One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of "situation" forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and purified by the writer.
Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the morning almost in good taste--a difficult task for the wife of a judge who for six years has lived in a provincial town. Her object was to give no hold for criticism to the Marquise d'Espard or the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, in a call so early as between eight and nine in the morning. Amelie Cecile Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only half succeeded; and in a matter of dress is this not a twofold blunder?
Few people can imagine how useful the women of Paris are to ambitious men of every class; they are equally necessary in the world of fashion and the world of thieves, where, as we have seen, they fill a most important part. For instance, suppose that a man, not to find himself left in the lurch, must absolutely get speech within a given time with the high functionary who was of such immense importance under the Restoration, and who is to this day called the Keeper of the Seals--a man, let us say, in the most favorable position, a judge, that is to say, a man familiar with the way of things. He is compelled to seek out the presiding judge of a circuit, or some private or official secretary, and prove to him his need of an immediate interview. But is a Keeper of the Seals ever visible "that very minute"? In the middle of the day, if he is not at the Chamber, he is at the Privy Council, or signing papers, or hearing a case. In the early morning he is out, no one knows where. In the evening he has public and private engagements. If every magistrate could claim a moment's interview under any pretext that might occur to him, the Supreme Judge would be besieged.
The purpose of a private and immediate interview is therefore submitted to the judgment of one of those mediatory potentates who are but an obstacle to be removed, a door that can be unlocked, so long as it is not held by a rival. A woman at once goes to another woman; she can get straight into her bedroom if she can arouse the curiosity of mistress or maid, especially if the mistress is under the stress of a strong interest or pressing necessity.
Call this female potentate Madame la Marquise d'Espard, with whom a Minister has to come to terms; this woman writes a little scented note, which her man-servant carries to the Minister's man-servant. The note greets the Minister on his waking, and he reads it at once. Though the Minister has business to attend to, the man is enchanted to have a reason for calling on one of the Queens of Paris, one of the Powers of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, one of the favorites of the Dauphiness, of MADAME, or of the King. Casimir Perier, the only real statesman of the Revolution of July, would leave anything to call on a retired Gentleman of the bed-chamber to King Charles X.
This theory accounts for the magical effect of the words:
"Madame,--Madame Camusot, on very important business, which she says you know of," spoken in Madame d'Espard's ear by her maid, who thought she was awake.
And the Marquise desired that Amelie should be shown in at once.
The magistrate's wife was attentively heard when she began with these words:
"Madame la Marquise, we have ruined ourselves by trying to avenge you----"
"How is that, my dear?" replied the Marquise, looking at Madame Camusot in the dim light that fell through the half-open door. "You are vastly sweet this morning in that little bonnet. Where do you get that shape?"
"You are very kind, madame.--Well, you know that Camusot's way of examining Lucien de Rubempre drove the young man to despair, and he hanged himself in prison."
"Oh, what will become of Madame de Serizy?" cried the Marquise, affecting ignorance, that she might hear the whole story once more.
"Alas! they say she is quite mad," said Amelie. "If you could persuade the Lord Keeper to send for my husband this minute, by special messenger, to meet him at the Palais, the Minister would hear some strange mysteries, and report them, no doubt, to the King. . . . Then Camusot's enemies would be reduced to silence."
"But who are Camusot's enemies?" asked Madame d'Espard.
"The public prosecutor, and now Monsieur de Serizy."
"Very good, my dear," replied Madame d'Espard, who owed to Monsieur de Granville and the Comte de Serizy her defeat in the disgraceful proceedings by which she had tried to have her husband treated as a lunatic, "I will protect you; I never forget either my foes or my friends."
She rang; the maid drew open the curtains, and daylight flooded the room; she asked for her desk, and the maid brought it in. The Marquise hastily scrawled a few lines.
"Tell Godard to go on horseback, and carry this note to the Chancellor's office.--There is no reply," said she to the maid.
The woman went out of the room quickly, but, in spite of the order, remained at the door for some minutes.
"There are great mysteries going forward then?" asked Madame d'Espard. "Tell me all about it, dear child. Has Clotilde de Grandlieu put a finger in the pie?"
"You will know everything from the Lord Keeper, for my husband has told me nothing. He only told me he was in danger. It would be better for us that Madame de Serizy should die than that she should remain mad."
"Poor woman!" said the Marquise. "But was she not mad already?"
Women of the world, by a hundred ways of pronouncing the same phrase, illustrate to attentive hearers the infinite variety of musical modes. The soul goes out into the voice as it does into the eyes; it vibrates in light and in air--the elements acted on by the eyes and the voice. By the tone she gave to the two words, "Poor woman!" the Marquise betrayed the joy of satisfied hatred, the pleasure of triumph. Oh! what woes did she not wish to befall Lucien's protectress. Revenge, which nothing can assuage, which can survive the person hated, fills us with dark terrors. And Madame Camusot, though harsh herself, vindictive, and quarrelsome, was overwhelmed. She could find nothing to say, and was silent.
"Diane told me that Leontine went to the prison," Madame d'Espard went on. "The dear Duchess is in despair at such a scandal, for she is so foolish as to be very fond of Madame de Serizy; however, it is comprehensible: they both adored that little fool Lucien at about the same time, and nothing so effectually binds or severs two women as worshiping at the same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours yesterday in Leontine's room. The poor Countess, it seems, says dreadful things! I heard that it was disgusting! A woman of rank ought not to give way to such attacks.--Bah! A purely physical passion.--The Duchess came to see me as pale as death; she really was very brave. There are monstrous things connected with this business."
"My husband will tell the Keeper of the Seals all he knows for his own justification, for they wanted to save Lucien, and he, Madame la Marquise, did his duty. An examining judge always has to question people in private at the time fixed by law! He had to ask the poor little wretch something, if only for form's sake, and the young fellow did not understand, and confessed things----"
"He was an impertinent fool!" said Madame d'Espard in a hard tone.
The judge's wife kept silence on hearing this sentence.
"Though we failed in the matter of the Commission in Lunacy, it was not Camusot's fault, I shall never forget that," said the Marquise after a pause. "It was Lucien, Monsieur de Serizy, Monsieur de Bauvan, and Monsieur de Granville who overthrew us. With time God will be on my side; all those people will come to grief.--Be quite easy, I will send the Chevalier d'Espard to the Keeper of the Seals that he may desire your husbands's presence immediately, if that is of any use."
"Oh! madame----"
"Listen," said the Marquise. "I promise you the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at once--to-morrow. It will be a conspicuous testimonial of satisfaction with your conduct in this affair. Yes, it implies further blame on Lucien; it will prove him guilty. Men do not commonly hang themselves for the pleasure of it.--Now, good-bye, my pretty dear----"
Ten minutes later Madame Camusot was in the bedroom of the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse, who had not gone to bed till one, and at nine o'clock had not yet slept.
