"And this women helps him in his robberies?"
"Yes, and in his murders too. They say he brags of having already, with her assistance, 'done for' two or three persons; and, amongst others, three weeks ago, a cattle-dealer on the road to Poissy, whom they also robbed."
"They must be very cunning, as well as powerful, to do that, for he always has under his blouse a brace of loaded pistols and a dagger. He says that Charlot (the executioner) waits for him, and he can only lose his head once, and so he will kill all he can kill to try and escape. Oh! he makes no mystery of it; and as he is twice as strong as you and I, they will have a tough job who take him."
"What did you do, Chourineur, when you left the Bagne?"
"I offered myself to the master-lighterman of the Quai St. Paul, and I get my livelihood there."
"But as you have never been a 'prig,' why do you live in the Cité?"
"Why, where else can I live? Who likes to be seen with a discharged criminal? I should be tired of always being alone, for I like company, and here I am with my equals. I have a bit of a row sometimes, and they fear me like fire in the Cité; but the police have nothing to say to me, except now and then for a 'shindy,' for which they give me, perhaps, twenty-four hours at the watch-house, and there's an end of that."
"Thirty-five sous for taking in the river foot-baths, up to the stomach from twelve to fifteen hours a day, summer and winter; but let me be just, and tell the truth; so if, through having my toes in the water, I get the _grenouille_,[7] I am allowed to break my arms in breaking up old vessels, and unloading timber on my back. I begin as a beast of burden, and end like a fish's tail. When I lose my strength entirely, I shall take a rake and a wicker basket, like the old rag-picker whom I see in the recollections of my childhood."
[7] A disease of the skin to which all who work in the water are liable.
"There are worse than I am; and without my dreams of the sergeant and soldiers with their throats cut,--for I have the dream still sometimes,--I could quietly wait for the moment when I should drop down dead at the corner of some dunghill, like that at which I was born; but the dream--the dream--by heaven and earth! I don't like even to think of that," said the Chourineur, and he emptied his pipe at the corner of the table.