"Has--has any cordon of women--female convicts--emigrants--passed in lately? From Paris? Speak, I beseech you," and he had again recourse to that which had not failed him yet, a gift of money.
The man pocketed the double piece in an instant. Then he said: "I cannot say. I was sent here but yesterday--the warders would have known."
"Go and ask them."
"Ask them. Ciel! they would return a strange answer. Man, they are dead! Do you not understand?"
"Is everybody dead in this unhappy place?" Walter asked, despairingly.
"Not yet. But as like as not they will soon be. You see, mon ami, we die gaily. Of us, of us others--gentlemen condemned for crimes we never committed--forty were sent into the city from our galleys two days ago. Four remain alive. I am one." Then, changing the subject, he said: "Is the life you love that of a woman who comes--or has come--in the cordon of which you speak?"
"God pity me! yes. She is my wife. Yet an innocent."
"Ha! An innocent. So! so! We are all innocent--all the convicts and convict emigrants. Also, our woman-kind. Well! enter, go find her if she is here. Then, away at once. Escape is easy, for the sufficient reason there will be none to stop you."
"Why not, therefore, flee yourself?"
"Oh I as for that, we have our reasons. We may grow rich by remaining, and we are paid eight livres a day to encourage us. There is much hidden treasure. And our costume is a little pronounced. We should not get far. Moreover," with a look of incredible cunning, "we shall get our yellow paper, our 'passport,' if we do well and survive! We shall be gentlemen at large once more. If we survive!"