"
"Don't you trouble yourself," he went on; "I can get in my money. They
are too much afraid of me to swindle me."
The convicts' prison, its language and customs, its sudden sharp
transitions from the humorous to the horrible, its appalling grandeur,
its triviality and its dark depths, were all revealed in turn by the
speaker's discourse; he seemed to be no longer a man, but the type and
mouthpiece of a degenerate race, a brutal, supple, clear-headed race
of savages. In one moment Collin became the poet of an inferno,
wherein all thoughts and passions that move human nature (save
repentance) find a place. He looked about him like a fallen archangel
who is for war to the end. Rastignac lowered his eyes, and
acknowledged this kinship claimed by crime as an expiation of his own
evil thoughts.
"Who betrayed me?" said Collin, and his terrible eyes traveled round
the room. Suddenly they rested on Mlle. Michonneau.
"It was you, old cat!" he said. "That sham stroke of apoplexy was your
doing, lynx eyes! . . . Two words from me, and your throat would be
cut in less than a week, but I forgive you, I am a Christian. You did
not sell me either.
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