The Mysteries Of Paris Volume V Part 25

"But if they find out that it is you?"

"Well, what if they do? Am I a calf with two heads, such as they show at the fair?"

"No, that's true; a man has but one throat, and yours--"

"Is sentenced; my lawyer told me so yesterday. I was taken with my hand in the bag, and my knife in the weasand of the stiff'un. I'm a 'return horse,' too; so nothing can be more certain. I'll drop my head into Charlot's (the headsman's) basket, and I shall see if it's true that he does his customers, and puts sawdust into his basket instead of the bran which government allows us."

"True, the guillotine has a right to its bran. Now, I remember my father was robbed in the same way," said Nicholas Martial, with a ferocious grin.

This horrid jest created immense laughter amongst the prisoners. This is fearful, but far from exaggeration; we give but a faint idea of these conversations, so common in prisons. The prisoners were all laughing joyously.

"Thousand thunders!" cried the Skeleton. "I wish they who punish us would come and see how we bear it. If they will come to the Barriere St.

Jacques the day of my benefit they will hear me address the audience in a neat and appropriate speech, and say to Charlot, in a gentlemanly tone, 'Pere Sampson, the cord if you please.'"[1]

[1] To understand this horrid jest the English reader must know that the doors in France are usually opened by the porter, who sits in his room and pulls a cord to allow the person going out to have free egress; and the blade of the guillotine glides down the grooves of the machine, after a spring has been set in motion, by touching a cord that acts upon it.

Fresh bursts of laughter hailed this jest.

"And then Charlot opens the baker's (the devil's) door," continued the Skeleton, still smoking his pipe.

"Ah, bah! Is there a devil?"

"You fool, I was only joking. There's a sharp blade, and they put a head under it, and that's all. And now that I know my road, and must stay at the abbey of _Mont-a-Regret_ (guillotine), I would rather go there to-day than to-morrow," said the Skeleton, with savage excitement. "I wish I was there now,--my blood comes into my mouth when I think what a crowd there'll be to see me; there'll be, at least, I should say, from four to five thousand who will push and squeeze to get good places, and they'll hire seats and windows, as if for a grand procession. I hear 'em now crying, 'Seats to let! Seats to let!' And then there'll be troops of soldiers, cavalry and infantry, and all for me,--for the Skeleton!

That's enough to rouse a man if he was as big a coward as Pique-Vinaigre, that would make you walk like a hero. All eyes on you, and that makes a fellow pluck up; then--'tis but a moment--a fellow dies game, and that annoys the big-wigs and curs, and gives the knowing ones pluck to face the chopper."

"That's true, on Gospel!" added Barbillon, trying to imitate the fearful audacity of the Skeleton; "they think to make us funky when they set Charlot to work to get his shop open at our expense."

"Ah, bah!" said Nicholas, in his turn; "we laugh at Charlot and his shop; it is like the prison or the galleys,--we laugh at them, too; and so, that we may be all friends together, let's be jolly as long as we can."

"The thing that would do us," said the shrill-voiced prisoner, "would be to put us in solitary cells day and night. They do say they mean to do so at last."

"In solitary cells!" exclaimed the Skeleton, with repressed rage; "don't talk of it! Solitary cell--alone! Hold your tongue! I would rather have my arms and legs cut off! Alone within four walls! Quite alone--without having our pals to laugh with! Oh, that will never be! I like the galleys a hundred times better than the central prison, because at the galleys, instead of being shut up, one is out-of-doors, sees the world, people going and coming, and has his jokes and fun. Well, I'd rather be done for at once than be put in a solitary cell, if only for a year.

Yes, for at this moment I am sure to be guillotined--ain't I? Well, if they said to me, 'Would you rather have a year of solitary confinement?'

I should hold out my neck. A year all alone! Why, is it possible? What do they suppose a man thinks of when he is alone?"

"Suppose you were carried there by main force?"

"Well, I wouldn't stay; I would make such use of my hands and feet that I should escape," replied the Skeleton.

"But if you couldn't,--if you were unable to escape?"

