“Well, my boy,” Fil-de-Soie was saying sententiously as Jacques Collin appeared on the scene, “the difference between Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort is——­”

“Well, old cock?” said the lad, with the curiosity of a novice.

This prisoner, a man of good family, accused of forgery, had come down from the cell next to that where Lucien had been.

“My son,” Fil-de-Soie went on, “at Brest you are sure to get some beans at the third turn if you dip your spoon in the bowl; at Toulon you never get any till the fifth; and at Rochefort you get none at all, unless you are an old hand.”

Having spoken, the philosopher joined le Biffon and la Pouraille, and all three, greatly puzzled by the priest, walked down the yard, while Jacques Collin, lost in grief, came up it. Trompe-la-Mort, absorbed in terrible meditations, the meditations of a fallen emperor, did not think of himself as the centre of observation, the object of general attention, and he walked slowly, gazing at the fatal window where Lucien had hanged himself.  None of the prisoners knew of this catastrophe, since, for reasons to be presently explained, the young forger had not mentioned the subject.  The three pals agreed to cross the priest’s path.

“He is no priest,” said Fil-de-Soie; “he is an old stager.  Look how he drags his right foot.”

It is needful to explain here—­for not every reader has had a fancy to visit the galleys—­that each convict is chained to another, an old one and a young one always as a couple; the weight of this chain riveted to a ring above the ankle is so great as to induce a limp, which the convict never loses.  Being obliged to exert one leg much more than the other to drag this fetter (manicle is the slang name for such irons), the prisoner inevitably gets into the habit of making the effort.  Afterwards, though he no longer wears the chain, it acts upon him still; as a man still feels an amputated leg, the convict is always conscious of the anklet, and can never get over that trick of walking.  In police slang, he “drags his right.”  And this sign, as well known to convicts among themselves as it is to the police, even if it does not help to identify a comrade, at any rate confirms recognition.

In Trompe-la Mort, who had escaped eight years since, this trick had to a great extent worn off; but just now, lost in reflections, he walked at such a slow and solemn pace that, slight as the limp was, it was strikingly evident to so practiced an eye as la Pouraille’s.  And it is quite intelligible that convicts, always thrown together, as they must be, and never having any one else to study, will so thoroughly have watched each other’s faces and appearance, that certain tricks will have impressed them which may escape their systematic foes—­spies, gendarmes, and police-inspectors.

Thus it was a peculiar twitch of the maxillary muscles of the left cheek, recognized by a convict who was sent to a review of the Legion of the Seine, which led to the arrest of the lieutenant-colonel of that corps, the famous Coignard; for, in spite of Bibi-Lupin’s confidence, the police could not dare believe that the Comte Pontis de Sainte-Helene and Coignard were one and the same man.