for I am weak, and the strong have made me suffer!'
In the meanwhile, as he was too small a boy to prevent the strong from
ill-using the weak, beginning with himself, he prevented the larger
brutes from eating the smaller ones."

"What a strange idea!" said the prisoner in the blue cap.

"And, what is stranger still," said the tale-teller, "it was this idea
that consoled Gringalet for being beaten; which proves that his heart
was not bad at bottom."

"_Pardieu!_ Quite the contrary," said the guardian. "What an amusing
devil that Pique-Vinaigre is!"

At this instant the chimes went half past three o'clock. The Skeleton
and Gros-Boiteux exchanged significant glances. The time was drawing on,
and the _surveillant_ did not go; and some of the less hardened
prisoners seemed almost to forget the sinister projects of the Skeleton
against Germain, as they listened attentively to Pique-Vinaigre's
recital.

"When I say," he continued, "that Gringalet prevented the larger brutes
from eating the smaller, you must understand that Gringalet did not mix
himself up with tigers, and lions, and wolves, or even foxes and
monkeys, in the menagerie of Cut-in-Half,--he was too much of a coward
for that; but if he saw, for instance, a spider hidden in his web, in
wait for a poor foolish fly flying gaily in the sunshine of the good
God, without hurting any one, why, in a moment, Gringalet smashed the
web, freed the fly, and did for the spider like a regular Caesar,--a real
Caesar; for he turned as white as a sheet in touching such nasty
reptiles; and then it required resolution in him, who was afraid of a
cockchafer, and had been a long while in forming an intimacy with the
tortoise which Cut-in-Half handed to him every morning. Thus Gringalet,
overcoming the fear which the spider caused him, in order to prevent
flies from being eaten, proved himself--"

"As plucky in his way as a man who attacks a wolf to take a lamb from
his jaws," said the prisoner in the blue cap.

"Or a man who would have attacked Cut-in-Half to take Gringalet from his
clutches," added Barbillon, who was deeply interested.

"As you say," continued Pique-Vinaigre; "so that after one of these
onslaughts Gringalet did not feel himself so unhappy. He who never
laughed, smiled, looked about him, cocked his cap on one side (when he
had one), and hummed the 'Marseillaise' with the air of a conqueror. At
this moment, there was not a spider that dared to look him in the