This new crime, the robbery
and murder of a diamond-dealer in Red-Arm's public-house, was frustrated by
the landlord's secret connection with the police. They had made their
descent just as the jewel-broker was in the villains' hands, and arrested
the whole gang. Bras-Rouge (taken to prevent his fellows suspecting his
treachery), Nicholas Martial, and a scamp named Barbillon, were put in La
Force, widow Martial and Calabash in Saint Lazare. Another capture, a
ruffian called the Maitre d'Ecole (Schoolmaster), from his caligraphic
abilities, who had killed La Chouette in a fit of madness, was put in the
Conciergerie Prison, in a cell for the insane.
To return to Nicholas Martial in La Force. Some veteran gallows-birds had
known his executed father, others, his brother, the galley-slave; he was
received and immediately patronized by these revelers in crime with savage
interest.
This paternal reception from murderer to murderer exhilarated the widow's
son, these praises bestowed on the hereditary perversity of his family
intoxicated him. Soon forgetting, in this hideous thoughtlessness, the
future which menaced him, he only remembered his past misdeeds but to
exaggerate them and glorify himself in the eyes of his companions. The
expression, then, of his face, was as impudent as his visitor's was uneasy
and concerned. This individual was one Micou, a receiver, dwelling in the
Passage de la Brasserie, to whose house Madame de Fermont and her daughter,
victims of the cupidity of Jacques Ferrand, had been obliged to retire.
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