“Is your time, then, expired, since I find you in a fair way to return there?”
“No, reverend sir; I have been liberated by someone.”
“That someone has done society a great kindness.”
“Ah,” said Caderousse, “I had promised—”
“And you are breaking your promise!” interrupted Monte Cristo.
“Alas, yes!” said Caderousse very uneasily.
“A bad relapse, that will lead you, if I mistake not, to the Place de Grève. So much the worse, so much the worse— diavolo! as they say in my country.”
“Reverend sir, I am impelled—”
“Every criminal says the same thing.”
“Poverty—”
“Pshaw!” said Busoni disdainfully; “poverty may make a man beg, steal a loaf of bread at a baker’s door, but not cause him to open a secretaire in a house supposed to be inhabited. And when the jeweller Johannes had just paid you 45,000 francs for the diamond I had given you, and you killed him to get the diamond and the money both, was that also poverty?”
“Pardon, reverend sir,” said Caderousse; “you have saved my life once, save me again!”
“That is but poor encouragement.”
“Are you alone, reverend sir, or have you there soldiers ready to seize me?”