Those old enemies of his, who always distrusted him most when his eyes were most affected, would have certainly disbelieved every word of the friendly speech he had just made, and would have assumed it as a matter of fact that his visit to the head jailer had some specially underhand business at the bottom of it.
"How am I getting on ?" said the jailer, shaking his head.

"Overworked, friend--overworked.

No idle hours in our department.

Even the guillotine is getting too slow for us!" "Sent off your batch of prisoners for trial this morning ?" asked Lomaque, with an appearance of perfect unconcern.
"No; they're just going," answered the other.

"Come and have a look at them." He spoke as if the prisoners were a collection of pictures on view, or a set of dresses just made up.