However insensible duchesses may be, even these women, whose hearts are of stone, cannot see a friend a victim to madness without being painfully impressed by it.
And besides, the connection between Diane and Lucien, though at an end now eighteen months since, had left such memories with the Duchess that the poor boy's disastrous end had been to her also a fearful blow. All night Diane had seen visions of the beautiful youth, so charming, so poetical, who had been so delightful a lover--painted as Leontine depicted him, with the vividness of wild delirium. She had letters from Lucien that she had kept, intoxicating letters worthy to compare with Mirabeau's to Sophie, but more literary, more elaborate, for Lucien's letters had been dictated by the most powerful of passions--Vanity. Having the most bewitching of duchesses for his mistress, and seeing her commit any folly for him--secret follies, of course--had turned Lucien's head with happiness. The lover's pride had inspired the poet. And the Duchess had treasured these touching letters, as some old men keep indecent prints, for the sake of their extravagant praise of all that was least duchess-like in her nature.
"And he died in a squalid prison!" cried she to herself, putting the letters away in a panic when she heard her maid knocking gently at her door.
"Madame Camusot," said the woman, "on business of the greatest importance to you, Madame la Duchesse."
Diane sprang to her feet in terror.
"Oh!" cried she, looking at Amelie, who had assumed a duly condoling air, "I guess it all--my letters! It is about my letters. Oh, my letters, my letters!"
She sank on to a couch. She remembered now how, in the extravagance of her passion, she had answered Lucien in the same vein, had lauded the man's poetry as he has sung the charms of the woman, and in what a strain!
"Alas, yes, madame, I have come to save what is dearer to you than life--your honor. Compose yourself and get dressed, we must go to the Duchesse de Grandlieu; happily for you, you are not the only person compromised."
"But at the Palais, yesterday, Leontine burned, I am told, all the letters found at poor Lucien's."
"But, madame, behind Lucien there was Jacques Collin!" cried the magistrate's wife. "You always forget that horrible companionship which beyond question led to that charming and lamented young man's end. That Machiavelli of the galleys never loses his head! Monsieur Camusot is convinced that the wretch has in some safe hiding-place all the most compromising letters written by you ladies to his----"
"His friend," the Duchess hastily put in. "You are right, my child. We must hold council at the Grandlieus'. We are all concerned in this matter, and Serizy happily will lend us his aid."
Extreme peril--as we have observed in the scenes in the Conciergerie-- has a hold over the soul not less terrible than that of powerful reagents over the body. It is a mental Voltaic battery. The day, perhaps, is not far off when the process shall be discovered by which feeling is chemically converted into a fluid not unlike the electric fluid.
The phenomena were the same in the convict and the Duchess. This crushed, half-dying woman, who had not slept, who was so particular over her dressing, had recovered the strength of a lioness at bay, and the presence of mind of a general under fire. Diane chose her gown and got through her dressing with the alacrity of a grisette who is her own waiting-woman. It was so astounding, that the lady's-maid stood for a moment stock-still, so greatly was she surprised to see her mistress in her shift, not ill pleased perhaps to let the judge's wife discern through the thin cloud of lawn a form as white and as perfect as that of Canova's Venus. It was like a gem in a fold of tissue paper. Diane suddenly remembered where a pair of stays had been put that fastened in front, sparing a woman in a hurry the ill-spent time and fatigue of being laced. She had arranged the lace trimming of her shift and the fulness of the bosom by the time the maid had fetched her petticoat, and crowned the work by putting on her gown. While Amelie, at a sign from the maid, hooked the bodice behind, the woman brought out a pair of thread stockings, velvet boots, a shawl, and a bonnet. Amelie and the maid each drew on a stocking.
"You are the loveliest creature I ever saw!" said Amelie, insidiously kissing Diane's elegant and polished knee with an eager impulse.
"Madame has not her match!" cried the maid.
"There, there, Josette, hold your tongue," replied the Duchess.--"Have you a carriage?" she went on, to Madame Camusot. "Then come along, my dear, we can talk on the r"
And the Duchess ran down the great stairs of the Hotel de Cadignan, putting on her gloves as she went--a thing she had never been known to do.
"To the Hotel de Grandlieu, and drive fast," said she to one of her men, signing to him to get up behind.
The footman hesitated--it was a hackney coach.
"Ah! Madame la Duchesse, you never told me that the young man had letters of yours. Otherwise Camusot would have proceeded differently . . ."
"Leontine's state so occupied my thoughts that I forgot myself entirely. The poor woman was almost crazy the day before yesterday; imagine the effect on her of this tragical termination. If you could only know, child, what a morning we went through yesterday! It is enough to make one forswear love!--Yesterday Leontine and I were dragged across Paris by a horrible old woman, an old-clothes buyer, a domineering creature, to that stinking and blood-stained sty they call the Palace of Justice, and I said to her as I took her there: 'Is not this enough to make us fall on our knees and cry out like Madame de Nucingen, when she went through one of those awful Mediterranean storms on her way to Naples, "Dear God, save me this time, and never again----!" '
"These two days will certainly have shortened my life.--What fools we are ever to write!--But love prompts us; we receive pages that fire the heart through the eyes, and everything is in a blaze! Prudence deserts us--we reply----"
"But why reply when you can act?" said Madame Camusot.
"It is grand to lose oneself utterly!" cried the Duchess with pride. "It is the luxury of the soul."
"Beautiful women are excusable," said Madame Camusot modestly. "They have more opportunities of falling than we have."
The Duchess smiled.
"We are always too generous," said Diane de Maufrigneuse. "I shall do just like that odious Madame d'Espard."
"And what does she do?" asked the judge's wife, very curious.
"She has written a thousand love-notes----"
"So many!" exclaimed Amelie, interrupting the Duchess.
"Well, my dear, and not a word that could compromise her is to be found in any one of them."
"You would be incapable of maintaining such coldness, such caution," said Madame Camusot. "You are a woman; you are one of those angels who cannot stand out against the devil----"
"I have made a vow to write no more letters. I never in my life wrote to anybody but that unhappy Lucien.--I will keep his letters to my dying day! My dear child, they are fire, and sometimes we want----"
"But if they were found!" said Amelie, with a little shocked expression.
"Oh! I should say they were part of a romance I was writing; for I have copied them all, my dear, and burned the originals."
"Oh, madame, as a reward allow me to read them."
"Perhaps, child," said the Duchess. "And then you will see that he did not write such letters as those to Leontine."
This speech was woman all the world over, of every age and every land.
Madame Camusot, like the frog in la Fontaine's fable, was ready to burst her skin with the joy of going to the Grandlieus' in the society of the beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse. This morning she would forge one of the links that are so needful to ambition. She could already hear herself addressed as Madame la Presidente. She felt the ineffable gladness of triumphing over stupendous obstacles, of which the greatest was her husband's ineptitude, as yet unrevealed, but to her well known. To win success for a second-rate man! that is to a woman-- as to a king--the delight which tempts great actors when they act a bad play a hundred times over. It is the very drunkenness of egoism. It is in a way the Saturnalia of power.
