I crush men’s hearts; I open them. — What are you afraid of?
Send me with an escort of gendarmes, of turnkeys — whom you will.”
“I will inquire whether the prison chaplain will allow you to take his place,” said Monsieur Gault.
And the governor withdrew, struck by the expression, perfectly indifferent, though inquisitive, with which the convicts and the prisoners on remand stared at this priest, whose unctuous tones lent a charm to his half-French, half-Spanish lingo.
“How did you come in here, Monsieur l’Abbe?” asked the youth who had questioned Fil-de-Soie.
“Oh, by a mistake!” replied Jacques Collin, eyeing the young gentleman from head to foot. “I was found in the house of a courtesan who had died, and was immediately robbed.
It was proved that she had killed herself, and the thieves — probably the servants — have not yet been caught.”
“And it was for that theft that your young man hanged himself?”
“The poor boy, no doubt, could not endure the thought of being blighted by his unjust imprisonment,” said Trompe-la-Mort, raising his eyes to heaven.
“Ay,” said the young man; “they were coming to set him free just when he had killed himself.
What bad luck!”
“Only innocent souls can be thus worked on by their imagination,” said Jacques Collin. “For, observe, he was the loser by the theft.”
“How much money was it?” asked Fil-de-Soie, the deep and cunning.
“Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs,” said Jacques Collin blandly.
The three convicts looked at each other and withdrew from the group that had gathered round the sham priest.
“He screwed the moll’s place himself!” said Fil-de-Soie in a whisper to le Biffon, “and they want to put us in a blue funk for our cartwheels” (thunes de balles, five-franc pieces).
“He will always be the boss of the swells,” replied la Pouraille. “Our pieces are safe enough.”
La Pouraille, wishing to find some man he could trust, had an interest in considering Jacques Collin an honest man.
And in prison, of all places, a man believes what he hopes.
“I lay you anything, he will come round the big Boss and save his chum!” said Fil-de-Soie.
“If he does that,” said le Biffon, “though I don’t believe he is really God, he must certainly have smoked a pipe with old Scratch, as they say.”
“Didn’t you hear him say,
‘Old Scratch has cut me’?” said Fil-de-Soie.
“Oh!” cried la Pouraille, “if only he would save my nut, what a time I would have with my whack of the shiners and the yellow boys I have stowed.”
“Do what he bids you!” said Fil-de Soie.
“You don’t say so?” retorted la Pouraille, looking at his pal.
“What a flat you are!
You will be booked for the Abbaye!” said le Biffon.
“You have no other door to budge, if you want to keep on your pins, to yam, wet your whistle, and fake to the end; you must take his orders.”
“That’s all right,” said la Pouraille. “There is not one of us that will blow the gaff, or if he does, I will take him where I am going ——”
“And he’ll do it too,” cried Fil-de-Soie.
The least sympathetic reader, who has no pity for this strange race, may conceive of the state of mind of Jacques Collin, finding himself between the dead body of the idol whom he had been bewailing during five hours that night, and the imminent end of his former comrade — the dead body of Theodore, the young Corsican.
Only to see the boy would demand extraordinary cleverness; to save him would need a miracle; but he was thinking of it.
For the better comprehension of what Jacques Collin proposed to attempt, it must be remarked that murderers and thieves, all the men who people the galleys, are not so formidable as is generally supposed.
With a few rare exceptions these creatures are all cowards, in consequence no doubt, of the constant alarms which weigh on their spirit.
The faculties being perpetually on the stretch in thieving, and the success of a stroke of business depending on the exertion of every vital force, with a readiness of wit to match their dexterity of hand, and an alertness which exhausts the nervous system; these violent exertions of will once over, they become stupid, just as a singer or a dancer drops quite exhausted after a fatiguing pas seul, or one of those tremendous duets which modern composers inflict on the public.
Malefactors are, in fact, so entirely bereft of common sense, or so much oppressed by fear, that they become absolutely childish.
Credulous to the last degree, they are caught by the bird-lime of the simplest snare.
When they have done a successful job, they are in such a state of prostration that they immediately rush into the debaucheries they crave for; they get drunk on wine and spirits, and throw themselves madly into the arms of their women to recover composure by dint of exhausting their strength, and to forget their crime by forgetting their reason.
Then they are at the mercy of the police.
When once they are in custody they lose their head, and long for hope so blindly that they believe anything; indeed, there is nothing too absurd for them to accept it.
An instance will suffice to show how far the simplicity of a criminal who has been nabbed will carry him.
Bibi–Lupin, not long before, had extracted a confession from a murderer of nineteen by making him believe that no one under age was ever executed.
When this lad was transferred to the Conciergerie to be sentenced after the rejection of his appeal, this terrible man came to see him.
“Are you sure you are not yet twenty?” said he.
“Yes, I am only nineteen and a half.”
“Well, then,” replied Bibi–Lupin, “you may be quite sure of one thing — you will never see twenty.”
“Why?”
“Because you will be scragged within three days,” replied the police agent.
The murderer, who had believed, even after sentence was passed, that a minor would never be executed, collapsed like an omelette soufflee.