"Ah, bah! is there a devil?"

"Fool! I said that for a joke. There is a knife; a head is placed under,
and that is all."

"Besides, is that our business?"

"As for me, now that I know my road, and that I must stop at the tree, I
would as soon go today as tomorrow," said Skeleton, with savage energy. "I
wish I was there now. I feel my blood in my mouth when I think of the crowd
who will be there to see me. There will be four or five thousand who will
fight or quarrel for places. They will hire out windows and chairs as for a
procession. I hear them already cry, 'Window to let! Place to let!' And then
there will be the troops, cavalry and infantry. And all this for me--for
old Boulard. It is not for an honest man that they take all this trouble,
hey, Sals! Here is something to make a man proud. Even he should be as
cowardly as Pique-Vinaigre, it would make him resolute. All these eyes
which are looking at you give you courage, and it is but a moment to pass,
you die boldly; that vexes the judges and the duffers, and encourages a
flash cove to die game."

"That is true," replied Barbillon, endeavoring to imitate the frightful
boasting. "They think to make us afraid, and confess all, when they send
Ketch to open shop on our account."

"Bah!" said Nicholas, in his turn. "One is not wrong to laugh at the
scaffold; it is like the prison and the galleys; we laugh at them also; so
long as we are all friends together, 'A short life and a merry one!'"