“El oro es el oro. El viento es el viento.”
“Mucho.”
“El hombre hace lo que puede con el oro. Dios con el viento hace lo que quiere.”
“Aqui sera viernes el que desea marcharse con Blasquito.”
“Pues.”
“A qual momento llega Blasquito.”
“A la noche. A la noche se llega, a la noche se marcha. Tenemos una muger quien se llama el mar, y una quien se llama la noche.”
“La muger puede faltar, la hermana no.”
“Todo dicho esta. Abour, hombres.”
“Blasquito will do whatever the gold coins command.”
“Does it take long to go to Torbay?”
“That is as it pleases the winds.”
“Eight hours?”
“More or less.”
“Will Blasquito obey the passenger?”
“If the sea will obey Blasquito.”
“He will be well rewarded.”
“Gold is gold; and the sea is the sea.”
“That is true.”
“Man with his gold does what he can. Heaven with its winds does what it will.”
“The man who is to accompany Blasquito will be here on Friday.”
“Good.”
“At what hour will Blasquito appear?”
“In the night. We arrive by night; and sail by night. We have a wife who is called the sea, and a sister called night. The wife betrays sometimes; but the sister never.”
“All is settled, then. Good night, my men.”
“Buenas tardes. Un golpe de aquardiente?”
“Gracias.”
“Es mejor que xarope.”
“Tengo vuestra palabra.”
“Mi nombre es Pundonor.”
“Sea usted con Dios.”
“Ereis gentleman, y soy caballero.”
“Good night. A drop of brandy first?”
“Thank you.”
“That is better than a syrup.”
“I have your word.”
“My name is Point-of-Honour.”
“Adieu.”
“You are a gentleman: I am a caballero.”
It was clear that only devils could talk in this way. The children did not listen long. This time they took to flight in earnest; the French boy, convinced at last, running even quicker than the others.
On the Tuesday following this Saturday, Sieur Clubin returned to St. Malo, bringing back the Durande.
The Tamaulipas was still at anchor in the roads.
Sieur Clubin, between the whiffs of his pipe, said to the landlord of the Jean Auberge:
“Well; and when does the Tamaulipas get under way?”
“The day after tomorrow—Thursday,” replied the landlord.
On that evening, Clubin supped at the coastguard officers’ table; and, contrary to his habit, went out after his supper. The consequence of his absence was, that he could not attend to the office of the Durande, and thus lost a little in the matter of freights. This fact was remarked in a man ordinarily punctual.
It appeared that he had chatted a few moments with his friend the money-changer.
He returned two hours after Noguette had sounded the Curfew bell. The Brazilian bell sounds at . It was therefore .
VI
The Jacressade
Forty years ago, St. Malo possessed an alley known by the name of the “Ruelle Coutanchez.” This alley no longer exists, having been removed for the improvements of the town.
It was a double row of houses, leaning one towards the other, and leaving between them just room enough for a narrow rivulet, which was called the street. By stretching the legs, it was possible to walk on both sides of the stream, touching with head or elbows, as you went, the houses either on the right or the left. These old relics of medieval Normandy have almost a human interest. Tumbledown houses and sorcerers always go together. Their leaning stories, their overhanging walls, their bowed penthouses, and their old thickset irons, seem like lips, chin, nose, and eyebrows. The garret window is the blind eye. The walls are the wrinkled and blotchy cheeks. The opposite houses lay their foreheads together as if they were plotting some malicious deed. All those words of ancient villany—like cutthroat, “slit-weazand,” and the like—are closely connected with architecture of this kind.
One of these houses in the alley—the largest and the most famous, or notorious—was known by the name of the Jacressade.
The Jacressade was a lodging-house for people who do not lodge. In all towns, and particularly in seaports, there is always found beneath the lowest stratum of society a sort of residuum: vagabonds who are more than a match for justice; rovers after adventures; chemists of the swindling order, who are always dropping their lives into the melting-pot; people in rags of every shape, and in every style of wearing them; withered fruits of roguery; bankrupt existences; consciences that have filed their schedule; men who have failed in the housebreaking trade (for the great masters of burglary move in a higher sphere); workmen and workwomen in the trade of wickedness; oddities, male and female; men in coats out at elbows; scoundrels reduced to indigence; rogues who have missed the wages of roguery; men who have been hit in the social duel; harpies who have no longer any prey; petty larceners; queux in the double and unhappy meaning of that word. Such are the constituents of that living mass. Human nature is here reduced to something bestial. It is the refuse of the social state, heaped up in an obscure corner, where from time to time descends that dreaded broom which is known by the name of police. In St. Malo, the Jacressade was the name of this corner.
It is not in dens of this sort that we find the high-class criminals—the robbers, forgers, and other great products of ignorance and poverty. If murder is represented here, it is generally in the person of some coarse drunkard; in the matter of robbery, the company rarely rise higher than the mere sharper. The vagrant is there; but not the highwayman. It would not, however, be safe to trust this distinction. This last stage of vagabondage may have its extremes of scoundrelism. It was on an occasion, when casting their nets into the Epi-scié—which was in Paris what the Jacressade was in St. Malo—that the police captured the notorious Lacenaire.
These lurking-places refuse nobody. To fall in the social scale has a tendency to bring men to one level. Sometimes honesty in tatters found itself
