ues Collin went on. "I discovered that Bibi-Lupin is cheating the
authorities, that one of his men murdered the Crottats. Was not this
providential, as you say?--So I perceived a remote possibility of doing
good, of turning my gifts and the dismal experience I have gained
to account for the benefit of society, of being useful instead
of mischievous, and I ventured to confide in your judgment, your
generosity."

The man's air of candor, of artlessness, of childlike simplicity, as
he made his confession, without bitterness, or that philosophy of vice
which had hitherto made him so terrible to hear, was like an absolute
transformation. He was no longer himself.

"I have such implicit trust in you," he went on, with the humility of a
penitent, "that I am wholly at your mercy. You see me with three roads
open to me--suicide, America, and the Rue de Jerusalem. Bibi-Lupin is
rich; he has served his turn; he is a double-faced rascal. And if you
set me to work against him, I would catch him red-handed in some trick
within a week. If you will put me in that sneak's shoes, you will do
society a real service. I will be honest. I have every quality that is
needed in the profession. I am better educated than Bibi-Lupin; I went
through my schooling up to rhetoric; I shall not blunder as he does; I
have very good manners when I choose. My sole ambition is to become an
instrument of order and repression instead of being the incarnation of
corruption. I will enlist no more recruits to the army of vice.

"In war, monsieur, when a hostile general is captured, he is not shot,
you know; his sword is returned to him, and his prison is a large town;
well, I am the general of the hulks, and I have surrendered.--I am
beaten, not by the law, but by death. The sphere in which I crave to
live and act is the only one that is suited to me, and there I can
develop the powers I feel within me.

"Decide."

And Jacques Collin stood in an attitude of diffident submission.

"You place the letters in my hands, then?" said the public prosecutor.

"You have only to send for them; they will be delivered to your
messenger."

"But how?"

Jacques Collin read the magistrate's mind, and kept up the game.

"You promised me to commute the capital sentence on Calvi for twenty
years' penal servitude. Oh, I am not reminding you of that to drive a
bargain," he added eagerly, seeing Monsieur de Granville's expression;
"that life should be safe for other reason