excited in my mind, did not for an instant stop my comrade, who thus answered them:—
"All you say is very fine, and I am quite of your opinion; and to follow my natural bias for virtuous behaviour, I only want 10,000l. a-year. But I see no reason for being scrupulous in your case. What does the baroness want? A husband, and a husband to her liking. Are you not that husband? Are you not determined to pay her every attention and to treat her as a person who is necessary to you, and of whom you have had no cause to complain? You talk of the inequality of your fortunes,—the baroness thinks not of that. You only want, to complete the matter, one single thing—a title of rank, which I will give you,—yes, I will give it to you! Why do you stare so? Listen, and do not interrupt me. You must be acquainted with some young nobleman of your own age and country; you are he, and your parents have emigrated and are now at Hamburgh. You entered France to endeavour to recover a third of the value of your paternal property, and to carry off the plate and a thousand double-louis concealed beneath the flooring of the drawing-room at the breaking out of the revolution: the presence of some strangers, the haste of departure, which an arrest issued against your father would not allow you to delay, has prevented you from getting this treasure. Arrived in this country, disguised as a journeyman tanner, you were denounced by the very person who had pledged himself to aid your enterprise; outlawed by the sentence of the republican authorities, you were nearly losing your head on the scaffold, when I fell in with you, half dead from inquietude and necessity. An old friend of the family, I procured for you the brevet of an officer of hussars, under the name of Rousseau, until an opportunity should offer of rejoining your noble parents at Hamburgh. The baroness already knows all this; yes, all, except your name, which, for
