"
"What a ruffian!"
"All the prisoners admire, and tremble before him. I put myself at once in
his good graces, by giving him some cigars; he has taken me into his
friendship, and teaches me slang. I make progress."
"Oh! oh! what a good lark! my general learning flash!"
"I tell you I amuse myself like anything. These jockeys adore me; some of
them are even familiar as relations. I am not proud, like a little
gentleman, Germain, a barefoot, who has not the means to be separate, and
yet pretends to play the disdainful with them."
"But he must have been delighted to find a man so much at home as you are,
to talk with, if he is so highly disgusted with the others?"
"Bah! he did not seem to remark who I was; but had he remarked it, I should
have been very guarded to respond to his advances. He is the butt of the
prison. They will play him, sooner or later, a bad turn, and I have not, of
course, any desire to partake of the aversion of which he is the object."
"You are very right."
"That would spoil my recreation; for my promenade with the prisoners is a
real promenade. Only these robbers have not a great opinion of me,
mentally. You comprehend--my accusation of a simple abuse of confidence--it
is a sad thing for such fellows. Thus they look upon me as no great shakes,
as Arnal says."
"In fact, alongside of these matadores of crime, you are--"
"A lamb, my dear comrade.
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