"For you have started torture in your house of Justice now, eh, friend Heron?
You and your friend the Public Prosecutor have gone the whole gamut of devilry--eh ?" "What's that to you ?" retorted the other gruffly.
"Oh, nothing, nothing! I was even proposing to pay you three thousand five hundred livres for the privilege of taking no further interest in what goes on inside this prison!" "Three thousand five hundred!" ejaculated Heron involuntarily, and this time even his eyes lost their cruelty; they joined issue with the mouth in an expression of hungering avarice.
"Two little zeros added to the thirty-five, which is all you would get for handing me over to your accursed Tribunal," said de Batz, and, as if thoughtlessly, his hand wandered to the inner pocket of his coat, and a slight rustle as of thin crisp paper brought drops of moisture to the lips of Heron.
"Leave me alone for three weeks and the money is yours," concluded de Batz pleasantly.
There was silence in the room now.

Through the narrow barred window the steely rays of the moon fought with the dim yellow light of the oil lamp, and lit up the pale face of the Committee's agent with its lines of cruelty in sharp conflict with those of greed.
"Well! is it a bargain ?" asked de Batz at last in his usual smooth, oily voice, as he half drew from out his pocket that tempting little bundle of crisp printed paper.

"You have only to give me the usual receipt for the money and it is yours." Heron gave a vicious snarl.
"It is dangerous, I tell you.

That receipt, if it falls into some cursed meddler's hands, would send me straight to the guillotine." "The receipt could only fall into alien hands," rejoined de Batz blandly, "if I happened to be arrested, and even in that case they could but fall into those of the chief agent of the Committee of General Security, and he hath name Heron.

You must take some risks, my friend.
I take them too.