Power can prove itself to itself only by the strange misapplication which leads it to crown some absurd person with the laurels of success while insulting genius--the only strong-hold which power cannot touch. The knighting of Caligula's horse, an imperial farce, has been, and always will be, a favorite performance.
In a few minutes Diane and Amelie had exchanged the elegant disorder of the fair Diane's bedroom for the severe but dignified and splendid austerity of the Duchesse de Grandlieu's rooms.
She, a Portuguese, and very pious, always rose at eight to attend mass at the little church of Sainte-Valere, a chapelry to Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, standing at that time on the esplanade of the Invalides. This chapel, now destroyed, was rebuilt in the Rue de Bourgogne, pending the building of a Gothic church to be dedicated to Sainte-Clotilde.
On hearing the first words spoken in her ear by Diane de Maufrigneuse, this saintly lady went to find Monsieur de Grandlieu, and brought him back at once. The Duke threw a flashing look at Madame Camusot, one of those rapid glances with which a man of the world can guess at a whole existence, or often read a soul. Amelie's dress greatly helped the Duke to decipher the story of a middle-class life, from Alencon to Mantes, and from Mantes to Paris.
Oh! if only the lawyer's wife could have understood this gift in dukes, she could never have endured that politely ironical look; she saw the politeness only. Ignorance shares the privileges of fine breeding.
"This is Madame Camusot, a daughter of Thirion's--one of the Cabinet ushers," said the Duchess to her husband.
The Duke bowed with extreme politeness to the wife of a legal official, and his face became a little less grave.
The Duke had rung for his valet, who now came in.
"Go to the Rue Saint-Honore: take a coach. Ring at a side door, No. 10. Tell the man who opens the door that I beg his master will come here, and if the gentleman is at home, bring him back with you.-- Mention my name, that will remove all difficulties.
"And do not be gone more than a quarter of an hour in all."
Another footman, the Duchess' servant, came in as soon as the other was gone.
"Go from me to the Duc de Chaulieu, and send up this card."
The Duke gave him a card folded down in a particular way. When the two friends wanted to meet at once, on any urgent or confidential business which would not allow of note-writing, they used this means of communication.
Thus we see that similar customs prevail in every rank of society, and differ only in manner, civility, and small details. The world of fashion, too, has its argot, its slang; but that slang is called style.
"Are you quite sure, madame, of the existence of the letters you say were written by Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu to this young man?" said the Duc de Grandlieu.
And he cast a look at Madame Camusot as a sailor casts a sounding line.
"I have not seen them, but there is reason to fear it," replied Madame Camusot, quaking.
"My daughter can have written nothing we would not own to!" said the Duchess.
"Poor Duchess!" thought Diane, with a glance at the Duke that terrified him.
"What do you think, my dear little Diane?" said the Duke in a whisper, as he led her away into a recess.
"Clotilde is so crazy about Lucien, my dear friend, that she had made an assignation with him before leaving. If it had not been for little Lenoncourt, she would perhaps have gone off with him into the forest of Fontainebleau. I know that Lucien used to write letters to her which were enough to turn the brain of a saint.--We are three daughters of Eve in the coils of the serpent of letter-writing."
The Duke and Diane came back to the Duchess and Madame Camusot, who were talking in undertones. Amelie, following the advice of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, affected piety to win the proud lady's favor.
"We are at the mercy of a dreadful escaped convict!" said the Duke, with a peculiar shrug. "This is what comes of opening one's house to people one is not absolutely sure of. Before admitting an acquaintance, one ought to know all about his fortune, his relations, all his previous history----"
This speech is the moral of my story--from the aristocratic point of view.
"That is past and over," said the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. "Now we must think of saving that poor Madame de Serizy, Clotilde, and me----"
"We can but wait for Henri; I have sent to him. But everything really depends on the man Gentil is gone to fetch. God grant that man may be in Paris!--Madame," he added to Madame Camusot, "thank you so much for having thought of us----"
This was Madame Camusot's dismissal. The daughter of the court usher had wit enough to understand the Duke; she rose. But the Duchess de Maufrigneuse, with the enchanting grace which had won her so much friendship and discretion, took Amelie by the hand as if to show her, in a way, to the Duke and Duchess.
"On my own account," said she, "to say nothing of her having been up before daybreak to save us all, I may ask for more than a remembrance for my little Madame Camusot. In the first place, she has already done me such a service as I cannot forget; and then she is wholly devoted to our side, she and her husband. I have promised that her Camusot shall have advancement, and I beg you above everything to help him on, for my sake."
"You need no such recommendation," said the Duke to Madame Camusot. "The Grandlieus always remember a service done them. The King's adherents will ere long have a chance of distinguishing themselves; they will be called upon to prove their devotion; your husband will be placed in the front----"
Madame Camusot withdrew, proud, happy, puffed up to suffocation. She reached home triumphant; she admired herself, she made light of the public prosecutor's hostility. She said to herself:
"Supposing we were to send Monsieur de Granville flying----"
It was high time for Madame Camusot to vanish. The Duc de Chaulieu, one of the King's prime favorites, met the bourgeoise on the outer steps.
"Henri," said the Duc de Grandlieu when he heard his friend announced, "make haste, I beg of you, to get to the Chateau, try to see the King --the business of this;" and he led the Duke into the window-recess, where he had been talking to the airy and charming Diane.
Now and then the Duc de Chaulieu glanced in the direction of the flighty Duchess, who, while talking to the pious Duchess and submitting to be lectured, answered the Duc de Chaulieu's expressive looks.
"My dear child," said the Duc de Grandlieu to her at last, the ASIDE being ended, "do be good! Come, now," and he took Diane's hands, "observe the proprieties of life, do not compromise yourself any more, write no letters. Letters, my dear, have caused as much private woe as public mischief. What might be excusable in a girl like Clotilde, in love for the first time, had no excuse in----"
"An old soldier who has been under fire," said Diane with a pout.
This grimace and the Duchess' jest brought a smile to the face of the two much-troubled Dukes, and of the pious Duchess herself.
"But for four years I have never written a billet-doux.--Are we saved?" asked Diane, who hid her curiosity under this childishness.
"Not yet," said the Duc de Chaulieu. "You have no notion how difficult it is to do an arbitrary thing. In a constitutional king it is what infidelity is in a wife: it is adultery."
"The fascinating sin," said the Duc de Grandlieu.
"Forbidden fruit!" said Diane, smiling. "Oh! how I wish I were the Government, for I have none of that fruit left--I have eaten it all."
"Oh! my dear, my dear!" said the elder Duchess, "you really go too far."
