Mysterious sentence from an elephant hunter

It makes no sense. Are you sure you heard/remembered/wrote it correctly?

Khoff, it's a transcript from the English audio of the movie. It doesn't have any sense for me, too.
I checked the Portuguese and Spanish subtitles corresponding to the abovementioned sentence and I think that they invented the words (nothing to do with the original ones), maybe because they were unable to make a correct translation.
I have the original English audio of the excerpt (10 sec

As nobody answered my question, I dare to put the audio file for you to verify that the words of the hunter are the ones that I wrote in my first message. You can listen to them at:
https://mega.co.nz#!GcQn2aaD!KYNRGeVgi188_-Xvd8nQvWxkl1LHs4hPRO7p942hbdA

It's very impo

Yes, it makes some sense!

For years with me it has been in my heart to return to my native Marseilles. Set myself up in a small inn, perhaps. A man can be forgiven for not wanting to go home without a small competence.

So, he wants to return to his native town, Marseilles, and perhaps open an inn. The last sentence is not real clear, but I think if means that if he goes home

Thanks, khoff. At last, as you said, it makes sense. And it has nothing to do with the translation found in the Portuguese and Spanish subtitles of the movie.

Competence here means "income sufficient to live on", usually implying without having to work. The idea here is that he wants to go home, but he doesn't want to go home broke.

Thanks, Blue Jay -- I knew I wasn't quite getting the sense of "competence."

khoffThanks, Blue Jay -- I knew I wasn't quite getting the sense of "competence."

It's an old-fashioned use of the word rarely encountered today.