‘Be it so! if he only lie quiet, I care not,’ rejoined the gaoler, and proceeded to the next name on the list.
The monotonous roll-call, the heat, the attitude in which I was lying, all conspired to make me drowsy: even the very press of sensations that crowded to my brain lent their aid, and at last I slept as soundly as ever I had done in my bed at night. I was dreaming of the dark alleys in the wood of Belleville, where so often I had strolled of an evening with Père Michel: I was fancying that we were gathering the fresh violets beneath the old trees, when a rude hand shook my shoulder, and I awoke. One of the turnkeys and Boivin stood over me, and I saw at once that my plan had worked well.
‘Is this the fellow?’ said the turnkey, pushing me rudely with his foot.
‘Yes,’ replied Boivin, white with fear; ‘this is the boy; his name is Tristan.’ The latter words were accompanied with a look of great significance towards me.
‘What care we how he is called! let us hear in what manner he came here.’
‘I can tell you little,’ said I, staring and looking wildly around; ‘I must have been asleep, and dreaming, too.’
‘The letter,’ whispered Boivin to the turnkey—‘the letter says that he was made to inhale some poisonous drug, and that while insensible——’
‘Bah,’ said the other derisively, ‘this will not gain credit here; there has been complicity in the affair, Master Boivin. The commissaire is not the man to believe a trumped-up tale of the sort; besides, you are well aware that you are responsible for these “rats” of yours. It is a private arrangement between you and the commissaire, and it is not very probable that he’ll get himself into a scrape for you.’
‘Then what are we to do?’ cried Boivin passionately, as he wrung his hands in despair.
‘I know what I should, in a like case,’ was the dry reply.