"Stop a moment. Here is the plant; with my thousand francs I went and bought a black wig; I shaved off my whiskers; I put on blue spectacles; I stuck a pillow on my back, and made up a hump. I began at once to look for one or two rooms on a ground floor in a retired street. I found my affair in the Rue du Provence; I paid my rent in advance under the name of Grégoire. The next day I went to the Temple to buy furniture for my two rooms, always wearing my black wig, hump, and blue barnacles, so that I might be well known. I sent the things to the Rue du Provence, and six silver spoons and forks which I bought on the Boulevard Saint Denis, still in my disguise as a hunchback. I returned to put all these in order in my domicile, I said to the porter that I should not sleep there for two days, and I carried away my key. The windows of the two rooms were fastened by strong shutters. Before I went away, I left one unfastened on the inside. At night I took off my wig, goggles, and hump, with which I had been to make my purchases and hired my rooms. I put this disguise in a trunk, which I sent to the address of M. Murphy, the friend of M. Rudolph, begging him to take care of it. I bought this blouse and blue cap, and a jimmy, and at one o'clock in the morning I came to the Rue du Provence to hang about my lodgings waiting until the patrol should pass, to commence my robbery, my burglary, in order to be copped!"
The Slasher was unable to suppress a hearty fit of laughter. "Oh! I comprehend," cried Germain.
"But you will see if I had not ill-luck: no police passed. I could have robbed myself twenty times at my ease. At length, about two o'clock, I heard the snails at the end of the street; I opened my window, and broke two or three panes of glass to make a devil of a noise; I dashed in the window, jumped into the room, and seized the money box and some clothes. Happily, the patrol had heard the jingling of the glass just as I got out of the window. I was nabbed by the guard, who, at the noise of breaking glass, had come to see what was the matter. They knocked at the door; the porter opened it; they sent for the commissary; he came; the porter said that the rooms had been taken the evening previous by a gentleman with a hunchback, with black hair and blue spectacles, and who was named Grégoire. I had the flaxen wool which you see; I had my eyes open like a hare in her form; I was as straight as a Russian at the command, 'Carry arms!' They could never take me for the hunchback, with blue spectacles and black locks. I confessed every, thing; I was arrested; they took me to the station—from there, here; and I arrived at a good moment, just in time to snatch from the claws of the Skeleton the young man of whom M. Rudolph had said, 'I am as much interested for him as for my own son.'"
"Oh! what do I not owe you for such services!" cried Germain.
"It is not me—it is to M. Rudolph you owe it.'
"But the cause of his interest for me."
"He will tell you, unless he does not choose to do so; for often he is pleased to do good, and if you take it into your head to ask him why, he will not mind answering, 'Mind your own business!'"
"And does M. Rudolph know that you are here?"
"Not so stupid as to tell him my idea; he would not, perhaps, have allowed me the fun, and without bragging, it is rich."
"But the risks you have run and still run?"