bag, and
made me accompany him to Auteuil. We reached the mayor's with a crowd of
blackguards and _gens-d'armes_. The owners of the cottage were fetched,
and they made their depositions. There was no means of denial; so I
confessed everything and signed the depositions, and they put on me
handcuffs, and I was brought here."

"In prison again, and for a long time, perhaps?"

"Listen to me, Jeanne, for I will not deceive you. I may as well tell
you at once; for it is no longer an affair of prison."

"Why not?"

"Why, the relapse, the breaking in and entry into a dwelling-house at
night, the lawyer told me, is a complete affair, and I shall have
fifteen or twenty years at the galleys, and the public exposure into the
bargain."

"The galleys,--and you so weak? Why, you'll die!"

"And suppose I had been with the white-lead party?"

"But the galleys,--the galleys!"

"It is a prison in the open air, with a red shirt instead of a brown
one; and then I have always had a curiosity to see the sea!"

"But the public exposure! To be subject to the contempt of all the
world! Oh, my poor brother!" And the poor woman wept bitterly.

"Come, come, Jeanne, be composed; it is an uncomfortable quarter of an
hour to pass. But you know I am used to see crowds. When I played with
my cups and balls, I always had a crowd around me; so I'll fancy I am
thimble-rigging, and if it has too much effect on me I'll close my eyes,
and that will seem as if no one was looking at me."

Speaking with this derision, the unhappy man affected this
insensibility, in order to console his sister. For a man accustomed to
the manners of prisons, and in whom all shame is utterly dead, the
_bagne_ (galleys) is, in fact, only a change of shirt, as Pique-Vinaigre
said, with frightful truth. Many prisoners in the central prisons even
prefer the _bagne_, because of the riotous life they lead, often
committing attempts at murder in order to be sent to Brest or Toulon.

"Twenty years at the galleys!" repeated Pique-Vinaigre's poor sister.

"Take comfort, Jeanne, they will only pay me as I deserve. I am too weak
to be put to hard labour, and if there is no manufactory of wooden
trumpets and swords as at Melun, why, I shall be set to some easy work;
they will employ me at the infirmary. I am not a troublesome fellow, but
a good, easy chap; and I shall tell my stories as I do here, and shall
be esteemed by my chiefs, and adored by my comrades, and I will send yo