you to be sentenced and sent there, to
arrive and to escape?"

"Even you cannot work such a miracle. She took no part in the job,"
replied la Biffe's partner.

"Oh, my good Biffon," said la Pouraille, "our boss is more powerful than
God Almighty."

"What is your password for her?" asked Jacques Collin, with the
assurance of a master to whom nothing can be refused.

"Sorgue a Pantin (night in Paris). If you say that she knows you have
come from me, and if you want her to do as you bid her, show her a
five-franc piece and say Tondif."

"She will be involved in the sentence on la Pouraille, and let off
with a year in quod for snitching," said Jacques Collin, looking at la
Pouraille.

La Pouraille understood his boss' scheme, and by a single look promised
to persuade le Biffon to promote it by inducing la Biffe to take upon
herself this complicity in the crime la Pouraille was prepared to
confess.

"Farewell, my children. You will presently hear that I have saved my
boy from Jack Ketch," said _Trompe-la-Mort_. "Yes, Jack Ketch and his
hairdresser were waiting in the office to get Madeleine ready.--There,"
he added, "they have come to fetch me to go to the public prosecutor."

And, in fact, a warder came out of the gate and beckoned to this
extraordinary man, who, in face of the young Corsican's danger, had
recovered his own against his own society.

It is worthy of note that at the moment when Lucien's body was taken
away from him, Jacques Collin had, with a crowning effort, made up
his mind to attempt a last incarnation, not as a human being, but as
a _thing_. He had at last taken the fateful step that Napoleon took
on board the boat which conveyed him to the Bellerophon. And a strange
concurrence of events aided this genius of evil and corruption in his
undertaking.

But though the unlooked-for conclusion of this life of crime may perhaps
be deprived of some of the marvelous effect which, in our day, can
be given to a narrative only by incredible improbabilities, it is
necessary, before we accompany Jacques Collin to the public prosecutor's
room, that we should follow Madame Camusot in her visits during the time
we have spent in the Conciergerie.

One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly
observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic
arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself
romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allo