“Yes, it is the same. Fool! why didst thou not warn me instead of betraying me? I would have asked double the sum. They would have paid it; they have the means. I would not have given the receipt; I will never give another. No! no! it is the last time! Received a hundred thousand francs of Mrs. Simons! What a foolish sentence! Was it really I who dictated that? But I reflect now; I did not sign it. Yes, but my seal is equal to a signature! There are twenty letters in my name. Why didst thou ? What do you expect from those ladies? Fifteen thousand francs for thy ransom? Selfishness, everywhere!

Thou shouldst have confided in me; I would have let thee go without the ransom; I would even have paid thee. If thou art poor, as thou sayest thou art, thou shouldst know how good money is. Thou thinkest only of a sum of 80,000 francs? Dost thou know what a heap that would make in a room? How many pieces of gold? How much money one could make in business with 80,000 francs? It is a calamity! Thou hast robbed me of a fortune! Thou hast robbed my daughter, the only being I love in the world. It is for her that I work. But, if thou knowest my affairs, thou knowest that I scour the mountains for a whole year to gain 40,000 francs. Thou hast plundered me of two years’ income; it is as if I had slept for two years!”

I had then found the tender chord. The old Palikar was touched to the heart. I knew that there was a heavy score against me, and I expected no mercy, and moreover, I experienced an intense joy in seeing that impassable mask torn asunder and that stony face wrung with emotion　I was convinced that he was hungry, that if I could find enough to surfeit him.. I rejoiced to see in his wrinkled face, the convulsive movements of passion, as the ship-wrecked boat lost in a raging sea, admires, afar off, the wave which is to engulf it. I was like the thinking reed, which the brutal universe crushes into a shapeless mass, and which consoles itself in dying with the lofty thought of its superiority. I said to myself, with pride: “I shall die by torture, but I am the master of my master, and the executioner of my execution!”
 

The King contemplated his vengeance, as a man who has fasted three days contemplates a bountiful repast. He examined, one by one, all the dishes, I mean to say all the tortures; he licked his dry lips, but he knew not where to commence nor what to choose. One would have said that excess of hunger spoiled his appetite. He struck his head with his fist, as if he could force out some ideas, but they came so rapidly that it was not easy to seize one in its passage. “Speak!” he cried to his subjects. “Advise me! What good are you, if you are not able to give me advice? Shall I await the coming of the Corfuan, or until Vasile shall speak from the depths of his tomb? Find for me, beasts that you are, some torture for the loss of 80,000 francs.”