death! And what I most dread now is destruction! Curses on myself, on you,
on the whole world!"

"Your misanthropy is more extensive than your philanthropy! The former
embraces the whole world; the latter but one of the wards of Paris."

"Go on--rail, monster!"

"Would you prefer that I should crush you with reproaches?"

"Whose fault is it that we are reduced to this position?"

"Yours. Why preserve around your neck, suspended as a relic, that letter of
mine relative to the murder which was worth a hundred thousand crowns to
you--the murder which we had so adroitly passed off as a suicide?"

"Why? wretch! Did I not give you fifty thousand francs for your
co-operation in the crime, and for this letter, which I required that I
might have a guarantee against your denouncing me? My life and fortune
were, then, dependent on its possession; that is the reason why I always
wore it around my neck."

"It is true, it was cunning on your part, for I would gain nothing by
denouncing you except the pleasure of going to the scaffold side by side
with you. And yet your cunning has ruined us, while mine would have assured
impunity for the crime to the present moment."

"Impunity?"

"Who could foresee what has come to pass? But, in the ordinary march of