"And suppose I had been with the white-lead party?"
"But the galleys,—the galleys!"
"It is a prison in the open air, with a red shirt instead of a brown one; and then I have always had a curiosity to see the sea!"
"But the public exposure! To be subject to the contempt of all the world! Oh, my poor brother!" And the poor woman wept bitterly.
"Come, come, Jeanne, be composed; it is an uncomfortable quarter of an hour to pass. But you know I am used to see crowds. When I played with my cups and balls, I always had a crowd around me; so I'll fancy I am thimble-rigging, and if it has too much effect on me I'll close my eyes, and that will seem as if no one was looking at me."
Speaking with this derision, the unhappy man affected this insensibility, in order to console his sister. For a man accustomed to the manners of prisons, and in whom all shame is utterly dead, the bagne (galleys) is, in fact, only a change of shirt, as Pique-Vinaigre said, with frightful truth. Many prisoners in the central prisons even prefer the bagne, because of the riotous life they lead, often committing attempts at murder in order to be sent to Brest or Toulon.
"Twenty years at the galleys!" repeated Pique-Vinaigre's poor sister.
"Take comfort, Jeanne, they will only pay me as I deserve. I am too weak to be put to hard labour, and if there is no manufactory of wooden trumpets and swords as at Melun, why, I shall be set to some easy work; they will employ me at the infirmary. I am not a troublesome fellow, but a good, easy chap; and I shall tell my stories as I do here, and shall be esteemed by my chiefs, and adored by my comrades, and I will send you carved cocoanuts and straw boxes for my nephews and nieces."
"If you had only written to me that you were coming to Paris, I would have tried to conceal you until you found work."
"Pardieu! I meant to have gone to you, but I preferred arriving with my hands full,—for I see you do not ride in your carriage. Well, and your children,—and your husband?"