Just as the first prison van, conveying Jacques Collin, reached the archway of Saint-Jean—­a narrow, dark passage, some block ahead compelled the postilion to stop under the vault.  The prisoner’s eyes shone like carbuncles through the grating, in spite of his aspect as of a dying man, which, the day before, had led the governor of La Force to believe that the doctor must be called in.  These flaming eyes, free to rove at this moment, for neither the officer nor the gendarme looked round at their “customer,” spoke so plain a language that a clever examining judge, M. Popinot, for instance, would have identified the man convicted for sacrilege.

In fact, ever since the “salad-basket” had turned out of the gate of La Force, Jacques Collin had studied everything on his way.  Notwithstanding the pace they had made, he took in the houses with an eager and comprehensive glance from the ground floor to the attics.  He saw and noted every passer-by.  God Himself is not more clear-seeing as to the means and ends of His creatures than this man in observing the slightest differences in the medley of things and people.  Armed with hope, as the last of the Horatii was armed with his sword, he expected help.  To anybody but this Machiavelli of the hulks, this hope would have seemed so absolutely impossible to realize that he would have gone on mechanically, as all guilty men do.  Not one of them ever dreams of resistance when he finds himself in the position to which justice and the Paris police bring suspected persons, especially those who, like Collin and Lucien, are in solitary confinement.

It is impossible to conceive of the sudden isolation in which a suspected criminal is placed.  The gendarmes who apprehend him, the commissioner who questions him, those who take him to prison, the warders who lead him to his cell—­which is actually called a cachot, a dungeon or hiding-place, those again who take him by the arms to put him into a prison-van—­every being that comes near him from the moment of his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all he says, to be repeated to the police or to the judge.  This total severance, so simply effected between the prisoner and the world, gives rise to a complete overthrow of his faculties and a terrible prostration of mind, especially when the man has not been familiarized by his antecedents with the processes of justice.  The duel between the judge and the criminal is all the more appalling because justice has on its side the dumbness of blank walls and the incorruptible coldness of its agents.

But Jacques Collin, or Carlos Herrera—­it will be necessary to speak of him by one or the other of these names according to the circumstances of the case—­had long been familiar with the methods of the police, of the jail, and of justice.  This colossus of cunning and corruption had employed all his powers of mind, and all the resources of mimicry, to affect the surprise and anility of an innocent man, while giving the lawyers the spectacle of his sufferings.  As has been told, Asie, that skilled Locusta, had given him a dose of poison so qualified as to produce the effects of a dreadful illness.