Mauprat
"No, I say. I am not aware that there is any evil in me. If you are not displeased at the lack of grace in my legs, or the lack of whiteness in my hands, or the lack of elegance in my words, I fail to see what you find to hate in me. From my childhood I have had to listen to evil precepts, but I have not accepted them. I have never considered it permissible to do a bad deed; or, at least, I have never found it pleasurable. If I have done wrong, it is because I have been forced to do it. I have always detested my uncles and their ways. I do not like to see others suffer; I do not like to rob a fellow-creature; I despise money, of which they made a god at Roche-Mauprat; I know how to keep sober, and, though I am fond of wine, I would drink water all my life if, like my uncles, I had to shed blood to get a good supper. Yet I fought for them; yet I drank with them. How could I do otherwise? But now, when I am my own master, what harm am I doing? Does your abbé, who is always prating of virtue, take me for a murderer or a thief? Come, Edmée, confess now; you know well enough that I am an honest man; you do not really think me wicked; but I am displeasing to you because I am not clever, and you like M. de la Marche because he has a knack of making unmeaning speeches which I should blush to utter."
"And if, to be pleasing to me," she said with a smile, after listening most attentively, and without withdrawing her hand which I had taken through the bars, "if, in order to be preferred to M. de la Marche, it were necessary to acquire more wit, as you say, would you not try?"
"I don't know," I replied, after hesitating a moment; "perhaps I should be fool enough; for the power you
139
