"The fact is, that the affair lasts as long as it takes to swallow a mouthful. Draw the bolt; and he opens the devil's door for you!" said Skeleton continuing to smoke his pipe.
"Ah, bah! is there a devil?"
"Fool! I said that for a joke. There is a knife; a head is placed under, and that is all."
"Besides, is that our business?"
"As for me, now that I know my road, and that I must stop at the tree, I would as soon go today as tomorrow," said Skeleton, with savage energy. "I wish I was there now. I feel my blood in my mouth when I think of the crowd who will be there to see me. There will be four or five thousand who will fight or quarrel for places. They will hire out windows and chairs as for a procession. I hear them already cry, 'Window to let! Place to let!' And then there will be the troops, cavalry and infantry. And all this for me—for old Boulard. It is not for an honest man that they take all this trouble, hey, Sals! Here is something to make a man proud. Even he should be as cowardly as Pique-Vinaigre, it would make him resolute. All these eyes which are looking at you give you courage, and it is but a moment to pass, you die boldly; that vexes the judges and the duffers, and encourages a flash cove to die game."
"That is true," replied Barbillon, endeavoring to imitate the frightful boasting. "They think to make us afraid, and confess all, when they send Ketch to open shop on our account."
"Bah!" said Nicholas, in his turn. "One is not wrong to laugh at the scaffold; it is like the prison and the galleys; we laugh at them also; so long as we are all friends together, 'A short life and a merry one!'"
"For instance," said the prisoner with the lisping voice, "what would be tough would be to keep us in cells day and night."
"In cells!" cried Skeleton, with a kind of savage alarm. "Do not speak of it. In cells! All alone! I would rather they would cut off my arms and legs. All alone! Between four walls! All alone! No old mates to laugh with! That cannot be! I prefer a hundred times the galleys to the prisons, because at the galleys, instead of being shut up, one is out of doors, sees company, moves about. Well! I would rather a hundred times be a head shorter than be put into a cell only for one year. See here, at this moment, I am sure of being cut down, am I not? Well, let them say to me, 'Would you prefer a year in a cell?' I would stretch out my neck. A year all alone! Can this be possible? What would they have one think of when one is all alone?"
"If they were to put you there by force?"