"Come, Jeanne," he said, "do not play the child. It is sixteen years since we met, and to keep your handkerchief up to your eyes is not the way for us to know each other again."
"Brother—my poor, dear Fortuné! I am choking—I cannot speak."
"Ah, nonsense! What ails you?"
His sister repressed her sobs, wiped her eyes, and, looking at him with astonishment, replied, "What ails me? What, when I find you again in prison, where you have already been fifteen years!"
"True. It is six months to-day since I left Melun; and I didn't call upon you in Paris because the capital was forbidden to me."
"Why did you leave Beaugency when you were under surveillance?"
"In the first place, Jeanne, since the gratings are between us, you must fancy I have embraced you, squeezed you in my arms, as a man ought to do who has not seen his sister for an eternity. Now let us talk. A prisoner at Melun, who is called the Gros-Boiteux, told me that there was at Beaugency an old convict of his acquaintance, who employed the freed prisoners in a factory of white lead. Those who work at it in a month or two catch the lead-colic. One in three of those attacked die. It is true that others die also; but they take their time about it and get on, sometimes as long as a year or even eighteen months. Then the trade is better paid than most others, and there are fellows who hold out at it for two or three years. But they are elders—patriarchs—of the white-leaders. They die, it is true, but that is all."
"And why did you choose a trade so dangerous that they die at it?"
"What could I do? When I went to Melun for that well-known job of the forged coin I was a thimble-rigger. As in gaol there was no scope for my line of business, and I am not stronger than a good stout flea, they put me to making children's toys. There was a tradesman in Paris who found it very advantageous to have his wooden trumpets and swords made by the prisoners. Why, I must have made half the wooden swords used by the children of Paris; and I was great in the trumpet line. Rattles, too,—why, with two of my manufacture I could have set on edge the teeth of a whole battalion! Well, when my time was up I was a first-rate maker of penny trumpets, and my only resource was making child's playthings. Now, supposing that a whole town, young and old, were inclined to play tur-tu-tu-tu on my trumpets, I should still have had a good deal of trouble to earn a livelihood; and then I could not have induced a whole population to continue playing the trumpet from morning to night."