The two Dukes, hearing a coach stop at the door with the clatter of horses checked in full gallop, bowed to the ladies and left them, going into the Duc de Grandlieu's study, whither came the gentleman from the Rue Honore-Chevalier--no less a man than the chief of the King's private police, the obscure but puissant Corentin.
"Go on," said the Duc de Grandlieu; "go first, Monsieur de Saint- Denis."
Corentin, surprised that the Duke should have remembered him, went forward after bowing low to the two noblemen.
"Always about the same individual, or about his concerns, my dear sir," said the Duc de Grandlieu.
"But he is dead," said Corentin.
"He has left a partner," said the Duc de Chaulieu, "a very tough customer."
"The convict Jacques Collin," replied Corentin.
"Will you speak, Ferdinand?" said the Duke de Chaulieu to his friend.
"That wretch is an object of fear," said the Duc de Grandlieu, "for he has possessed himself, so as to be able to levy blackmail, of the letters written by Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse to Lucien Chardon, that man's tool. It would seem that it was a matter of system in the young man to extract passionate letters in return for his own, for I am told that Mademoiselle de Grandlieu had written some --at least, so we fear--and we cannot find out from her--she is gone abr"
"That little young man," replied Corentin, "was incapable of so much foresight. That was a precaution due to the Abbe Carlos Herrera."
Corentin rested his elbow on the arm of the chair on which he was sitting, and his head on his hand, meditating.
"Money!--The man has more than we have," said he. "Esther Gobseck served him as a bait to extract nearly two million francs from that well of gold called Nucingen.--Gentlemen, get me full legal powers, and I will rid you of the fellow."
"And--the letters?" asked the Duc de Grandlieu.
"Listen to me, gentlemen," said Corentin, standing up, his weasel-face betraying his excitement.
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his black doeskin trousers, shaped over the shoes. This great actor in the historical drama of the day had only stopped to put on a waistcoat and frock-coat, and had not changed his morning trousers, so well he knew how grateful men can be for immediate action in certain cases. He walked up and down the room quite at his ease, haranguing loudly, as if he had been alone.
"He is a convict. He could be sent off to Bicetre without trial, and put in solitary confinement, without a soul to speak to, and left there to die.--But he may have given instructions to his adherents, foreseeing this possibility."
"But he was put into the secret cells," said the Duc de Grandlieu, "the moment he was taken into custody at that woman's house."
"Is there such a thing as a secret cell for such a fellow as he is?" said Corentin. "He is a match for--for me!"
"What is to be done?" said the Dukes to each other by a glance.
"We can send the scoundrel back to the hulks at once--to Rochefort; he will be dead in six months! Oh! without committing any crime," he added, in reply to a gesture on the part of the Duc de Grandlieu. "What do you expect? A convict cannot hold out more than six months of a hot summer if he is made to work really hard among the marshes of the Charente. But this is of no use if our man has taken precautions with regard to the letters. If the villain has been suspicious of his foes, and that is probable, we must find out what steps he has taken. Then, if the present holder of the letters is poor, he is open to bribery. So, no, we must make Jacques Collin speak. What a duel! He will beat me. The better plan would be to purchase those letters by exchange for another document--a letter of reprieve--and to place the man in my gang. Jacques Collin is the only man alive who is clever enough to come after me, poor Contenson and dear old Peyrade both being dead! Jacques Collin killed those two unrivaled spies on purpose, as it were, to make a place for himself. So, you see, gentlemen, you must give me a free hand. Jacques Collin is in the Conciergerie. I will go to see Monsieur de Granville in his Court. Send some one you can trust to meet me there, for I must have a letter to show to Monsieur de Granville, who knows nothing of me. I will hand the letter to the President of the Council, a very impressive sponsor. You have half an hour before you, for I need half an hour to dress, that is to say, to make myself presentable to the eyes of the public prosecutor."
"Monsieur," said the Duc de Chaulieu, "I know your wonderful skill. I only ask you to say Yes or No. Will you be bound to succeed?"
"Yes, if I have full powers, and your word that I shall never be questioned about the matter.--My plan is laid."
This sinister reply made the two fine gentlemen shiver. "Go on, then, monsieur," said the Duc de Chaulieu. "You can set down the charges of the case among those you are in the habit of undertaking."
Corentin bowed and went away.
Henri de Lenoncourt, for whom Ferdinand de Grandlieu had a carriage brought out, went off forthwith to the King, whom he was privileged to see at all times in right of his office.
Thus all the various interests that had got entangled from the highest to the lowest ranks of society were to meet presently in Monsieur de Granville's room at the Palais, all brought together by necessity embodied in three men--Justice in Monsieur de Granville, and the family in Corentin, face to face with Jacques Collin, the terrible foe who represented social crime in its fiercest energy.
What a duel is that between justice and arbitrary wills on one side and the hulks and cunning on the other! The hulks--symbolical of that daring which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach--the swift and bloodthirsty pretext of hunger. Is it not attack as against self- protection, theft as against property? The terrible quarrel between the social state and the natural man, fought out on the narrowest possible ground! In short, it is a terrible and vivid image of those compromises, hostile to social interests, which the representatives of authority, when they lack power, submit to with the fiercest rebels.
When Monsieur Camusot was announced, the public prosecutor signed that he should be admitted. Monsieur de Granville had foreseen this visit, and wished to come to an understanding with the examining judge as to how to wind up this business of Lucien's death. The end could no longer be that on which he had decided the day before in agreement with Camusot, before the suicide of the hapless poet.
"Sit down, Monsieur Camusot," said Monsieur de Granville, dropping into his armchair. The public prosecutor, alone with the inferior judge, made no secret of his depressed state. Camusot looked at Monsieur de Granville and observed his almost livid pallor, and such utter fatigue, such complete prostration, as betrayed greater suffering perhaps than that of the condemned man to whom the clerk had announced the rejection of his appeal. And yet that announcement, in the forms of justice, is a much as to say, "Prepare to die; your last hour has come."
"I will return later, Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot. "Though business is pressing----"
"No, stay," replied the public prosecutor with dignity. "A magistrate, monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how to hide them. I was in fault if you saw any traces of agitation in me----"
Camusot bowed apologetically.
"God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities of our life. A man might sink under less! I have just spent the night with one of my most intimate friends.--I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy.--We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy, the Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning, taking it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de Serizy's bedside, fearing each time that we might find her dead or irremediably insane. Desplein, Bianchon, and Sinard never left the room, and she has two nurses. The Count worships his wife. Imagine the night I have spent, between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with despair. And a statesman's despair is not like that of an idiot. Serizy, as calm as if he were sitting in his place in council, clutched his chair to force himself to show us an unmoved countenance, while sweat stood over the brows bent by so much hard thought.--Worn out by want of sleep, I dozed from five till half-past seven, and I had to be here by half-past eight to warrant an execution. Take my word for it, Monsieur Camusot, when a judge has been toiling all night in such gulfs of sorrow, feeling the heavy hand of God on all human concerns, and heaviest on noble souls, it is hard to sit down here, in front of a desk, and say in cold blood, 'Cut off a head at four o'clock! Destroy one of God's creatures full of life, health, and strength!'--And yet this is my duty! Sunk in grief myself, I must order the scaffold----
"The condemned wretch cannot know that his judge suffers anguish equal to his own. At this moment he and I, linked by a sheet of paper--I, society avenging itself; he, the crime to be avenged--embody the same duty seen from two sides; we are two lives joined for the moment by the sword of the law.
