden, he makes us to forget."
"Tell me, my good Alexis, whom do you rob now? Who pays for the best, and gets the second best? Whose money do you invest, eh! my little fox? Why are you here? Come, tell me, while I drink to your success."
"I have the honor to serve his Excellency the Count Spezzato."
"Ten thousand devils! My accursed cousin!" broke in the guard. "He who has robbed me from his birth; whose birth itself was a vile robbery of me—me, his cousin, child of his father's brother. May he be accursed for ever!"
I took most particular pains to appear only amused at this genuine outburst of passion, for I saw the watchful eye of the courier was on me all the time they were talking.
The guard drank off a tumbler of brandy.