A peasant may do good or do evil (according to your ideas) and he'll go out of the world just as he came into it, in rags; while you wear the fine clothes." No one interrupted Pere Fourchon, who seemed to owe his eloquence to his potations.

At first Sibilet tried to cut him short, but desisted at a sign from Blondet.

The abbe, the general, and the countess, all understood from the expression of the writer's eye that he wanted to study the question of pauperism from life, and perhaps take his revenge on Pere Fourchon.
"What sort of education are you giving Mouche ?" asked Blondet.

"Do you expect to make him any better than your daughters ?" "Does he ever speak to him of God ?" said the priest.
"Oh, no, no! Monsieur le cure, I don't tell him to fear God, but men.
God is good; he has promised us poor folks, so you say, the kingdom of heaven, because the rich people keep the earth to themselves.

I tell him: 'Mouche! fear the prison, and keep out of it,--for that's the way to the scaffold.