human
The trick was clever that you played. Yet--as you should know, you who haunted the gambling-hells of Paris with your precious guardian--you should know that, however clever a trickster may be, there is generally one to be found who is his master. Always. Always. He always finds his master, does that trickster. Shall I tell you of a cleverer trick than yours?
gpt
What--what do you mean?
human
Attend. You hear that noise in the next street; do you know what it is? It is the archers and the exempts carrying of people to prison who are supposed to be insurgents, uprisers against the King, the Regent--the 'System.' Many of those persons are quite innocent, they are simply passers-by seeking their homes. Still, they have, some of them, enemies, people whom they have wronged, perhaps even inadvertently; yet the wronged ones have now their hour. A purse--a very light one--dropped into an archer's or an exempt's hands--a hint--a name--an address--and--that is all! To-night the prisons, La Force, La Pitié, La Tournelle--the Bastille; to-morrow the false accusations--a month later the wheel, or, at best, the Mississippi, the Colonies. And--and--my purse is not light.
gpt
Devil! she murmured.
human
Devil incarnate!
gpt
Ay, an aroused one. Yet, 'tis your own doing. You should have thought, you should have reflected. Desparre's name was known in those choice circles which you and Vandecque affected--in your own gambling hell. Had you ever heard it coupled with so weak a quality as forgiveness for an insult, a slight? Nay, madame, nay! None can prevent either insult or slight being offered--it is only the weak and powerless who do not retaliate. And I, Desparre, am neither.
human
You mean, she said, staring at him as one stares who is fascinated by some horror from which, appalling as it is, the eyes cannot be withdrawn,
gpt
I mean precisely that. On you. Yet without my purse's weight being much tested, either. For against you, madame, I have legal claims that will, I fear, prevent you from enjoying your new-found happiness for some time, even were your husband able to share it with you, which he is not----