“If you save Madeleine, my good boss, you can just as easily——”
“Don’t waste your spittle,” said Jacques Collin shortly. “Make your will.”
“Well, then—I want to leave the money to la Gonore,” replied la Pouraille piteously.
“What! Are you living with Moses’ widow—the Jew who led the swindling gang in the South?” asked Jacques Collin.
For Trompe-la-Mort, like a great general, knew the person of every one of his army.
“That’s the woman,” said la Pouraille, much flattered.
“A pretty woman,” said Jacques Collin, who knew exactly how to manage his dreadful tools. “The moll is a beauty; she is well informed, and stands by her mates, and a first-rate hand. Yes, la Gonore has made a new man of you! What a flat you must be to risk your nut when you have a trip like her at home! You noodle; you should have set up some respectable little shop and lived quietly.—And what does she do?”
“She is settled in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, managing a house——”
“And she is to be your legatee? Ah, my dear boy, this is what such sluts bring us to when we are such fools as to love them.”
“Yes, but don’t you give her anything till I am done for.”