"Well, you'll see how it answered. I offered my savings as a guarantee to the master locksmith that he might give me work. 'I'm not a banker to take money on interest,' says he to me, 'and I don't want any freed convicts in my shop. I go to work in houses to open doors where keys are lost, I have a confidential business, and if it were known that I employed a freed convict amongst my workmen I should lose my customers. Good day, my man.'"
"Wasn't that just what he deserved, Cardillac?"
"You simpleton!" said the Gros-Boiteux to Frank, with a paternal air; "instead of breaking your ban at once, and coming to Paris to melt your mopusses, so that you might not have a sou left, but be compelled to return to robbing. You see the end of your fine ideas."
"That's what you are always saying," said Frank, with impatience; "it is true I was wrong not to spend my 'tin,' for I have not even enjoyed it. Well, as there were only four locksmiths in Etampes, he whom I had first addressed had soon told all the others, and they said to me as had said their fellow tradesman, 'No, thank ye.' All sung the same song."
"Only see, now, what it all comes to! You must see that we are all marked for life."
"Well, then, I was on the idle of Etampes, and my money melted and melted," continued Frank, "but no work came. I left Etampes, in spite of my surveillance, and came to Paris, where I found work immediately, for my employer did not know who or what I was, and it's no boast to say I am a first-rate workman. Well, I put my seven hundred francs which I had remaining into an agent's hands, who gave me a note for it; when that was due he did not pay me, so I took my note to a huissier, who brought an action against him, and recovered the money, which I left in his hands, saying to myself there's something for a rainy day. Well, just then I met the Gros-Boiteux."
"True. Well, Frank was a locksmith and made keys, I had a job in which he could be of service, and I proposed it to him. I had the prints, and he had only to go to work, when, only imagine, he refused,—he meant to turn honest. So, says I, I'll arrange about that, I'll make him work, for his own interest. So I wrote a letter, without any signature, to his master, and another to his fellow workmen, to inform them that Frank was a liberated convict,—so the master turned him away. He went to another employer and worked there for a week,—same game again; and if he had gone to a dozen I'd have served him in the same way."
"And if I had suspected that it was you who had informed against me," answered Frank, "I'd have given you a pleasant quarter of an hour to pass. Well, I was at length driven away from my last employer as a scamp only fit to be hanged. Work, then,—be respectable,—so that people may say, not 'What are you doing?' but 'What have you done?' Once on the pavé I said, 'Fortunately I have my savings to fall back upon.' So I went to the huissier, but he had cut his stick, and spent my 'tin'; and here was I without a feather to fly with, not even enough to pay for a week's lodging. What a precious rage I was in! Well, at this moment comes the Gros-Boiteux, and he took advantage of my situation. I saw it was useless trying to be honest, and that once on the prig there's no leaving it. But, old Gros, I owe you a turn."
"Come, Frank, no malice!" replied the Gros-Boiteux. "Well, he did his part like a man, and we entered upon the business, which promised royally; but, unfortunately, at the moment when we opened our mouths to swallow the dainty bit, the 'traps' were down upon us. Couldn't be helped, you know, lad! If it wasn't for that, why, our profession would be too good."