arts; I open
them.--What are you afraid of? Send me with an escort of gendarmes, of
turnkeys--whom you will."

"I will inquire whether the prison chaplain will allow you to take his
place," said Monsieur Gault.

And the governor withdrew, struck by the expression, perfectly
indifferent, though inquisitive, with which the convicts and the
prisoners on remand stared at this priest, whose unctuous tones lent a
charm to his half-French, half-Spanish lingo.

"How did you come in here, Monsieur l'Abbe?" asked the youth who had
questioned Fil-de-Soie.

"Oh, by a mistake!" replied Jacques Collin, eyeing the young gentleman
from head to foot. "I was found in the house of a courtesan who had
died, and was immediately robbed. It was proved that she had killed
herself, and the thieves--probably the servants--have not yet been
caught."

"And it was for that theft that your young man hanged himself?"

"The poor boy, no doubt, could not endure the thought of being blighted
by his unjust imprisonment," said _Trompe-la-Mort_, raising his eyes to
heaven.

"Ay," said the young man; "they were coming to set him free just when he
had killed himself. What bad luck!"

"Only innocent souls can be thus worked on by their imagination," said
Jacques Collin. "For, observe, he was the loser by the theft."

"How much money was it?" asked Fil-de-Soie, the deep and cunning.

"Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Jacques Collin blandly.

The three convicts looked at each other and withdrew from the group that
had gathered round the sham priest.

"He screwed the moll's place himself!" said Fil-de-Soie in a whisper to
le Biffon, "and they want to put us in a blue funk for our cartwheels"
(thunes de balles, five-franc pieces).

"He will always be the boss of the swells," replied la Pouraille. "Our
pieces are safe enough."

La Pouraille, wishing to find some man he could trust, had an interest
in considering Jacques Collin an honest man. And in prison, of all
places, a man believes what he hopes.

"I lay you anything, he will come round the big Boss and save his chum!"
said Fil-de-Soie.

"If he does that," said le Biffon, "though I don't believe he is really
God, he must certainly have smoked a pipe with old Scratch, as they
say."

"Didn't you hear him say, 'Old Scratch has cut me'?" said Fil-de-Soie.

"Oh!" cried la Pouraille, "if only he would save my nut, what a time
I would have with my whack of the shiners and the yel