sieur le Comte, I propose to give
you full and plenary absolution, and you shall be one of my men, the
chief next to me, and perhaps my successor."

"You really offer me a situation?" said Jacques Collin. "A nice
situation indeed!--out of the fire into the frying-pan!"

"You will be in a sphere where your talents will be highly appreciated
and well paid for, and you will act at your ease. The Government police
are not free from perils. I, as you see me, have already been imprisoned
twice, but I am none the worse for that. And we travel, we are what we
choose to appear. We pull the wires of political dramas, and are treated
with politeness by very great people.--Come, my dear Jacques Collin, do
you say yes?"

"Have you orders to act in this matter?" said the convict.

"I have a free hand," replied Corentin, delighted at his own happy idea.

"You are trifling with me; you are very shrewd, and you must allow that
a man may be suspicious of you.--You have sold more than one man by
tying him up in a sack after making him go into it of his own accord.
I know all your great victories--the Montauran case, the Simeuse
business--the battles of Marengo of espionage."

"Well," said Corentin, "you have some esteem for the public prosecutor?"

"Yes," said Jacques Collin, bowing respectfully, "I admire his noble
character, his firmness, his dignity. I would give my life to make
him happy. Indeed, to begin with, I will put an end to the dangerous
condition in which Madame de Serizy now is."

Monsieur de Granville turned to him with a look of satisfaction.

"Then ask him," Corentin went on, "if I have not full power to snatch
you from the degrading position in which you stand, and to attach you to
me."

"It is quite true," said Monsieur de Granville, watching the convict.

"Really and truly! I may have absolution for the past and a promise of
succeeding to you if I give sufficient evidence of my intelligence?"

"Between two such men as we are there can be no misunderstanding," said
Corentin, with a lordly air that might have taken anybody in.

"And the price of the bargain is, I suppose, the surrender of those
three packets of letters?" said Jacques Collin.

"I did not think it would be necessary to say so to you----"

"My dear Monsieur Corentin," said _Trompe-la-Mort_, with irony worthy
of that which made the fame of Talma in the part of Nicomede, "I beg to
decline. I am indebted to you for the knowledge of what I am wo