"Oh, misfortune! misfortune irretrievable! On whatever side I turn, it is 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."
"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."
"Who could foresee what has come to pass? But, in the ordinary march of events, our crime would have been unpunished, thanks to me."
"Yes; when we had blown this man's brains out, you wished simply to counterfeit his signature, and to write his sister that, ruined completely, he had killed himself from despair. You thought that you would make a great stroke of policy by not speaking in this letter of the deposit he had confided to you. It was absurd. This deposit being known to his sister, she would have unquestionably reclaimed it. It was necessary, then, on the contrary, to mention it as we did, in order that, if there were any suspicions of the reality of the suicide, you might be the last person to be suspected. Then what happened? The suicide was believed; from your reputation for probity, you were enabled to deny the deposit, and it was thought that the brother killed himself after having dissipated the fortune of his sister."
"But what matters all this at present? The crime is discovered."