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Very soon afterwards, a heavy step was heard on the stairs; and Blangin came in, looking pale and anxious, like a man who feels that he is running a great risk. "Neither seen nor known," he cried. "No one is aware of your presence here. I was only afraid of that dog of a sentinel; and, just as you came by, I had managed to get him round the corner, offering him a drop of something to drink.
"Do you really wish to make my prison hours a thousand times harder than they are? Do you want to deprive me of my last remnant of strength and of courage? Have you really no confidence in me any longer? Could you not believe me a few days more?" He paused. Somebody knocked at the door; and almost at the same time Blangin the jailer called out through the wicket, "Time is passing.
"You are the best of men!" exclaimed M. de Boiscoran, far from suspecting the price that had been paid for Blangin's sympathy, "and, on the day on which I regain my liberty, I will prove to you that we whom you have obliged are not ungrateful." "Quite at your service," replied the jailer modestly. Gradually, however, Dionysia had recovered her self-possession. She said gently to Blangin,
When M. Blangin, the keeper, saw him appear, he turned very pale; for M. Blangin had not slept since Dionysia had given him the seventeen thousand francs. He, once upon a time the special friend of all gendarmes, now trembled when one of them entered the jail. Not that he felt any remorse about having betrayed his duty; oh, no! but he feared discovery.
At the foot of the steps, Blangin pointed at a door, and said, "That is the parlor. When the marchioness wants to go, please call me." On the threshold, Jacques paused once more. The parlor of the jail at Sauveterre is an immense vaulted hall, lighted up by two narrow windows with close, heavy iron gratings.
He it is who has made a hole in the wall, and escaped, thinking, no doubt, that the heavens are a better roof than the finest jail." A little distance behind the group stood Blangin, the jailer, affecting a contrite and distressed air.
"That is the business of his mother, the Marchioness of Boiscoran. Whatever Blangin agrees to venture for your sake, he will do as well for her sake. Let the marchioness go and spend the night at the jail. I agree to that. Let her see her son. That is her duty." "But surely she will never shake Jacques's resolution." "And you think you have more influence over him than his mother?"
"Blangin agrees," the clerk went on. "I promised him sixteen thousand francs. Perhaps that is rather much?" "It is very little." "He insists upon having them in gold." "He shall have it." "Finally, he makes certain conditions with regard to the interview, which will appear rather hard to you." The young girl had quite recovered by this time. "What are they?"
He could not sleep for it that night; and noticed his anxious air as he crossed the street next morning on his way to the jail. Blangin the keeper was on the lookout for him, and cried, "Ah, come quick, sir! The accused is devoured with impatience." Slowly, and his heart beating furiously, the famous advocate went up the narrow stairs.
"But I, my dear M. Blangin, think of me! You would not refuse me? Don't you know who I am? Have you never heard your wife speak of me?" The jailer was certainly touched. He replied, "I know how much my wife and myself are indebted to your kindness, madam. But I have my orders, and you surely would not want me to lose my place, madam?"
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