he mad. Des exaltes--quoi! When I was drunk I loved them.
When I got more drink I was angry with the world. That was the best
time. I found refuge from misery in rage. But one can't be always
drunk--n'est-ce pas, monsieur? And when I was sober I was afraid to
break away. They would have stuck me like a pig."

He folded his arms again and raised his sharp chin with a bitter smile.

"By and by they told me it was time to go to work. The work was to rob
a bank. Afterwards a bomb would be thrown to wreck the place. My
beginner's part would be to keep watch in a street at the back and to
take care of a black bag with the bomb inside till it was wanted. After
the meeting at which the affair was arranged a trusty comrade did not
leave me an inch. I had not dared to protest; I was afraid of being
done away with quietly in that room; only, as we were walking together I
wondered whether it would not be better for me to throw myself suddenly
into the Seine. But while I was turning it over in my mind we had
crossed the bridge, and afterwards I had not the opportunity."

In the light of the candle end, with his sharp features, fluffy little
moustache, and oval face, he looked at times delicately and gaily young,
and then appeared quite old, decrepit, full of sorrow, pressing his
folded arms to his breast.

As he remained silent I felt bound to ask:

"Well! And how did it end?"

"Deportation to Cayenne," he answered.

He seemed to think that somebody had given the plot away. As he was
keeping watch in the back street, bag in hand, he was set upon by the
police. "These imbeciles," had knocked him down without noticing what he
had in his hand. He wondered how the bomb failed to explode as he fell.
But it didn't explode.

"I tried to tell my story in court," he continued. "The president was
amused. There were in the audience some idiots who laughed."

I expressed the hope that some of his companions had been caught, too.
He shuddered slightly before he told me that there were two--Simon,
called also Biscuit, the middle-aged fitter who spoke to him in the
street, and a fellow of the name of Mafile, one of the sympathetic
strangers who had applauded his sentiments and consoled his humanitarian
sorrows when he got drunk in the cafe.

"Yes," he went on, with an effort, "I had the advantage of their company
over there on St. Joseph's Island, amongst some eighty or ninety other
convicts. We were all classed as dangerous."

St. Jo