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Updated: June 6, 2025
And la Pouraille, the possessor of a sum vastly greater, no doubt, than that placed in his pal's keeping, would probably prove easy to deal with. And Jacques Collin, thoroughly on his guard, had, until now, played his part to admiration as an innocent man and stranger, both at La Force and at the Conciergerie.
La Pouraille, a small, lean, dry man, with a face like a ferret, forty-five years old, and one of the celebrities of the prisons he had successively lived in since the age of nineteen, knew Jacques Collin well, how and why will be seen.
"He will always be the boss of the swells," replied la Pouraille. "Our pieces are safe enough." La Pouraille, wishing to find some man he could trust, had an interest in considering Jacques Collin an honest man. And in prison, of all places, a man believes what he hopes. "I lay you anything, he will come round the big Boss and save his chum!" said Fil-de-Soie.
La Pouraille, after telling the tale of all his crimes, but in thieves' slang, gave an account of the murder and robbery of the two Crottats. "You have my respect," said Jacques Collin. "The job was well done; but you seem to me to have blundered afterwards." "In what way?"
So in his desire for vengeance, to which the examining judge had given play under the necessity of identifying Jacques Collin, the chief of the "Safety" had very skilfully chosen his allies by setting la Pouraille, Fil-de-Soie, and le Biffon on the sham Spaniard for la Pouraille and Fil-de-Soie both belonged to the "Ten-thousand," and le Biffon was a "Great Pal."
Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon were always wheedling la Pouraille, who had lost all hope. The murderer knew that he would be tried, sentenced, and executed within four months. It is easy to understand why Fil-de-Soie and le Biffon should fawn on la Pouraille.
Two other convicts, brought with la Pouraille from La Force within these twenty-four hours, had at once acknowledged and made the whole prison-yard acknowledge the supremacy of this past-master sealed to the scaffold.
"My aunt Jacqueline, with whom I have just exchanged a few words in the office, and who is, as you know, a mother to the pals, told me that the authorities mean to be quit of you; they are so much afraid of you." "But I am rich now," said La Pouraille, with a simplicity which showed how convinced a thief is of his natural right to steal. "What are they afraid of?"
"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.
"Here you are nabbed by the Justice, with five robberies and three murders, the latest of them those of two rich and respectable folks.... Now, juries do not like to see respectable folks killed. You will be put through the machine, and there is not a chance for you." "I have heard all that," said la Pouraille lamentably.
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