- Auguste Dupin: [awakened while playing chess] Oh, dear!
- [clears his throat and looks at the board]
- Auguste Dupin: Did I miss that? Am I losing my concentration as well as everything else?
- [laughs]
- Claire Dupin: You were asleep, Father?
- Auguste Dupin: That's no excuse for incompetence. I used to be able to sleep and think at the same time.
- [laughs ironically and then adds introspectively]
- Auguste Dupin: I was famous for it.
- Phillipe Huron: Have you thought about him?
- Auguste Dupin: And that's when I said he would not have stood for it. Suppose that unlike me,
- Auguste Dupin: [Clearing his throat] he would not have allowed himself to be pensioned off without a battle.
- Phillipe Huron: My thought precisely. I'm sorry, Gust.
- Auguste Dupin: Don't feel badly. I often wonder why I accepted it without a fight. I've seemed to have lost all stamina - all forcefulness. Ted, my boy, you don't know what it's like not having a job without work.
- Auguste Dupin: [Angrily] The humiliation! The uselessness! The fear of not having a roof over your family's head! And the rage! The absolutte powerless rage!
- Auguste Dupin: [He sees his daughter enters the room and composes himself] Excuse me.
- Auguste Dupin: For 42 years I went into battle with every case that was put before me. The solution of a crime made my blood pump. I thought it was my reason for living. Nothing came before my work. Nothing! When my wife died, I was out sorting for buttons from a dead man's shirt. I never regretted it. Never once! I had a higher calling. An honorable cause. The public trust! Hmmm. I thought it was my life. I let it become my life, and I'm a fool because of it! I can no more consult with you than apologize to the dead.