"What could I do? When I went to Melun for that well-known job of the forged coin I was a thimble-rigger. As in gaol there was no scope for my line of business, and I am not stronger than a good stout flea, they put me to making children's toys. There was a tradesman in Paris who found it very advantageous to have his wooden trumpets and swords made by the prisoners. Why, I must have made half the wooden swords used by the children of Paris; and I was great in the trumpet line. Rattles, too,--why, with two of my manufacture I could have set on edge the teeth of a whole battalion! Well, when my time was up I was a first-rate maker of penny trumpets, and my only resource was making child's playthings. Now, supposing that a whole town, young and old, were inclined to play tur-tu-tu-tu on my trumpets, I should still have had a good deal of trouble to earn a livelihood; and then I could not have induced a whole population to continue playing the trumpet from morning to night." "You are still such a jester!" "Better joke than cry. Well, then, seeing that at forty leagues from Paris my trade of juggler was no more useful to me than my trumpets, I requested the surveillance at Beaugency, intending to become a white-leader. It is a trade that gives you indigestion enough to send you mad; but until one bursts one lives, and that is always something, and it was better than turning thief. I am neither brave nor strong enough to thieve, and it was from pure accident that I did the thing I have just mentioned to you." "And yet you had the courage to take up with a deadly trade! Come now, Fortune, you wish to make yourself out worse than you are." "I thought that the malady would have so little to take hold of in me that it would go elsewhere, and that I should become one of the patriarchal white-leaders. Well, when I came out of prison, I found my earnings had considerably increased by telling stories." "So you told us. You remember how it amused poor old mother?" "Dear soul! She never suspected that I was at Melun?" "Never. She thought you had gone abroad."