“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 acumen 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 God 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.”