"Who pities the judge's deep sorrow? Who can soothe it? Our glory is to bury it in the depth of our heart. The priest with his life given to God, the soldier with a thousand deaths for his country's sake, seem to me far happier than the magistrate with his doubts and fears and appalling responsibility.
"You know who the condemned man is?" Monsieur de Granville went on. "A young man of seven-and-twenty--as handsome as he who killed himself yesterday, and as fair; condemned against all our anticipations, for the only proof against him was his concealment of the stolen goods. Though sentenced, the lad will confess nothing! For seventy days he has held out against every test, constantly declaring that he is innocent. For two months I have felt two heads on my shoulders! I would give a year of my life if he would confess, for juries need encouragement; and imagine what a blow it would be to justice if some day it should be discovered that the crime for which he is punished was committed by another.
"In Paris everything is so terribly important; the most trivial incidents in the law courts have political consequences.
"The jury, an institution regarded by the legislators of the Revolution as a source of strength, is, in fact, an instrument of social ruin, for it fails in action; it does not sufficiently protect society. The jury trifles with its functions. The class of jurymen is divided into two parties, one averse to capital punishment; the result is a total upheaval of true equality in administration of the law. Parricide, a most horrible crime, is in some departments treated with leniency, while in others a common murder, so to speak, is punished with death. [There are in penal servitude twenty-three parricides who have been allowed the benefit of EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCES.] And what would happen if here in Paris, in our home district, an innocent man should be executed!"
"He is an escaped convict," said Monsieur Camusot, diffidently.
"The Opposition and the Press would make him a paschal lamb!" cried Monsieur de Granville; "and the Opposition would enjoy white-washing him, for he is a fanatical Corsican, full of his native notions, and his murders were a Vendetta. In that island you may kill your enemy, and think yourself, and be thought, a very good man.
"A thorough-paced magistrate, I tell you, is an unhappy man. They ought to live apart from all society, like the pontiffs of old. The world should never see them but at fixed hours, leaving their cells, grave, and old, and venerable, passing sentence like the high priests of antiquity, who combined in their person the functions of judicial and sacerdotal authority. We should be accessible only in our high seat.--As it is, we are to be seen every day, amused or unhappy, like other men. We are to be found in drawing-rooms and at home, as ordinary citizens, moved by our passions; and we seem, perhaps, more grotesque than terrible."
This bitter cry, broken by pauses and interjections, and emphasized by gestures which gave it an eloquence impossible to reduce to writing, made Camusot's blood run chill.
"And I, monsieur," said he, "began yesterday my apprenticeship to the sufferings of our calling.--I could have died of that young fellow's death. He misunderstood my wish to be lenient, and the poor wretch committed himself."
"Ah, you ought never to have examined him!" cried Monsieur de Granville; "it is so easy to oblige by doing nothing."
"And the law, monsieur?" replied Camusot. "He had been in custody two days."
"The mischief is done," said the public prosecutor. "I have done my best to remedy what is indeed irremediable. My carriage and servants are following the poor weak poet to the grave. Serizy has sent his too; nay, more, he accepts the duty imposed on him by the unfortunate boy, and will act as his executor. By promising this to his wife he won from her a gleam of returning sanity. And Count Octave is attending the funeral in person."
"Well, then, Monsieur le Comte," said Camusot, "let us complete our work. We have a very dangerous man on our hands. He is Jacques Collin --and you know it as well as I do. The ruffian will be recognized----"
"Then we are lost!" cried Monsieur de Granville.
"He is at this moment shut up with your condemned murderer, who, on the hulks, was to him what Lucien has been in Paris--a favorite protege. Bibi-Lupin, disguised as a gendarme, is watching the interview."
"What business has the superior police to interfere?" said the public prosecutor. "He has no business to act without my orders!"
"All the Conciergerie must know that we have caught Jacques Collin.-- Well, I have come on purpose to tell you that this daring felon has in his possession the most compromising letters of Lucien's correspondence with Madame de Serizy, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu."
"Are you sure of that?" asked Monsieur de Granville, his face full of pained surprise.
"You shall hear, Monsieur le Comte, what reason I have to fear such a misfortune. When I untied the papers found in the young man's rooms, Jacques Collin gave a keen look at the parcel, and smiled with satisfaction in a way that no examining judge could misunderstand. So deep a villain as Jacques Collin takes good care not to let such a weapon slip through his fingers. What is to be said if these documents should be placed in the hands of counsel chosen by that rascal from among the foes of the government and the aristocracy!--My wife, to whom the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse has shown so much kindness, is gone to warn her, and by this time they must be with the Grandlieus holding council."
"But we cannot possibly try the man!" cried the public prosecutor, rising and striding up and down the room. "He must have put the papers in some safe place----"
"I know where," said Camusot.
These words finally effaced every prejudice the public prosecutor had felt against him.
"Well, then----" said Monsieur de Granville, sitting down again.
"On my way here this morning I reflected deeply on this miserable business. Jacques Collin has an aunt--an aunt by nature, not putative --a woman concerning whom the superior police have communicated a report to the Prefecture. He is this woman's pupil and idol; she is his father's sister, her name is Jacqueline Collin. This wretched woman carries on a trade as a wardrobe purchaser, and by the connection this business has secured her she gets hold of many family secrets. If Jacques Collin has intrusted those papers, which would be his salvation, to any one's keeping, it is to that of this creature. Have her arrested."
The public prosecutor gave Camusot a keen look, as much as to say, "This man is not such a fool as I thought him; he is still young, and does not yet know how to handle the reins of justice."
"But," Camusot went on, "in order to succeed, we must give up all the plans we laid yesterday, and I came to take your advice--your orders----"
The public prosecutor took up his paper-knife and tapped it against the edge of the table with one of the tricky movements familiar to thoughtful men when they give themselves up to meditation.
"Three noble families involved!" he exclaimed. "We must not make the smallest blunder!--You are right: as a first step let us act on Fouche's principle, 'Arrest!'--and Jacques Collin must at once be sent back to the secret cells."
"That is to proclaim him a convict and to ruin Lucien's memory!"
"What a desperate business!" said Monsieur de Granville. "There is danger on every side."
At this instant the governor of the Conciergerie came in, not without knocking; and the private room of a public prosecutor is so well guarded, that only those concerned about the courts may even knock at the door.
