derstand why Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon
should fawn on la Pouraille. The man had somewhere hidden two hundred
and fifty thousand francs in gold, his share of the spoil found in
the house of the Crottats, the "victims," in newspaper phrase. What a
splendid fortune to leave to two pals, though the two old stagers would
be sent back to the galleys within a few days! Le Biffon and Fil-de-Soie
would be sentenced for a term of fifteen years for robbery with
violence, without prejudice to the ten years' penal servitude on a
former sentence, which they had taken the liberty of cutting short. So,
though one had twenty-two and the other twenty-six years of imprisonment
to look forward to, they both hoped to escape, and come back to find la
Pouraille's mine of gold.

But the "Ten-thousand man" kept his secret; he did not see the use of
telling it before he was sentenced. He belonged to the "upper ten" of
the hulks, and had never betrayed his accomplices. His temper was well
known; Monsieur Popinot, who had examined him, had not been able to get
anything out of him.

This terrible trio were at the further end of the prison-yard, that is
to say, near the better class of cells. Fil-de-Soie was giving a lecture
to a young man who was IN for his first offence, and who, being certain
of ten years' penal servitude, was gaining information as to the various
convict establishments.

"Well, my boy," Fil-de-Soie was saying sententiously as Jacques Collin
appeared on the scene, "the difference between Brest, Toulon, and
Rochefort is----"

"Well, old cock?" said the lad, with the curiosity of a novice.

This prisoner, a man of good family, accused of forgery, had come down
from the cell next to that where Lucien had been.

"My son," Fil-de-Soie went on, "at Brest you are sure to get some beans
at the third turn if you dip your spoon in the bowl; at Toulon you never
get any till the fifth; and at Rochefort you get none at all, unless you
are an old hand."

Having spoken, the philosopher joined le Biffon and la Pouraille, and
all three, greatly puzzled by the priest, walked down the yard, while
Jacques Collin, lost in grief, came up it. _Trompe-la-Mort_, absorbed in
terrible meditations, the meditations of a fallen emperor, did not
think of himself as the centre of observation, the object of general
attention, and he walked slowly, gazing at the fatal window where Lucien
had hanged himself. None of the prisoners knew of this catastrophe,