"Oh, that is not what I mean. If I choose, I can but a stop to his beating me, or any one else again. I know what I know!"
"Well, and what do you know?" cried I, struck by the tone in which he pronounced these last words.
"Yes, yes," answered Chante à l'heure, highly exasperated; "he has done well in driving me to this: I nave only to blab, and his business is settled."
"Nonsense; hold your tongue," said I, affecting not to believe him; "you are both birds of a feather. When you owe any one a spite, you have only to blow at his head, and he would instantly fail."
"You think so, do you?" said Chante à l'heure, striking the table. "Suppose I told you that he had slit a woman's weasand!"
"Not so loud, Chante à l'heure; not so loud," said I, putting my finger significantly on my lips. "You know very well that at Lorcefée (La Force) walls have ears; and you must not turn nose against a comrade."
"What do you call turning nose," replied he, the more irritated in proportion as I feigned a wish to stop him from speaking; "when I tell you that it only depends on me to split upon him in another case."
"That is all very well" I replied; "but to bring a man before the big wigs, we must have proofs!"
"Proofs! Does the devil's child ever want them? Listen. You know the little shopkeeper who lives near the Pont Notre-Dame?"
"An old procuress, mistress of Chatonnet, and wife of the hump-backed man?"
"The same! Well, three months ago, as Blignon and I were blowing a cloud quietly in a boozing ken of the Rue Planche-Mibray, she came there to us. 'There's swag for you, my lads,' said she, 'not far off, in the Rue de la Sonnerie! You are boys of mettle, and I will put you on the lay. An old dowager who has been pocketing lots of blunt; a few days since she received fifteen or twenty thousand francs, in notes or
