"Ain't you droll! what ever is the matter with you?"

This sister--for this woman was his sister--restrained her sobs, dried her
eyes, and regarding him with stupor, answered, "What is the matter? I find
you again in prison, who had already been in fifteen years!"

"It is true; to-day six months I came out of Melun prison, without going to
see you at Paris, because the _capital_ was forbidden to me."

"Already retaken! What have you then done? Why did you leave Beaugency,
where you were sent, with orders to report yourself now and then?"

"Why? You ought to ask me why I went there?"

"You are right."

"In the first place, my poor Jeanne, since these gratings are between us
both, imagine that I have embraced you, folded you in my arms, as one ought
to do when he sees a sister after an age. Now, let us chat. A prisoner of
Melun, called the Big Cripple, told me that there was at Beaugency an old
galley-slave of his acquaintance, who employed liberated convicts in a
manufactory of white-lead. Do you know what that is?"

"No, brother."

"It is a very fine trade; those who are employed in it, at the end of a
month or two, have the painter's colic; of three attacked, about one dies.
To be just, the two others die also, but at their ease; they take their
time; take good care of themselves, and they may last a year, eighteen