"I think not."
"Are you for or against the king?"
"I have no time for that."
"What do you think of what is going on?"
"I have nothing to live on."
"Why do you come to my assistance?"
"I saw that you were an outlaw. What is the law? So one can be out of it. I don't understand. As for me, am I in the law? am I out of the law? I know nothing about it. To die of hunger, is that to be in the law?"
"How long have you been dying of hunger?"
"All my life."
"And you wish to save me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I said, 'There is another poorer than I. I have the right to breathe, he has not.'"
"It is true. And you would save me?"
"Surely. We are brothers, monseigneur. I ask for bread, you ask for life. We are both beggars."
"But do you know that a price has been put on my head?"
"Yes."
"How did you know?"
"I read the placard."
"You know how to read?"
"Yes, and to write, too. Why should I be a brute?"
"Then, since you know how to read, and since you have read the placard, you know that the man who betrays me will win sixty thousand francs."
"I know it."
"Not in assignats."
"Yes, I know, in gold."
"Do you know that sixty thousand francs is a fortune? "
"Yes."
"And that the one who will deliver me up will make his fortune?"
"Well, what next?"
"His fortune!"
"That is just what I thought. When I saw you, I said to myself, 'Only think of it, the one who betrays this very man, will win sixty thousand francs and make his fortune! Let us hasten to conceal him.'"
