marked.

The keeper who, without knowing it, was, by his departure, to give the
signal for the murder of Germain, stood near the half-opened door.

"All ready!" said Pique-Vinaigre to Skeleton.

"Silence in the band" answered the latter, half-turning round; then,
addressing Pique-Vinaigre, "Now fire away! we listen." A profound silence
reigned in the sitting-room.




CHAPTER X.

GRINGALET AND CUT-IN-HALF.


Before we commence the recital of Pique-Vinaigre, we will recall to our
readers that, by a strange contrast, the majority of the prisoners,
notwithstanding their cynical perversity, almost always preferred artless
stories (we will not say puerile), in which the oppressed, by the laws of
an inexorable fatality, is revenged on his tyrant, after trials and
difficulties without number. The thought is far from us, to establish the
slightest parallel between corrupted beings and the honest and poor masses;
but is it not known with what frenzied applause the audience of minor
theaters behold the deliverance of the victim, and with what curses they
pursue the traitorous and the wicked? One ordinarily laughs at these rough
evidences of sympathy for that which is good, weak, and persecuted; of