"May the devil tear my eyes out rather than make them serve such an apprenticeship!" cried the student. "Fifteen years! you have been fifteen years in prison?" "Fifteen or sixteen years, perhaps more, perhaps less. I long since ceased to count days or to measure time." "You must have committed some abominable crime," cried the student, "to have been punished so pitilessly." "I am innocent," replied the prisoner. "Innocent!" cried Jacques aghast. "Ah! my dear comrade, I have already reminded you that this is no time for joking." "And I replied that I was not joking." "But still less is it a time for lying, for a joke is simply a relaxation of the mind, which offends neither heaven nor earth, while lying is a deadly sin, which compromises the soul's wellbeing." "I have never lied." "Why you say that you are innocent, and yet you have been fifteen years in prison?" "Fifteen years more or less, I said." "Ah!" cried Jacques, "and I also am innocent!" "May God protect you then!" rejoined the dying man. "Why do you say that?" "Because a guilty man may hope for pardon; an innocent man, never!" "What you say is very profound, my friend; but it's not consoling at all, do you know?" "I tell you the truth." "Come," said Jacques, "come, you have some little peccadillo or other to reproach yourself with, haven't you? Between ourselves, tell me about it." With that Jacques, who was really beginning to distinguish objects in the darkness, took a stool, carried it to the dying man's bedside, and, selecting a spot where there was a recess in the wall, placed the stool there and made himself as comfortable as possible in his improvised arm-chair. "Ah! you say nothing, my friend; you have no confidence in me. Oh, well! I can understand that: fifteen years in prison may well have made you suspicious. My name is Jacques Aubry. I am twenty-two years old, and a student, as you have discovered,--according to what you say, at least. I had certain reasons which concern myself alone, for getting myself committed to the Châtelet; I have been here ten minutes; I have had the honor of making your acquaintance. There's my whole life in a word, and you know me now as well as I know myself. Now, my dear companion, I will listen to you." "I am Etienne Raymond," said the prisoner. "Etienne Raymond," the student repeated; "I don't know that name." "In the first place," said the prisoner, "you were a child when it pleased God to have me disappear from the world: in the next place, I was of little consequence in the world, so that no one noticed my absence." "But what did you do? Who were you?" "I was the Connétable de Bourbon's confidential servant." "Oho! and you had a share with him in betraying the state. In that case I am no longer surprised." "No; I refused to betray my master, that was all." "Tell me about it; how did it happen?"