“I have such implicit trust in you,” he went on, with the humility of a penitent, “that I am wholly at your mercy.  You see me with three roads open to me—­suicide, America, and the Rue de Jerusalem.  Bibi-Lupin is rich; he has served his turn; he is a double-faced rascal.  And if you set me to work against him, I would catch him red-handed in some trick within a week.  If you will put me in that sneak’s shoes, you will do society a real service.  I will be honest.  I have every quality that is needed in the profession.  I am better educated than Bibi-Lupin; I went through my schooling up to rhetoric; I shall not blunder as he does; I have very good manners when I choose.  My sole ambition is to become an instrument of order and repression instead of being the incarnation of corruption.  I will enlist no more recruits to the army of vice.

“In war, monsieur, when a hostile general is captured, he is not shot, you know; his sword is returned to him, and his prison is a large town; well, I am the general of the hulks, and I have surrendered.—­I am beaten, not by the law, but by death.  The sphere in which I crave to live and act is the only one that is suited to me, and there I can develop the powers I feel within me.

“Decide.”

And Jacques Collin stood in an attitude of diffident submission.

“You place the letters in my hands, then?” said the public prosecutor.

“You have only to send for them; they will be delivered to your messenger.”

“But how?”

Jacques Collin read the magistrate’s mind, and kept up the game.

“You promised me to commute the capital sentence on Calvi for twenty years’ penal servitude.  Oh, I am not reminding you of that to drive a bargain,” he added eagerly, seeing Monsieur de Granville’s expression; “that life should be safe for other reasons, the lad is innocent——­”

“How am I to get the letters?” asked the public prosecutor.  “It is my right and my business to convince myself that you are the man you say you are.  I must have you without conditions.”

“Send a man you can trust to the Flower Market on the quay.  At the door of a tinman’s shop, under the sign of Achilles’ shield——­”

“That house?”

“Yes,” said Jacques Collin, smiling bitterly, “my shield is there.  —­Your man will see an old woman dressed, as I told you before, like a fish-woman who has saved money—­earrings in her ears, and clothes like a rich market-woman’s.  He must ask for Madame de Saint-Esteve.  Do not omit the DE.  And he must say, ’I have come from the public prosecutor to fetch you know what.’—­You will immediately receive three sealed packets.”

“All the letters are there?” said Monsieur de Granville.

“There is no tricking you; you did not get your place for nothing!” said Jacques Collin, with a smile.  “I see you still think me capable of testing you and giving you so much blank paper.—­No; you do not know me,” said he.  “I trust you as a son trusts his father.”