“ ‘Monsieur,’ I replied, ‘it is not for myself that I entreat your interference⁠—I should grieve for him or avenge him, but my poor brother had a wife, and were anything to happen to me, the poor creature would perish from want, for my brother’s pay alone kept her. Pray, try and obtain a small government pension for her.’

“ ‘Every revolution has its catastrophes,’ returned M. de Villefort; ‘your brother has been the victim of this. It is a misfortune, and government owes nothing to his family. If we are to judge by all the vengeance that the followers of the usurper exercised on the partisans of the king, when, in their turn, they were in power, your brother would be today, in all probability, condemned to death. What has happened is quite natural, and in conformity with the law of reprisals.’

“ ‘What,’ cried I, ‘do you, a magistrate, speak thus to me?’