"Monsieur le Comte," said Monsieur Gault, "the prisoner calling himself Carlos Herrera wishes to speak with you."
"Has he had communication with anybody?" asked Monsieur de Granville.
"With all the prisoners, for he has been out in the yard since about half-past seven. And he has seen the condemned man, who would seem to have talked to him."
A speech of Camusot's, which recurred to his mind like a flash of light, showed Monsieur de Granville all the advantage that might be taken of a confession of intimacy between Jacques Collin and Theodore Calvi to obtain the letters. The public prosecutor, glad to have an excuse for postponing the execution, beckoned Monsieur Gault to his side.
"I intend," said he, "to put off the execution till to-morrow; but let no one in the prison suspect it. Absolute silence! Let the executioner seem to be superintending the preparations.
"Send the Spanish priest here under a strong guard; the Spanish Embassy claims his person! Gendarmes can bring up the self-styled Carlos by your back stairs so that he may see no one. Instruct the men each to hold him by one arm, and never let him go till they reach this door.
"Are you sure, Monsieur Gault, that this dangerous foreigner has spoken to no one but the prisoners!"
"Ah! just as he came out of the condemned cell a lady came to see him----"
The two magistrates exchanged looks, and such looks!
"What lady was that!" asked Camusot.
"One of his penitents--a Marquise," replied Gault.
"Worse and worse!" said Monsieur de Granville, looking at Camusot.
"She gave all the gendarmes and warders a sick headache," said Monsieur Gault, much puzzled.
"Nothing can be a matter of indifference in your business," said the public prosecutor. "The Conciergerie has not such tremendous walls for nothing. How did this lady get in?"
"With a regular permit, monsieur," replied the governor. "The lady, beautifully dressed, in a fine carriage with a footman and a chasseur, came to see her confessor before going to the funeral of the poor young man whose body you had had removed."
"Bring me the order for admission," said Monsieur de Granville.
"It was given on the recommendation of the Comte de Serizy."
"What was the woman like?" asked the public prosecutor.
"She seemed to be a lady."
"Did you see her face?"
"She wore a black veil."
"What did they say to each other?"
"Well--a pious person, with a prayer-in her hand--what could she say? She asked the Abbe's blessing and went on her knees."
"Did they talk together a long time?"
"Not five minutes; but we none of us understood what they said; they spoke Spanish no doubt."
"Tell us everything, monsieur," the public prosecutor insisted. "I repeat, the very smallest detail is to us of the first importance. Let this be a caution to you."
"She was crying, monsieur."
"Really weeping?"
"That we could not see, she hid her face in her handkerchief. She left three hundred francs in gold for the prisoners."
"That was not she!" said Camusot.
"Bibi-Lupin at once said, 'She is a thief!' " said Monsieur Gault.
"He knows the tribe," said Monsieur de Granville.--"Get out your warrant," he added, turning to Camusot, "and have seals placed on everything in her house--at once! But how can she have got hold of Monsieur de Serizy's recommendation?--Bring me the order--and go, Monsieur Gault; send me that Abbe immediately. So long as we have him safe, the danger cannot be greater. And in the course of two hours' talk you get a long way into a man's mind."
"Especially such a public prosecutor as you are," said Camusot insidiously.
"There will be two of us," replied Monsieur de Granville politely.
And he became discursive once more.
"There ought to be created for every prison parlor, a post of superintendent, to be given with a good salary to the cleverest and most energetic police officers," said he, after a long pause. "Bibi- Lupin ought to end his days in such a place. Then we should have an eye and ear on the watch in a department that needs closer supervision than it gets.--Monsieur Gault could tell us nothing positive."
"He has so much to do," said Camusot. "Still, between these secret cells and us there lies a gap which ought not to exist. On the way from the Conciergerie to the judges' rooms there are passages, courtyards, and stairs. The attention of the agents cannot be unflagging, whereas the prisoner is always alive to his own affairs.
"I was told that a lady had already placed herself in the way of Jacques Collin when he was brought up from the cells to be examined. That woman got into the guardroom at the top of the narrow stairs from the mousetrap; the ushers told me, and I blamed the gendarmes."
"Oh! the Palais needs entire reconstruction," said Monsieur de Granville. "But it is an outlay of twenty to thirty million francs! Just try asking the Chambers for thirty millions for the more decent accommodation of Justice."
The sound of many footsteps and a clatter of arms fell on their ear. It would be Jacques Collin.
The public prosecutor assumed a mask of gravity that hid the man. Camusot imitated his chief.
The office-boy opened the door, and Jacques Collin came in, quite calm and unmoved.
"You wished to speak to me," said Monsieur de Granville. "I am ready to listen."
"Monsieur le Comte, I am Jacques Collin. I surrender!"
Camusot started; the public prosecutor was immovable.
"As you may suppose, I have my reasons for doing this," said Jacques Collin, with an ironical glance at the two magistrates. "I must inconvenience you greatly; for if I had remained a Spanish priest, you would simply have packed me off with an escort of gendarmes as far as the frontier by Bayonne, and there Spanish bayonets would have relieved you of me."
The lawyers sat silent and imperturbable.
"Monsieur le Comte," the convict went on, "the reasons which have led me to this step are yet more pressing than this, but devilish personal to myself. I can tell them to no one but you.--If you are afraid----"
"Afraid of whom? Of what?" said the Comte de Granville.
In attitude and expression, in the turn of his head, his demeanor and his look, this distinguished judge was at this moment a living embodiment of the law which ought to supply us with the noblest examples of civic courage. In this brief instant he was on a level with the magistrates of the old French Parlement in the time of the civil wars, when the presidents found themselves face to face with death, and stood, made of marble, like the statues that commemorate them.
"Afraid to be alone with an escaped convict!"
"Leave us, Monsieur Camusot," said the public prosecutor at once.
"I was about to suggest that you should bind me hand and foot," Jacques Collin coolly added, with an ominous glare at the two gentlemen. He paused, and then said with great gravity:
"Monsieur le Comte, you had my esteem, but you now command my admiration."
"Then you think you are formidable?" said the magistrate, with a look of supreme contempt.
"THINK myself formidable?" retorted the convict. "Why think about it? I am, and I know it."
Jacques Collin took a chair and sat down, with all the ease of a man who feels himself a match for his adversary in an interview where they would treat on equal terms.
At this instant Monsieur Camusot, who was on the point of closing the door behind him, turned back, came up to Monsieur de Granville, and handed him two folded papers.
"Look!" said he to Monsieur de Granville, pointing to one of them.
"Call back Monsieur Gault!" cried the Comte de Granville, as he read the name of Madame de Maufrigneuse's maid--a woman he knew.
The governor of the prison came in.
"Describe the woman who came to see the prisoner," said the public prosecutor in his ear.
"Short, thick-set, fat, and square," replied Monsieur Gault.
