Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon were always wheedling la Pouraille, who had lost all hope.
The murderer knew that he would be tried, sentenced, and executed within four months.
Indeed, Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon, la Pouraille’s chums, never called him anything but le Chanoine de l’Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret (a grim paraphrase for a man condemned to the guillotine).
It is easy to understand why Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon should fawn on la Pouraille.
The man had somewhere hidden two hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold, his share of the spoil found in the house of the Crottats, the “victims,” in newspaper phrase.
What a splendid fortune to leave to two pals, though the two old stagers would be sent back to the galleys within a few days!
Le Biffon and Fil-de-Soie would be sentenced for a term of fifteen years for robbery with violence, without prejudice to the ten years’ penal servitude on a former sentence, which they had taken the liberty of cutting short.
So, though one had twenty-two and the other twenty-six years of imprisonment to look forward to, they both hoped to escape, and come back to find la Pouraille’s mine of gold.
But the “Ten-thousand man” kept his secret; he did not see the use of telling it before he was sentenced.
He belonged to the “upper ten” of the hulks, and had never betrayed his accomplices.
His temper was well known; Monsieur Popinot, who had examined him, had not been able to get anything out of him.
This terrible trio were at the further end of the prison-yard, that is to say, near the better class of cells.
Fil-de-Soie was giving a lecture to a young man who was IN for his first offence, and who, being certain of ten years’ penal servitude, was gaining information as to the various convict establishments.
“Well, my boy,” Fil-de-Soie was saying sententiously as Jacques Collin appeared on the scene, “the difference between Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort is ——”
“Well, old cock?” said the lad, with the curiosity of a novice.
This prisoner, a man of good family, accused of forgery, had come down from the cell next to that where Lucien had been.
“My son,” Fil-de-Soie went on, “at Brest you are sure to get some beans at the third turn if you dip your spoon in the bowl; at Toulon you never get any till the fifth; and at Rochefort you get none at all, unless you are an old hand.”
Having spoken, the philosopher joined le Biffon and la Pouraille, and all three, greatly puzzled by the priest, walked down the yard, while Jacques Collin, lost in grief, came up it.
Trompe-la-Mort, absorbed in terrible meditations, the meditations of a fallen emperor, did not think of himself as the centre of observation, the object of general attention, and he walked slowly, gazing at the fatal window where Lucien had hanged himself.
None of the prisoners knew of this catastrophe, since, for reasons to be presently explained, the young forger had not mentioned the subject.
The three pals agreed to cross the priest’s path.
“He is no priest,” said Fil-de-Soie; “he is an old stager.
Look how he drags his right foot.”
It is needful to explain here — for not every reader has had a fancy to visit the galleys — that each convict is chained to another, an old one and a young one always as a couple; the weight of this chain riveted to a ring above the ankle is so great as to induce a limp, which the convict never loses.
Being obliged to exert one leg much more than the other to drag this fetter (manicle is the slang name for such irons), the prisoner inevitably gets into the habit of making the effort.
Afterwards, though he no longer wears the chain, it acts upon him still; as a man still feels an amputated leg, the convict is always conscious of the anklet, and can never get over that trick of walking.
In police slang, he “drags his right.”
And this sign, as well known to convicts among themselves as it is to the police, even if it does not help to identify a comrade, at any rate confirms recognition.
In Trompe-la Mort, who had escaped eight years since, this trick had to a great extent worn off; but just now, lost in reflections, he walked at such a slow and solemn pace that, slight as the limp was, it was strikingly evident to so practiced an eye as la Pouraille’s.
And it is quite intelligible that convicts, always thrown together, as they must be, and never having any one else to study, will so thoroughly have watched each other’s faces and appearance, that certain tricks will have impressed them which may escape their systematic foes — spies, gendarmes, and police-inspectors.
Thus it was a peculiar twitch of the maxillary muscles of the left cheek, recognized by a convict who was sent to a review of the Legion of the Seine, which led to the arrest of the lieutenant-colonel of that corps, the famous Coignard; for, in spite of Bibi–Lupin’s confidence, the police could not dare believe that the Comte Pontis de Sainte–Helene and Coignard were one and the same man.
“He is our boss” (dab or master) said Fil-de-Soie, seeing in Jacques Collin’s eyes the vague glance a man sunk in despair casts on all his surroundings.
“By Jingo!
Yes, it is Trompe-la-Mort,” said le Biffon, rubbing his hands.
“Yes, it is his cut, his build; but what has he done to himself?
He looks quite different.”
“I know what he is up to!” cried Fil-de-Soie; “he has some plan in his head.
He wants to see the boy” (sa tante) “who is to be executed before long.”
The persons known in prison as tantes or aunts may be best described in the ingenious words of the governor of one of the great prisons to the late Lord Durham, who, during his stay in Paris, visited every prison.
So curious was he to see every detail of French justice, that he even persuaded Sanson, at that time the executioner, to erect the scaffold and decapitate a living calf, that he might thoroughly understand the working of the machine made famous by the Revolution.
The governor having shown him everything — the yards, the workshops, and the underground cells — pointed to a part of the building, and said,
“I need not take your Lordship there; it is the quartier des tantes.”—“Oh,” said Lord Durham, “what are they!”—“The third sex, my Lord.”
“And they are going to scrag Theodore!” said la Pouraille, “such a pretty boy!
And such a light hand! such cheek!
What a loss to society!”
“Yes, Theodore Calvi is yamming his last meal,” said le Biffon. “His trips will pipe their eyes, for the little beggar was a great pet.”
“So you’re here, old chap?” said la Pouraille to Jacques Collin.
And, arm-in-arm with his two acolytes, he barred the way to the new arrival.
“Why, Boss, have you got yourself japanned?” he went on.
“I hear you have nobbled our pile” (stolen our money), le Biffon added, in a threatening tone.