"
"What more now?"
"Come, take courage!"
"But speak, then!"
"Well! there is no more prison for me."
"How is that?"
"On account of the burglary in an inhabited house, the lawyer told me,
'It's a safe thing.' I shall have fifteen or twenty years at the galleys
and a berth in the pillory to boot."
"The galleys! but you are so weak you will die there!" cried the unhappy
woman, bursting into tears.
"How if I had enrolled myself among the white-leaders?"
"But the galleys, oh! the galleys!"
"It is a prison in the open air, with a red cap instead of a brown one,
and, besides, I have always been curious to see the ocean. What a starer I
am!"
"But the pillory! To be exposed there to the contempt of all the world, oh!
my brother." And the unfortunate woman began again to weep.
"Come, come, Jeanne, be reasonable. It is a bad quarter of an hour to pass,
but I believe one is seated. And, besides, am I not accustomed to a crowd?
When I played juggler I always had people around me; I will imagine that I
am at my old trade, and if it has too much effect upon me I will close my
eyes; it will absolutely be the same as if they did not see me."
Speaking with so much stoicism, this unfortunate man wished less to appear
insensible of his criminal actions than to console and satisfy his sister
by this apparent indifference. For a man accustomed to prison
_manners_, and with whom all shame is necessarily dead--even the
galleys were only a change of condition, a "change of caps," as
Pique-Vinaigre said, with frightful truth.
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