"I have something better than that to propose to you, my good fellow."
"Better! It's unpolite to contradict you, but I think that would be difficult. Four francs a day!"
"I tell you I have something better: for this house, all that it contains, the shop, and a thousand crowns which are in this pocketbook,--all are yours."
The Chourineur smiled with a stupid air, flattened his long-napped hat between his knees, and squeezed it convulsively, evidently not understanding what Rodolph said to him, although his language was plain enough.
Rodolph, with much kindness, said to him:
"I can imagine your surprise; but I again repeat, this house and this money are yours,--they are your property."
The Chourineur became purple, passed his horny hand over his brow, which was bathed with perspiration, and stammered out, in a faltering voice:
"What!--eh!--that is--indeed--my property!"
"Yes, your property; for I bestow it all upon you. Do you understand? I give it to you."
The Chourineur rocked backwards and forwards on his chair, scratched his head, coughed, looked down on the ground, and made no reply. He felt that the thread of his ideas had escaped him. He heard quite well what Rodolph said to him, and that was the very reason he could not credit what he heard. Between the depth of misery, the degradation in which he had always existed, and the position in which Rodolph now placed him, there was an abyss so wide that the service he had rendered to Rodolph, important as it was, could not fill it up.
"Does what I give you, then, seem beyond your hopes?" inquired Rodolph.
"My lord," said the Chourineur, starting up suddenly, "you offer me this house and a great deal of money,--to tempt me; but I cannot take them; I never robbed in my life. It is, perhaps, to kill; but I have too often dreamed of the sergeant," added he, in a hoarse tone.
"Oh, the unfortunate!" exclaimed Rodolph, with bitterness. "The compassion evinced for them is so rare, that they can only explain liberality as a temptation to crime!"
Then addressing the Chourineur, in a voice full of gentleness:
"You judge me wrong,--you mistake: I shall require from you nothing but what is honourable. What I give you, I give because you have deserved it."