Malefactors are, in fact, so entirely bereft of common sense, or so much oppressed by fear, that they become absolutely childish.  Credulous to the last degree, they are caught by the bird-lime of the simplest snare.  When they have done a successful job, they are in such a state of prostration that they immediately rush into the debaucheries they crave for; they get drunk on wine and spirits, and throw themselves madly into the arms of their women to recover composure by dint of exhausting their strength, and to forget their crime by forgetting their reason.

Then they are at the mercy of the police.  When once they are in custody they lose their head, and long for hope so blindly that they believe anything; indeed, there is nothing too absurd for them to accept it.  An instance will suffice to show how far the simplicity of a criminal who has been nabbed will carry him.  Bibi-Lupin, not long before, had extracted a confession from a murderer of nineteen by making him believe that no one under age was ever executed.  When this lad was transferred to the Conciergerie to be sentenced after the rejection of his appeal, this terrible man came to see him.

“Are you sure you are not yet twenty?” said he.

“Yes, I am only nineteen and a half.”

“Well, then,” replied Bibi-Lupin, “you may be quite sure of one thing —­you will never see twenty.”

“Why?”

“Because you will be scragged within three days,” replied the police agent.

The murderer, who had believed, even after sentence was passed, that a minor would never be executed, collapsed like an omelette soufflee.

Such men, cruel only from the necessity for suppressive evidence, for they murder only to get rid of witnesses (and this is one of the arguments adduced by those who desire the abrogation of capital punishment),—­these giants of dexterity and skill, whose sleight of hand, whose rapid sight, whose every sense is as alert as that of a savage, are heroes of evil only on the stage of their exploits.  Not only do their difficulties begin as soon as the crime is committed, for they are as much bewildered by the need for concealing the stolen goods as they were depressed by necessity—­but they are as weak as a woman in childbed.  The vehemence of their schemes is terrific; in success they become like children.  In a word, their nature is that of the wild beast—­easy to kill when it is full fed.  In prison these strange beings are men in dissimulation and in secretiveness, which never yields till the last moment, when they are crushed and broken by the tedium of imprisonment.

It may hence be understood how it was that the three convicts, instead of betraying their chief, were eager to serve him; and as they suspected he was now the owner of the stolen seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, they admired him for his calm resignation, under bolt and bar of the Conciergerie, believing him capable of protecting them all.