procured me a slap-up situation. I have no need to tell you what--it would
be too long; in a word, he sent me to Marseilles, to embark for my place. I
left Paris contented as a beggar! Good! But soon that changed. A
supposition: let us say that I left on a fine sunny day. Well! the next day
is cloudy; the day after very cloudy, and every succeeding day more and
more so, until, at length, it became as black as the devil. Do you
comprehend?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, let us see. Did you ever keep a pup?"

"What a singular question!"

"Have you had a dog that loved you well, and that was lost?"

"No."

"Then I will tell you at once, that when at a distance from M. Rudolph, I
was restless, uneasy, alarmed, like a dog that had lost his master. It was
brutish, but the dogs also are brutes, and this does not prevent them from
being attached to their masters, and remembering quite as much the good
mouthfuls as the kickings they are accustomed to receive; and M. Rudolph
had given me better than good mouthfuls, for, do you see, for me M. Rudolph
is all in all. From a wicked, brutal, savage, and riotous rascal, he made
me a kind of honest man, by saying only two words to me; but those words
were like magic."

"And those words, what are they? What did he say to you?"