"The woman to whom this permit was given is tall and thin," said Monsieur de Granville. "How old was she?"
"About sixty."
"This concerns me, gentlemen?" said Jacques Collin. "Come, do not puzzle your heads. That person is my aunt, a very plausible aunt, a woman, and an old woman. I can save you a great deal of trouble. You will never find my aunt unless I choose. If we beat about the bush, we shall never get forwarder."
"Monsieur l'Abbe has lost his Spanish accent," observed Monsieur Gault; "he does not speak broken French."
"Because things are in a desperate mess, my dear Monsieur Gault," replied Jacques Collin with a bitter smile, as he addressed the Governor by name.
Monsieur Gault went quickly up to his chief, and said in a whisper, "Beware of that man, Monsieur le Comte; he is mad with rage."
Monsieur de Granville gazed slowly at Jacques Collin, and saw that he was controlling himself; but he saw, too, that what the governor said was true. This treacherous demeanor covered the cold but terrible nervous irritation of a savage. In Jacques Collin's eyes were the lurid fires of a volcanic eruption, his fists were clenched. He was a tiger gathering himself up to spring.
"Leave us," said the Count gravely to the prison governor and the judge.
"You did wisely to send away Lucien's murderer!" said Jacques Collin, without caring whether Camusot heard him or no; "I could not contain myself, I should have strangled him."
Monsieur de Granville felt a chill; never had he seen a man's eyes so full of blood, or cheeks so colorless, or muscles so set.
"And what good would that murder have done you?" he quietly asked.
"You avenge society, or fancy you avenge it, every day, monsieur, and you ask me to give a reason for revenge? Have you never felt vengeance throbbing in surges in your veins? Don't you know that it was that idiot of a judge who killed him?--For you were fond of my Lucien, and he loved you! I know you by heart, sir. The dear boy would tell me everything at night when he came in; I used to put him to bed as a nurse tucks up a child, and I made him tell me everything. He confided everything to me, even his least sensations!
"The best of mothers never loved an only son so tenderly as I loved that angel! If only you knew! All that is good sprang up in his heart as flowers grow in the fields. He was weak; it was his only fault, weak as the string of a lyre, which is so strong when it is taut. These are the most beautiful natures; their weakness is simply tenderness, admiration, the power of expanding in the sunshine of art, of love, of the beauty God has made for man in a thousand shapes!--In short, Lucien was a woman spoiled. Oh! what could I not say to that brute beast who had just gone out of the room!
"I tell you, monsieur, in my degree, as a prisoner before his judge, I did what God A'mighty would have done for His Son if, hoping to save Him, He had gone with Him before Pilate!"
A flood of tears fell from the convict's light tawny eyes, which just now had glared like those of a wolf starved by six months' snow in the plains of the Ukraine. He went on:
"That dolt would listen to nothing, and he killed the boy!--I tell you, sir, I bathed the child's corpse in my tears, crying out to the Power I do not know, and which is above us all! I, who do not believe in God!--(For if I were not a materialist, I should not be myself.)
"I have told everything when I say that. You don't know--no man knows what suffering is. I alone know it. The fire of anguish so dried up my tears, that all last night I could not weep. Now I can, because I feel that you can understand me. I saw you, sitting there just now, an Image of Justice. Oh! monsieur, may God--for I am beginning to believe in Him--preserve you from ever being as bereft as I am! That cursed judge has robbed me of my soul, Monsieur le Comte! At this moment they are burying my life, my beauty, my virtue, my conscience, all my powers! Imagine a dog from which a chemist had extracted the blood.-- That's me! I am that dog----
"And that is why I have come to tell you that I am Jacques Collin, and to give myself up. I made up my mind to it this morning when they came and carried away the body I was kissing like a madman--like a mother-- as the Virgin must have kissed Jesus in the tomb.
"I meant then to give myself up to justice without driving any bargain; but now I must make one, and you shall know why."
"Are you speaking to the judge or to Monsieur de Granville?" asked the magistrate.
The two men, Crime and Law, looked at each other. The magistrate had been strongly moved by the convict; he felt a sort of divine pity for the unhappy wretch; he understood what his life and feelings were. And besides, the magistrate--for a magistrate is always a magistrate-- knowing nothing of Jacques Collin's career since his escape from prison, fancied that he could impress the criminal who, after all, had only been sentenced for forgery. He would try the effect of generosity on this nature, a compound, like bronze, of various elements, of good and evil.
Again, Monsieur de Granville, who had reached the age of fifty-three without ever having been loved, admired a tender soul, as all men do who have not been loved. This despair, the lot of many men to whom women can only give esteem and friendship, was perhaps the unknown bond on which a strong intimacy was based that united the Comtes de Bauvan, de Granville, and de Serizy; for a common misfortune brings souls into unison quite as much as a common joy.
"You have the future before you," said the public prosecutor, with an inquisitorial glance at the dejected villain.
The man only expressed by a shrug the utmost indifference to his fate.
"Lucien made a will by which he leaves you three hundred thousand francs."
"Poor, poor chap! poor boy!" cried Jacques Collin. "Always too honest! I was all wickedness, while he was goodness--noble, beautiful, sublime! Such lovely souls cannot be spoiled. He had taken nothing from me but my money, sir."
This utter and complete surrender of his individuality, which the magistrate vainly strove to rally, so thoroughly proved his dreadful words, that Monsieur de Granville was won over to the criminal. The public prosecutor remained!
"If you really care for nothing," said Monsieur de Granville, "what did you want to say to me?"
"Well, is it not something that I have given myself up? You were getting warm, but you had not got me; besides, you would not have known what to do with me----"
"What an antagonist!" said the magistrate to himself.
"Monsieur le Comte, you are about to cut off the head of an innocent man, and I have discovered the culprit," said Jacques Collin, wiping away his tears. "I have come here not for their sakes, but for yours. I have come to spare you remorse, for I love all who took an interest in Lucien, just as I will give my hatred full play against all who helped to cut off his life--men or women!
"What can a convict more or less matter to me?" he went on, after a short pause. "A convict is no more in my eyes than an emmet is in yours. I am like the Italian brigands--fine men they are! If a traveler is worth ever so little more than the charge of their musket, they shoot him dead.
"I thought only of you.--I got the young man to make a clean breast of it; he was bound to trust me, we had been chained together. Theodore is very good stuff; he thought he was doing his mistress a good turn by undertaking to sell or pawn stolen goods; but he is no more guilty of the Nanterre job than you are. He is a Corsican; it is their way to revenge themselves and kill each other like flies. In Italy and Spain a man's life is not respected, and the reason is plain. There we are believed to have a soul in our own image, which survives us and lives for ever. Tell that to your analyst! It is only among atheistical or philosophical nations that those who mar human life are made to pay so dearly; and with reason from their point of view--a belief only in matter and in the present.
