“How was it with you?” asked Madame Graslin.

“Ah! there,” replied Farrabesche, “I had luck; I never drew a lot to kill a convict; I never had to vote the death of any one of them; I never was punished; no man took a dislike to me; and I got on well with the three different men I was chained to; they all feared me but liked me.  One reason was, my name was known and famous at the galleys before I got there.  A chauffeur! they thought me one of those brigands.  I have seen chauffing,” continued Farrabesche after a pause, in a low voice, “but I never either did it myself, or took any of the money obtained by it.  I was a refractory, I evaded the conscription, that was all.  I helped my comrades, I kept watch; I was sentinel and brought up the rear-guard; but I never shed any man’s blood except in self-defence.  Ah!  I told all to Monsieur Bonnet and my lawyer, and the judges knew well enough that I was no murderer.  But, all the same, I am a great criminal; nothing that I ever did was morally right.  However, before I got there, as I was saying, two of my comrades told of me as a man able to do great things.  At the galleys, madame, nothing is so valuable as that reputation, not even money.  In that republic of misery murder is a passport to tranquillity.  I did nothing to destroy that opinion of me.  I was sad, resigned, and they mistook the appearance of it.  My gloomy manner, my silence, passed for ferocity.  All that world, convicts, keepers, young and old, respected me.  I was treated as first in my hall.  No one interfered with my sleep; I was never suspected of informing; I behaved honorably according to their ideas; I never refused to do service; I never testified the slightest repugnance; I howled with the wolves outside, I prayed to God within.  My last companion in chains was a soldier, twenty-two years of age, who had committed a theft and deserted in consequence of it.  We were chained together for four years, and we were friends; wherever I may be I am certain to meet him when his time is up.  This poor devil, whose name is Guepin, is not a scoundrel, he is merely heedless; his punishment may reform him.  If my comrades had discovered that religion led me to submit to my trials,—­that I meant, when my time was up, to live humbly in a corner, letting no one know where I was, intending to forget their horrible community and never to cross the path of any of them,—­they would probably have driven me mad.”

“Then,” said Madame Graslin, “if a poor young man, a tender soul, carried away by passion, having committed a murder, was spared from death and sent to the galleys—­”

“Oh! madame,” said Farrabesche, interrupting her, “there is no sparing in that.  The sentence may be commuted to twenty years at the galleys, but for a decent young man, that is awful!  I could not speak to you of the life that awaits him there; a thousand times better die.  Yes, to die upon the scaffold is happiness in comparison.”