; just try it. You have to go to Italy for most
of them, then you have to smuggle them across the frontier like bales of
contraband goods."

Perpignan paused to take a breath, and Tantaine asked,--

"What sum do you make each of the lads bring in daily?"

"That depends," answered Perpignan hesitatingly.

"Well, you can give an average?"

"Say three francs then."

"Three francs!" repeated Tantaine with a genial smile, "and you have
forty little cherubs, so that makes one hundred and twenty francs per
day."

"Absurd!" retorted Perpignan; "do you think each of the lads bring in
such a sum as that?"

"Ah! you know the way to make them do so."

"I don't understand you," answered Perpignan, in whose voice a shade of
anxiety now began to appear.

"No offence, no offence," answered Tantaine; "but the fact is, the
newspapers are doing you a great deal of harm, by retailing some of the
means adopted by your colleague to make the boys do a good day's work.
Do you recollect the sentence on that master who tied one of his lads
down on a bed, and left him without food for two days at a stretch?"

"I don't care about such matters; no one can bring a charge of cruelty
against me," retorted Perpignan angrily.

"A man with the kindest heart in the world may be the victim of
circumstances."

Perpignan felt that the decisive moment was at hand.

"What do you mean?" asked he.

"Well, suppose, to punish one of your refractory lads, you were to shut
him in the cellar. A storm comes on during the night, the gutter gets
choked up, the cellar fills with water, and next morning you find the
little cherub drowned like a rat in his hole?"

Perpignan's face was livid.

"Well, and what then?" asked he.

"Ah! now the awkward part of the matter comes. You would not care to
send for the police, that might excite suspicion; the easiest thing is
to dig a hole and shove the body into it."

Perpignan got up and placed his back against the door.

"You know too much, M. Tantaine,--a great deal too much," said he.

Perpignan's manner was most threatening; but Tantaine still smiled
pleasantly, like a child who had just committed some simply mischievous
act, the results of which it cannot foresee.

"The sentence isn't heavy," he continued; "five years' penal servitude,
if evidence of previous good conduct could be put in; but if former
antecedents were disclosed, such as a journey to Nancy----"

This was the last straw, and Perpigna