“Well, you manage to make a living out of it?”

“I don’t lose, I confess, but I have six little cherubs in hospital, besides the one in the kitchen, and these, of course, are a dead loss to me.”

“That is a sad thing for you,” answered Tantaine gravely.

Perpignan began to be amazed at his visitor’s coolness.

“Damn it all,” said he, “if you and Mascarin think the business such a profitable one, why don’t you go in for it.  You may perhaps think it easy to procure the kids; just try it.  You have to go to Italy for most of them, then you have to smuggle them across the frontier like bales of contraband goods.”

Perpignan paused to take a breath, and Tantaine asked,—­

“What sum do you make each of the lads bring in daily?”

“That depends,” answered Perpignan hesitatingly.

“Well, you can give an average?”

“Say three francs then.”

“Three francs!” repeated Tantaine with a genial smile, “and you have forty little cherubs, so that makes one hundred and twenty francs per day.”

“Absurd!” retorted Perpignan; “do you think each of the lads bring in such a sum as that?”

“Ah! you know the way to make them do so.”

“I don’t understand you,” answered Perpignan, in whose voice a shade of anxiety now began to appear.

“No offence, no offence,” answered Tantaine; “but the fact is, the newspapers are doing you a great deal of harm, by retailing some of the means adopted by your colleague to make the boys do a good day’s work.  Do you recollect the sentence on that master who tied one of his lads down on a bed, and left him without food for two days at a stretch?”

“I don’t care about such matters; no one can bring a charge of cruelty against me,” retorted Perpignan angrily.

“A man with the kindest heart in the world may be the victim of circumstances.”

Perpignan felt that the decisive moment was at hand.

“What do you mean?” asked he.

“Well, suppose, to punish one of your refractory lads, you were to shut him in the cellar.  A storm comes on during the night, the gutter gets choked up, the cellar fills with water, and next morning you find the little cherub drowned like a rat in his hole?”

Perpignan’s face was livid.

“Well, and what then?” asked he.

“Ah! now the awkward part of the matter comes.  You would not care to send for the police, that might excite suspicion; the easiest thing is to dig a hole and shove the body into it.”

Perpignan got up and placed his back against the door.

“You know too much, M. Tantaine,—­a great deal too much,” said he.

Perpignan’s manner was most threatening; but Tantaine still smiled pleasantly, like a child who had just committed some simply mischievous act, the results of which it cannot foresee.

“The sentence isn’t heavy,” he continued; “five years’ penal servitude, if evidence of previous good conduct could be put in; but if former antecedents were disclosed, such as a journey to Nancy——­”