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Bibi-Lupin is too well known; he has served his turn; if you get his place, you will have the only situation that suits you. I am delighted to see you in it on my honor " "Till our next meeting, very soon," said Jacques Collin. On turning round, Trompe-la-Mort saw the public prosecutor sitting at his table, his head resting on his hands.
"Either the public prosecutor has broken his word, or he had not taken Bibi-Lupin into his confidence, and in that case I must get the matter explained," thought he. "Do you mean to arrest me?" he asked his enemy. "Say so without more ado. Don't I know that in the heart of this place you are stronger than I am?
"You can expect no less; they won't crown you with roses like a fatted ox. When they first set us down for Rochefort, it was because they wanted to be rid of us! A sigh such as had rarely been heard under that inexorable roof struck the stones, which sent back the sound that has no fellow in music, to the ear of the astounded Bibi-Lupin.
"Say something to show me that you are he; you have nothing but his voice," said Theodore. "You see, poor boy, he assures me that he is innocent," said Jacques Collin to Bibi-Lupin, who dared not speak for fear of being recognized. "Sempre mi," said Jacques, returning close to Theodore, and speaking the word in his ear. "Sempre ti," replied Theodore, giving the countersign.
"There ought to be created for every prison parlor, a post of superintendent, to be given with a good salary to the cleverest and most energetic police officers," said he, after a long pause. "Bibi-Lupin ought to end his days in such a place. Then we should have an eye and ear on the watch in a department that needs closer supervision than it gets. Monsieur Gault could tell us nothing positive."
"Well, then," replied Bibi-Lupin, "you may be quite sure of one thing you will never see twenty." "Why?" "Because you will be scragged within three days," replied the police agent. The murderer, who had believed, even after sentence was passed, that a minor would never be executed, collapsed like an omelette soufflee.
Bibi-Lupin knew better than to call out; but he sprang to his feet, ran to the entrance to the passage, and signed to a gendarme to stand on guard. Then, swift as lightning, he came back to the foe, who quietly looked on. Jacques Collin had decided what to do.
Bibi-Lupin, himself formerly a convict, and a comrade of Jacques Collin's on the hulks, was his personal enemy. This hostility had its rise in quarrels in which Jacques Collin had always got the upper hand, and in the supremacy over his fellow-prisoners which Trompe-la-Mort had always assumed.
Take off his coat, and you will see..." Jacques Collin was again obliged to take off his coat; Bibi-Lupin turned up his sleeve and showed the scar he had spoken of. "It is the scar of a bullet," replied Don Carlos Herrera. "Here are several more." "Ah! It is certainly his voice," cried Bibi-Lupin. "Your certainty," said Camusot, "is merely an opinion; it is not proof."
A marginal note in the Prefet's handwriting ran thus: "Orders have been sent by telegraph to Bibi-Lupin, chief of the Safety department, to return forthwith, to be confronted with the prisoner, as he is personally acquainted with Jacques Collin, whom he, in fact, arrested in 1819 with the connivance of a Mademoiselle Michonneau.
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