Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Part 76

"Yes, Theodore Calvi is yamming his last meal," said le Biffon. "His trips will pipe their eyes, for the little beggar was a great pet."

"So you're here, old chap?" said la Pouraille to Jacques Collin. And, arm-in-arm with his two acolytes, he barred the way to the new arrival.

"Why, Boss, have you got yourself j.a.panned?" he went on.

"I hear you have n.o.bbled our pile" (stolen our money), le Biffon added, in a threatening tone.

"You have just got to stump up the tin!" said Fil-de-Soie.

The three questions were fired at him like three pistol-shots.

"Do not make game of an unhappy priest sent here by mistake," Jacques Collin replied mechanically, recognizing his three comrades.

"That is the sound of his pipe, if it is not quite the cut of his mug,"

said la Pouraille, laying his hand on Jacques Collin's shoulder.

This action, and the sight of his three chums, startled the "Boss" out of his dejection, and brought him back to a consciousness of reality; for during that dreadful night he had lost himself in the infinite spiritual world of feeling, seeking some new road.

"Do not blow the gaff on your Boss!" said Jacques Collin in a hollow threatening tone, not unlike the low growl of a lion. "The reelers are here; let them make fools of themselves. I am faking to help a pal who is awfully down on his luck."

He spoke with the unction of a priest trying to convert the wretched, and a look which flashed round the yard, took in the warders under the archways, and pointed them out with a wink to his three companions.

"Are there not narks about? Keep your peepers open and a sharp lookout.

Don't know me, Nanty parnarly, and soap me down for a priest, or I will do for you all, you and your molls and your blunt."

"What, do you funk our blabbing?" said Fil-de-Soie. "Have you come to help your boy to guy?"

"Madeleine is getting ready to be turned off in the Square" (the Place de Greve), said la Pouraille.

"Theodore!" said Jacques Collin, repressing a start and a cry.

"They will have his nut off," la Pouraille went on; "he was booked for the scaffold two months ago."

Jacques Collin felt sick, his knees almost failed him; but his three comrades held him up, and he had the presence of mind to clasp his hands with an expression of contrition. La Pouraille and le Biffon respectfully supported the sacrilegious _Trompe-la-Mort_, while Fil-de-Soie ran to a warder on guard at the gate leading to the parlor.

"That venerable priest wants to sit down; send out a chair for him,"

said he.

And so Bibi-Lupin's plot had failed.

_Trompe-la-Mort_, like a Napoleon recognized by his soldiers, had won the submission and respect of the three felons. Two words had done it.

Your molls and your blunt--your women and your money--epitomizing every true affection of man. This threat was to the three convicts an indication of supreme power. The Boss still had their fortune in his hands. Still omnipotent outside the prison, their Boss had not betrayed them, as the false pals said.

Their chief's immense reputation for skill and inventiveness stimulated their curiosity; for, in prison, curiosity is the only goad of these blighted spirits. And Jacques Collin's daring disguise, kept up even under the bolts and locks of the Conciergerie, dazzled the three felons.

"I have been in close confinement for four days and did not know that Theodore was so near the Abbaye," said Jacques Collin. "I came in to save a poor little chap who scragged himself here yesterday at four o'clock, and now here is another misfortune. I have not an ace in my hand----"

"Poor old boy!" said Fil-de-Soie.

"Old Scratch has cut me!" cried Jacques Collin, tearing himself free from his supporters, and drawing himself up with a fierce look. "There comes a time when the world is too many for us! The beaks gobble us up at last."

The governor of the Conciergerie, informed of the Spanish priest's weak state, came himself to the prison-yard to observe him; he made him sit down on a chair in the sun, studying him with the keen ac.u.men which increases day by day in the practise of such functions, though hidden under an appearance of indifference.

"Oh! Heaven!" cried Jacques Collin. "To be mixed up with such creatures, the dregs of society--felons and murders!--But G.o.d will not desert His servant! My dear sir, my stay here shall be marked by deeds of charity which shall live in men's memories. I will convert these unhappy creatures, they shall learn they have souls, that life eternal awaits them, and that though they have lost all on earth, they still may win heaven--Heaven which they may purchase by true and genuine repentance."

Twenty or thirty prisoners had gathered in a group behind the three terrible convicts, whose ferocious looks had kept a s.p.a.ce of three feet between them and their inquisitive companions, and they heard this address, spoken with evangelical unction.

"Ay, Monsieur Gault," said the formidable la Pouraille, "we will listen to what this one may say----"

"I have been told," Jacques Collin went on, "that there is in this prison a man condemned to death."

"The rejection of his appeal is at this moment being read to him," said Monsieur Gault.

"I do not know what that means," said Jacques Collin, artlessly looking about him.

"Golly, what a flat!" said the young fellow, who, a few minutes since, had asked Fil-de-Soie about the beans on the hulks.

"Why, it means that he is to be scragged to-day or to-morrow."

"Scragged?" asked Jacques Collin, whose air of innocence and ignorance filled his three pals with admiration.

"In their slang," said the governor, "that means that he will suffer the penalty of death. If the clerk is reading the appeal, the executioner will no doubt have orders for the execution. The unhappy man has persistently refused the offices of the chaplain."

"Ah! Monsieur le Directeaur, this is a soul to save!" cried Jacques Collin, and the sacrilegious wretch clasped his hands with the expression of a despairing lover, which to the watchful governor seemed nothing less than divine fervor. "Ah, monsieur," _Trompe-la-Mort_ went on, "let me prove to you what I am, and how much I can do, by allowing me to incite that hardened heart to repentance. G.o.d has given me a power of speech which produces great changes. I crush men's hearts; I open them.--What are you afraid of? Send me with an escort of gendarmes, of turnkeys--whom you will."

"I will inquire whether the prison chaplain will allow you to take his place," said Monsieur Gault.

And the governor withdrew, struck by the expression, perfectly indifferent, though inquisitive, with which the convicts and the prisoners on remand stared at this priest, whose unctuous tones lent a charm to his half-French, half-Spanish lingo.

"How did you come in here, Monsieur l'Abbe?" asked the youth who had questioned Fil-de-Soie.

"Oh, by a mistake!" replied Jacques Collin, eyeing the young gentleman from head to foot. "I was found in the house of a courtesan who had died, and was immediately robbed. It was proved that she had killed herself, and the thieves--probably the servants--have not yet been caught."

"And it was for that theft that your young man hanged himself?"

"The poor boy, no doubt, could not endure the thought of being blighted by his unjust imprisonment," said _Trompe-la-Mort_, raising his eyes to heaven.

"Ay," said the young man; "they were coming to set him free just when he had killed himself. What bad luck!"

"Only innocent souls can be thus worked on by their imagination," said Jacques Collin. "For, observe, he was the loser by the theft."

"How much money was it?" asked Fil-de-Soie, the deep and cunning.

"Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs," said Jacques Collin blandly.

The three convicts looked at each other and withdrew from the group that had gathered round the sham priest.

"He screwed the moll's place himself!" said Fil-de-Soie in a whisper to le Biffon, "and they want to put us in a blue funk for our cartwheels"

(thunes de balles, five-franc pieces).