low boys I have
stowed."

"Do what he bids you!" said Fil-de Soie.

"You don't say so?" retorted la Pouraille, looking at his pal.

"What a flat you are! You will be booked for the Abbaye!" said le
Biffon. "You have no other door to budge, if you want to keep on your
pins, to yam, wet your whistle, and fake to the end; you must take his
orders."

"That's all right," said la Pouraille. "There is not one of us that will
blow the gaff, or if he does, I will take him where I am going----"

"And he'll do it too," cried Fil-de-Soie.

The least sympathetic reader, who has no pity for this strange race, may
conceive of the state of mind of Jacques Collin, finding himself between
the dead body of the idol whom he had been bewailing during five hours
that night, and the imminent end of his former comrade--the dead body
of Theodore, the young Corsican. Only to see the boy would demand
extraordinary cleverness; to save him would need a miracle; but he was
thinking of it.

For the better comprehension of what Jacques Collin proposed to attempt,
it must be remarked that murderers and thieves, all the men who people
the galleys, are not so formidable as is generally supposed. With a
few rare exceptions these creatures are all cowards, in consequence no
doubt, of the constant alarms which weigh on their spirit. The faculties
being perpetually on the stretch in thieving, and the success of a
stroke of business depending on the exertion of every vital force, with
a readiness of wit to match their dexterity of hand, and an alertness
which exhausts the nervous system; these violent exertions of will
once over, they become stupid, just as a singer or a dancer drops quite
exhausted after a fatiguing pas seul, or one of those tremendous duets
which modern composers inflict on the public.

Malefactors are, in fact, so entirely bereft of common sense, or so much
oppressed by fear, that they become absolutely childish. Credulous to
the last degree, they are caught by the bird-lime of the simplest snare.
When they have done a successful _job_, they are in such a state of
prostration that they immediately rush into the debaucheries they crave
for; they get drunk on wine and spirits, and throw themselves madly into
the arms of their women to recover composure by dint of exhausting their
strength, and to forget their crime by forgetting their reason.

Then they are at the mercy of the police. When once they are in custody
they lose th