was all alone----"

"And do you love the slut?" asked Jacques Collin, feeling that the
reproach was a just one.

"Oh! I want to live, but it is for you now rather than for her."

"Be quite easy, I am not called _Trompe-la-Mort_ for nothing. I
undertake the case."

"What! life?" cried the lad, lifting his swaddled hands towards the damp
vault of the cell.

"My little Madeleine, prepare to be lagged for life (penal servitude),"
replied Jacques Collin. "You can expect no less; they won't crown you
with roses like a fatted ox. When they first set us down for Rochefort,
it was because they wanted to be rid of us! But if I can get you
ticketed for Toulon, you can get out and come back to Pantin (Paris),
where I will find you a tidy way of living."

A sigh such as had rarely been heard under that inexorable roof struck
the stones, which sent back the sound that has no fellow in music, to
the ear of the astounded Bibi-Lupin.

"It is the effect of the absolution I promised him in return for his
revelations," said Jacques Collin to the gendarme. "These Corsicans,
monsieur, are full of faith! But he is as innocent as the Immaculate
Babe, and I mean to try to save him."

"God bless you, Monsieur l'Abbe!" said Theodore in French.

_Trompe-la-Mort_, more Carlos Herrera, more the canon than ever,
left the condemned cell, rushed back to the hall, and appeared before
Monsieur Gault in affected horror.

"Indeed, sir, the young man is innocent; he has told me who the guilty
person is! He was ready to die for a false point of honor--he is a
Corsican! Go and beg the public prosecutor to grant me five minutes'
interview. Monsieur de Granville cannot refuse to listen at once to
a Spanish priest who is suffering so cruelly from the blunders of the
French police."

"I will go," said Monsieur Gault, to the extreme astonishment of all the
witnesses of this extraordinary scene.

"And meanwhile," said Jacques, "send me back to the prison-yard where
I may finish the conversion of a criminal whose heart I have touched
already--they have hearts, these people!"

This speech produced a sensation in all who heard it. The gendarmes, the
registry clerk, Sanson, the warders, the executioner's assistant--all
awaiting orders to go and get the scaffold ready--to rig up the machine,
in prison slang--all these people, usually so indifferent, were agitated
by very natural curiosity.

Just then the rattle of a carriage with high-stepping hor