"The crime? Well! I have betrayed my friend."
"That's no crime," said the jailer. "Good night." And he closed the wicket.
"That's not a crime, you say? that's not a crime? What is it then, pray?"
And Jacques grasped the knocker with both hands, and knocked with all his strength.
"What's the matter? what's the matter?" said a different voice from within the Châtelet.
"It's a madman, who wants to be admitted into the prison," replied the jailer.
"If he's a madman, his place is not at the Châtelet, but at the asylum."
"At the asylum!" cried Aubry, scampering away as fast as his legs would carry him, "at the asylum! Peste! that's not what I want. I want to get into the Châtelet, not the asylum! Besides, paupers and beggars are sent to the asylum, and not people who have twenty Paris sous in their pocket as I have. The asylum! Why, that wretched jailer claims that to betray one's friend is no crime! So it seems that, in order to have the honor of being committed to prison one must have murdered or stolen. But now I think of it,—why might I not have led some young girl astray? There's nothing dishonorable about that. Very good, but what girl? Gervaise?"
Despite his preoccupation, the student roared with laughter.
"But, after all," he said, "though it isn't so, it might have been. Good! good! I have discovered my crime: I seduced Gervaise!"