CHAPTER XV A NOTE OF WARNING
I
"Now do you see how impossible it is that we can fail?" exclaimed Madame la Marquise triumphantly, as soon as the man had gone.
"I do not see how we can," assented de Puisaye.
The others all concurred. Leroux, despite his ill-favoured appearance, despite his criminal antecedents which none of them here could ignore, had made a favourable impression on them all.
"The man means to go straight, I think," said Prigent.
"He hates his present condition," commented M. de Courson dryly, "and would sell his soul, if he had one, to be freed from it. Bonaparte will find that it is a dangerous experiment," he added naïvely, "to try and use men like Leroux and his mates to help him prosecute his infamous wars."
"I suppose," continued M. d'Aché, "that the mates on whom this man reckons are ex-convicts like himself?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Madame la Marquise quite unabashed. "Most of the men who are detailed to the powder factories in France now were serving life sentences for murder, rape, or arson before."
"I suppose that we can trust them," said Prigent, with a doleful sigh.