“I will not rob you of your money,” said Doctor Lebrun; “no one in this world can ever communicate with him again——­”

“No one?” said the prisoner in amazement.  “Why?”

“He has hanged himself——­”

No tigress robbed of her whelps ever startled an Indian jungle with a yell so fearful as that of Jacques Collin, who rose to his feet as a tiger rears to spring, and fired a glance at the doctor as scorching as the flash of a falling thunderbolt.  Then he fell back on the bed, exclaiming: 

“Oh, my son!”

“Poor man!” said the doctor, moved by this terrific convulsion of nature.

In fact, the first explosion gave way to such utter collapse, that the words, “Oh, my son,” were but a murmur.

“Is this one going to die in our hands too?” said the turnkey.

“No; it is impossible!” Jacques Collin went on, raising himself and looking at the two witnesses of the scene with a dead, cold eye.  “You are mistaken; it is not Lucien; you did not see.  A man cannot hang himself in one of these cells.  Look—­how could I hang myself here?  All Paris shall answer to me for that boy’s life!  God owes it to me.”

The warder and the doctor were amazed in their turn—­they, whom nothing had astonished for many a long day.

On seeing the governor, Jacques Collin, crushed by the very violence of this outburst of grief, seemed somewhat calmer.

“Here is a letter which the public prosecutor placed in my hands for you, with permission to give it to you sealed,” said Monsieur Gault.

“From Lucien?” said Jacques Collin.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Is not that young man——­”

“He is dead,” said the governor.  “Even if the doctor had been on the spot, he would, unfortunately, have been too late.  The young man died —­there—­in one of the rooms——­”

“May I see him with my own eyes?” asked Jacques Collin timidly.  “Will you allow a father to weep over the body of his son?”

“You can, if you like, take his room, for I have orders to remove you from these cells; you are no longer in such close confinement, monsieur.”

The prisoner’s eyes, from which all light and warmth had fled, turned slowly from the governor to the doctor; Jacques Collin was examining them, fearing some trap, and he was afraid to go out of the cell.

“If you wish to see the body,” said Lebrun, “you have no time to lose; it is to be carried away to-night.”

“If you have children, gentlemen,” said Jacques Collin, “you will understand my state of mind; I hardly know what I am doing.  This blow is worse to me than death; but you cannot know what I am saying.  Even if you are fathers, it is only after a fashion—­I am a mother too—­I —­I am going mad—­I feel it!”

By going through certain passages which open only to the governor, it is possible to get very quickly from the cells to the private rooms.  The two sets of rooms are divided by an underground corridor formed of two massive walls supporting the vault over which Galerie Marchande, as it is called, is built.  So Jacques Collin, escorted by the warder, who took his arm, preceded by the governor, and followed by the doctor, in a few minutes reached the cell where Lucien was lying stretched on the bed.