The nickname dates from the Revolution of 1789.
The words produced a great sensation.
The prisoners looked at each other.
“It is all over with him,” the warder went on; “the warrant has been delivered to Monsieur Gault, and the sentence has just been read to him.”
“And so the fair Madeleine has received the last sacraments?” said la Pouraille, and he swallowed a deep mouthful of air.
“Poor little Theodore!” cried le Biffon; “he is a pretty chap too.
What a pity to drop your nut” (eternuer dans le son) “so young.”
The warder went towards the gate, thinking that Jacques Collin was at his heels. But the Spaniard walked very slowly, and when he was getting near to Julien he tottered and signed to la Pouraille to give him his arm.
“He is a murderer,” said Napolitas to the priest, pointing to la Pouraille, and offering his own arm.
“No, to me he is an unhappy wretch!” replied Jacques Collin, with the presence of mind and the unction of the Archbishop of Cambrai.
And he drew away from Napolitas, of whom he had been very suspicious from the first.
Then he said to his pals in an undertone:
“He is on the bottom step of the Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret, but I am the Prior! I will show you how well I know how to come round the beaks.
I mean to snatch this boy’s nut from their jaws.”
“For the sake of his breeches!” said Fil-de-Soie with a smile.
“I mean to win his soul to heaven!” replied Jacques Collin fervently, seeing some other prisoners about him.
And he joined the warder at the gate.
“He got in to save Madeleine,” said Fil-de-Soie. “We guessed rightly.
What a boss he is!”
“But how can he?
Jack Ketch’s men are waiting.
He will not even see the kid,” objected le Biffon.
“The devil is on his side!” cried la Pouraille. “He claim our blunt! Never!
He is too fond of his old chums!
We are too useful to him!
They wanted to make us blow the gaff, but we are not such flats!
If he saves his Madeleine, I will tell him all my secrets.”
The effect of this speech was to increase the devotion of the three convicts to their boss; for at this moment he was all their hope.
Jacques Collin, in spite of Madeleine’s peril, did not forget to play his part.
Though he knew the Conciergerie as well as he knew the hulks in the three ports, he blundered so naturally that the warder had to tell him,
“This way, that way,” till they reached the office.
There, at a glance, Jacques Collin recognized a tall, stout man leaning on the stove, with a long, red face not without distinction: it was Sanson.
“Monsieur is the chaplain?” said he, going towards him with simple cordiality.
The mistake was so shocking that it froze the bystanders.
“No, monsieur,” said Sanson; “I have other functions.”
Sanson, the father of the last executioner of that name — for he has recently been dismissed — was the son of the man who beheaded Louis XVI.
After four centuries of hereditary office, this descendant of so many executioners had tried to repudiate the traditional burden.
The Sansons were for two hundred years executioners at Rouen before being promoted to the first rank in the kingdom, and had carried out the decrees of justice from father to son since the thirteenth century.
Few families can boast of an office or of nobility handed down in a direct line during six centuries.
This young man had been captain in a cavalry regiment, and was looking forward to a brilliant military career, when his father insisted on his help in decapitating the king.
Then he made his son his deputy when, in 1793, two guillotines were in constant work — one at the Barriere du Trone, and the other in the Place de Greve.
This terrible functionary, now a man of about sixty, was remarkable for his dignified air, his gentle and deliberate manners, and his entire contempt for Bibi–Lupin and his acolytes who fed the machine.
The only detail which betrayed the blood of the mediaeval executioner was the formidable breadth and thickness of his hands.
Well informed too, caring greatly for his position as a citizen and an elector, and an enthusiastic florist, this tall, brawny man with his low voice, his calm reserve, his few words, and a high bald forehead, was like an English nobleman rather than an executioner.
And a Spanish priest would certainly have fallen into the mistake which Jacques Collin had intentionally made.
“He is no convict!” said the head warder to the governor.
“I begin to think so too,” replied Monsieur Gault, with a nod to that official.
Jacques Collin was led to the cellar-like room where Theodore Calvi, in a straitwaistcoat, was sitting on the edge of the wretched camp bed.
Trompe-la-Mort, under a transient gleam of light from the passage, at once recognized Bibi–Lupin in the gendarme who stood leaning on his sword.
“Io sono Gaba–Morto.