“She will be involved in the sentence on la Pouraille, and let off with a year in quod for snitching,” said Jacques Collin, looking at la Pouraille.

La Pouraille understood his boss’ scheme, and by a single look promised to persuade le Biffon to promote it by inducing la Biffe to take upon herself this complicity in the crime la Pouraille was prepared to confess.

“Farewell, my children.  You will presently hear that I have saved my boy from Jack Ketch,” said Trompe-la-Mort.  “Yes, Jack Ketch and his hairdresser were waiting in the office to get Madeleine ready.  —­There,” he added, “they have come to fetch me to go to the public prosecutor.”

And, in fact, a warder came out of the gate and beckoned to this extraordinary man, who, in face of the young Corsican’s danger, had recovered his own against his own society.

It is worthy of note that at the moment when Lucien’s body was taken away from him, Jacques Collin had, with a crowning effort, made up his mind to attempt a last incarnation, not as a human being, but as a thing.  He had at last taken the fateful step that Napoleon took on board the boat which conveyed him to the Bellerophon.  And a strange concurrence of events aided this genius of evil and corruption in his undertaking.

But though the unlooked-for conclusion of this life of crime may perhaps be deprived of some of the marvelous effect which, in our day, can be given to a narrative only by incredible improbabilities, it is necessary, before we accompany Jacques Collin to the public prosecutor’s room, that we should follow Madame Camusot in her visits during the time we have spent in the Conciergerie.

One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself romantic.  Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination.  The audacity of facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of “situation” forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and purified by the writer.

Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the morning almost in good taste—­a difficult task for the wife of a judge who for six years has lived in a provincial town.  Her object was to give no hold for criticism to the Marquise d’Espard or the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, in a call so early as between eight and nine in the morning.  Amelie Cecile Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only half succeeded; and in a matter of dress is this not a twofold blunder?