"Then I'd kill the first person who came near me, in order to have my head chopped off."

"But if, instead of sentencing such as us to death, they condemned us to be in solitary confinement for life?"

The Skeleton appeared struck at this remark, and, after a moment's silence, replied:

"Why, then, I'll tell you what I should do,--I should dash out my brains against the walls. I would starve rather than be in a solitary cell.

What, all alone! all my life alone with myself,--and no chance of escape! I tell you it is impossible. Well, you know, there's no man more reckless than I am--I'd kill a man for a dollar, and for nothing if my honour was concerned; they believe I have only killed two persons, but if the dead could tell tales there are five tongues could say what I have done."

The ruffian was boasting. The sanguinary declarations are still another trait of the hardened criminals. A governor of a prison said to us, "If the a.s.sa.s.sinations boasted of by these scoundrels were really committed, the population would be decimated."

"And I, too," said Barbillon, desirous of bragging in his turn; "they think I only silenced the husband of the milk-woman in the Cite, but I did many others with tall Robert, who suffered last year."

"I was going to say," continued the Skeleton, "that I fear neither fire nor devil. Well, if I were in a solitary cell, and certain I could not escape,--thunder! I believe I should be frightened!"

"And so, if you had to begin your time over again as prig and throttler, and if, instead of central houses, galleys, and guillotine, there were only solitary cells, you would hesitate before such a chance?"

"_Ma foi!_ I believe I really should!" replied the Skeleton.

And he said truly. It is impossible to describe the vast terror which such ruffians experience at the very idea of being in solitary confinement. And is not this very terror an eloquent plea in favour of this punishment?

An uproarious noise made by the prisoners in the yard interrupted the Skeleton's council. Nicholas rose hastily, and went to the door of the room to discover the cause of this unusual tumult.

"It is the Gros-Boiteux," said Nicholas, returning.

"The Gros-Boiteux!" exclaimed the _prevot_. "And has Germain come down from the visiting-room?"

"Not yet," replied Barbillon.

"Then let him make haste," said the Skeleton, "and I'll give him an order for a new coffin."

The Gros-Boiteux, whose arrival was so warmly hailed by the prisoners in the lions' den, and whose information might be so fatal to Germain, was a man of middle stature; but, in spite of being fat and crippled, he was nimble and vigorous. His countenance, brutal like that of most of his companions, was of the bulldog character; his low forehead, his small yellow eyes, his flaccid cheeks, his heavy jaws, the lower being very projecting, and armed with long teeth, or, rather, broken fangs, which in places projected beyond his lips, made his resemblance to that animal the more striking. He wore a felt cap, and over his clothes a blue cloak with a fur collar.

The Gros-Boiteux was accompanied into the prison by a man about thirty years of age, whose tanned and freckled face appeared less dissolute than that of the other prisoners, although he affected to appear as dogged as his companion. From time to time his features became overcast, and he smiled bitterly. The Gros-Boiteux soon found himself amongst his boon companions and acquaintances, and he could scarcely reply to the congratulations and kind words which came to him from all sides.

"What, is it you, old boy? All right! Now we shall have some fun."

"You haven't hurried yourself."

"Still I have done all I could to see my friends again as soon as possible, and it was no fault of mine if the stone jug didn't claim me sooner."

"Don't doubt you, old boy! And a man doesn't pick out a gaol as his favourite residence; but once trapped he does his best to be jolly."

"And so we shall be, for Pique-Vinaigre is here."

"Is he? What, one of the old customers of Melun? Why, that's capital!

For he'll help us to pa.s.s the time with his stories, and his customers will not fail him, for there are more recruits coming in."

"Who are they?"

"Why, just now at the entrance, whilst I came in, I saw two fresh chaps brought in; one I didn't know, but the other, who wore a blue cotton cap and a gray blouse, I have seen before somewhere. He is a powerful-looking man, and I think I have met him at the Ogress's of the White Rabbit."

"I say, Gros-Boiteux, don't you remember at Melun I bet you a wager that in less than a year you would be nabbed again?"

"To be sure I do, and you've won. But what are you here for?"