"Yes, and it is very gay, very animated; I come out of my room after breakfast. I go sometimes into one court, sometimes into another; and, as you say, I mix with the dregs. I assure you that, at the bottom, they appear to be very good fellows; some of them are very amusing. The most abandoned assemble in what they call the Lions' Den. Ah! my dear comrade, what hangdog faces! There is one among them named Skeleton! I have never seen his fellow." "What a singular name!" "He is so thin, or, rather, so fleshless, that it is no nickname; I tell you, he is frightful; and with all this, he is provost-marshal of his ward; he is by far the greatest villain of them all. He comes from the galleys, and he has again robbed and murdered; but his last murder is so horrible, that he knows very well he will be condemned to death to a certainty, but he laughs at it like fun." "What a ruffian!" "All the prisoners admire, and tremble before him. I put myself at once in his good graces, by giving him some cigars; he has taken me into his friendship, and teaches me slang. I make progress." "Oh! oh! what a good lark! my general learning flash!" "I tell you I amuse myself like anything. These jockeys adore me; some of them are even familiar as relations. I am not proud, like a little gentleman, Germain, a barefoot, who has not the means to be separate, and yet pretends to play the disdainful with them." "But he must have been delighted to find a man so much at home as you are, to talk with, if he is so highly disgusted with the others?" "Bah! he did not seem to remark who I was; but had he remarked it, I should have been very guarded to respond to his advances. He is the butt of the prison. They will play him, sooner or later, a bad turn, and I have not, of course, any desire to partake of the aversion of which he is the object." "You are very right." "That would spoil my recreation; for my promenade with the prisoners is a real promenade. Only these robbers have not a great opinion of me, mentally. You comprehend--my accusation of a simple abuse of confidence--it is a sad thing for such fellows. Thus they look upon me as no great shakes, as Arnal says." "In fact, alongside of these matadores of crime, you are--" "A lamb, my dear comrade. Since you are so obliging, do not forget my commissions." "Do not be uneasy, my general." "1st Alexandrine; 2d the fish, and the hamper of wine; 3d the old 1817 Cognac, the ground coffee, and the eiderdown coverlet." "You shall have all. Anything more?" "Yes, I forgot. Do you know where M. Badinot lives?" "The broker? yes." "Will you tell him that I reckon on his obliging disposition to find me a lawyer who is prepared for my cause--that I shall not regard a cool thousand?" "I will see M. Badinot, be assured, general; this evening all your commissions shall be executed, and to-morrow you will receive what you have demanded. Adieu, and a good heart, general." "Ta, ta!"