my
allies, but the souteneur, the most abject of them all, is, perhaps, the
most valuable.

"He is too lazy to work, and, as a rule, has not got the pluck of a
mouse, consequently he rarely resorts to crime, requiring the smallest
amount of energy or daring. He furthermore loves his Paris, where,
according to his own lights, he enjoys himself and lives upon the fat of
the land; all these reasons make him careful not to commit himself,
albeit that at every minute of the day he comes in contact with
everything that is vile. But he gets hold of their secrets, though the
word is almost a misnomer, seeing that few of these desperadoes can hold
their tongue about their own business, knowing all the while, as they
must do, that their want of reticence virtually puts their heads into
the halter. But if they have done 'a good stroke of business,' even if
they do not brag about it in so many words, they must show their success
by their sudden show of finery, by their treating of everybody all
round, etc. The souteneur is, as it were, jealous of all this; for
though he lives in comparative comfort from what his mistress gives him,
he rarely makes a big haul. His mistress gone, the pot ceases to boil;
in fact, he calls her his _marmite_. In a few days he is on his beams'
ends, unless he has one in every different quarter, which is not often
the case, though it happens now and then. But, at any rate, the
incarceration of one of them makes a difference, and, under the
circumstance, he repairs, as far as he dares, to the prefecture, and
obtains her liberation in exchange for the address of a burglar or even
a murderer who is wanted. I have known one who had perfected his system
of obtaining information to such a degree as to be able to sell his
secrets to his fellow-souteneurs when they had none of their own
wherewith to propitiate the detectives. He has had as much as three or
four hundred francs for one revelation of that kind, which means twenty
or thirty times the sum the police would have awarded him. Of course,
three or four hundred francs is a big sum for the souteneur to shell
out; but, when the marmite is a good one, he sooner does that than be
deprived of his revenues for six months or so. I have diverted some of
those secrets into my own channel, and Clementine's souteneur is one of
my clients; that is why I gave her up. Very shocking, gentlemen, but a
la guerre comme a la guerre."

M. Canler furthermore counselled us to