"If Calvi had told you who the woman was from whom he obtained the stolen goods, you would not have found the real murderer; he is already in your hands; but his accomplice, whom poor Theodore will not betray because she is a woman---- Well, every calling has its point of honor; convicts and thieves have theirs!
"Now, I know the murderer of those two women and the inventors of that bold, strange plot; I have been told every detail. Postpone Calvi's execution, and you shall know all; but you must give me your word that he shall be sent safe back to the hulks and his punishment commuted. A man so miserable as I am does not take the trouble to lie--you know that. What I have told you is the truth."
"To you, Jacques Collin, though it is degrading Justice, which ought never to condescend to such a compromise, I believe I may relax the rigidity of my office and refer the case to my superiors."
"Will you grant me this life?"
"Possibly."
"Monsieur, I implore you to give me your word; it will be enough."
Monsieur Granville drew himself up with offended pride.
"I hold in my hand the honor of three families, and you only the lives of three convicts in yours," said Jacques Collin. "I have the stronger hand."
"But you may be sent back to the dark cells: then, what will you do?" said the public prosecutor.
"Oh! we are to play the game out then!" said Jacques Collin. "I was speaking as man to man--I was talking to Monsieur de Granville. But if the public prosecutor is my adversary, I take up the cards and hold them close.--And if only you had given me your word, I was ready to give you back the letters that Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu----"
This was said with a tone, an audacity, and a look which showed Monsieur de Granville, that against such an adversary the least blunder was dangerous.
"And is that all you ask?" said the magistrate.
"I will speak for myself now," said Jacques. "The honor of the Grandlieu family is to pay for the commutation of Theodore's sentence. It is giving much to get very little. For what is a convict in penal servitude for life? If he escapes, you can so easily settle the score. It is drawing a bill on the guillotine! Only, as he was consigned to Rochefort with no amiable intentions, you must promise me that he shall be quartered at Toulon, and well treated there.
"Now, for myself, I want something more. I have the packets of letters from Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse.--And what letters!-- I tell you, Monsieur le Comte, prostitutes, when they write letters, assume a style of sentiment; well, sir, fine ladies, who are accustomed to style and sentiment all day long, write as prostitutes behave. Philosophers may know the reasons for this contrariness. I do not care to seek them. Woman is an inferior animal; she is ruled by her instincts. To my mind a woman has no beauty who is not like a man.
"So your smart duchesses, who are men in brains only, write masterpieces. Oh! they are splendid from beginning to end, like Piron's famous ode!----"
"Indeed!"
"Would you like to see them?" said Jacques Collin, with a laugh.
The magistrate felt ashamed.
"I cannot give them to you to read. But, there; no nonsense; this is business and all above board, I suppose?--You must give me back the letters, and allow no one to play the spy or to follow or to watch the person who will bring them to me."
"That will take time," said Monsieur de Granville.
"No. It is half-past nine," replied Jacques Collin, looking at the clock; "well, in four minutes you will have a letter from each of these ladies, and after reading them you will countermand the guillotine. If matters were not as they are, you would not see me taking things so easy.--The ladies indeed have had warning."--Monsieur de Granville was startled.--"They must be making a stir by now; they are going to bring the Keeper of the Seals into the fray--they may even appeal to the King, who knows?--Come, now, will you give me your word that you will forget all that has passed, and neither follow, nor send any one to follow, that person for a whole hour?"
"I promise it."
"Very well; you are not the man to deceive an escaped convict. You are a chip of the block of which Turennes and Condes are made, and would keep your word to a thief.--In the Salle des Pas-Perdus there is at this moment a beggar woman in rags, an old woman, in the very middle of the hall. She is probably gossiping with one of the public writers, about some lawsuit over a party-wall perhaps; send your office messenger to fetch her, saying these words, 'Dabor ti Mandana' (the Boss wants you). She will come.
"But do not be unnecessarily cruel. Either you accept my terms or you do not choose to be mixed up in a business with a convict.--I am only a forger, you will remember!--Well, do not leave Calvi to go through the terrors of preparation for the scaffold."
"I have already countermanded the execution," said Monsieur de Granville to Jacques Collin. "I would not have Justice beneath you in dignity."
Jacques Collin looked at the public prosecutor with a sort of amazement, and saw him ring his bell.
"Will you promise not to escape? Give me your word, and I shall be satisfied. Go and fetch the woman."
The office-boy came in.
"Felix, send away the gendarmes," said Monsieur de Granville.
Jacques Collin was conquered.
In this duel with the magistrate he had tried to be the superior, the stronger, the more magnanimous, and the magistrate had crushed him. At the same time, the convict felt himself the superior, inasmuch as he had tricked the Law; he had convinced it that the guilty man was innocent, and had fought for a man's head and won it; but this advantage must be unconfessed, secret and hidden, while the magistrate towered above him majestically in the eye of day.
As Jacques Collin left Monsieur de Granville's room, the Comte des Lupeaulx, Secretary-in-Chief of the President of the Council, and a deputy, made his appearance, and with him a feeble-looking, little old man. This individual, wrapped in a puce-colored overcoat, as though it were still winter, with powdered hair, and a cold, pale face, had a gouty gait, unsteady on feet that were shod with loose calfskin boots; leaning on a gold-headed cane, he carried his hat in his hand, and wore a row of seven orders in his button-hole.
"What is it, my dear des Lupeaulx?" asked the public prosecutor.
"I come from the Prince," replied the Count, in a low voice. "You have carte blanche if you can only get the letters--Madame de Serizy's, Madame de Maufrigneuse's and Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu's. You may come to some arrangement with this gentleman----"
"Who is he?" asked Monsieur de Granville, in a whisper.
"There are no secrets between you and me, my dear sir," said des Lupeaulx. "This is the famous Corentin. His Majesty desires that you will yourself tell him all the details of this affair and the conditions of success."
"Do me the kindness," replied the public prosecutor, "of going to tell the Prince that the matter is settled, that I have not needed this gentleman's assistance," and he turned to Corentin. "I will wait on His Majesty for his commands with regard to the last steps in the matter, which will lie with the Keeper of the Seals, as two reprieves will need signing."
"You have been wise to take the initiative," said des Lupeaulx, shaking hands with the Comte de Granville. "On the very eve of a great undertaking the King is most anxious that the peers and the great families should not be shown up, blown upon. It ceases to be a low criminal case; it becomes an affair of State."
"But tell the Prince that by the time you came it was all settled."
"Really!"
"I believe so."
"Then you, my dear fellow, will be Keeper of the Seals as soon as the present Keeper is made Chancellor----"
"I have no ambition," replied the magistrate.
Des Lupeaulx laughed, and went away.
"Beg of the Prince to request the King to grant me ten minutes' audience at about half-past two," added Monsieur de Granville, as he accompanied the Comte des Lupeaulx to the door.
"So you are not ambitious!" said des Lupeaulx, with a keen look at Monsieur de Granville. "Come, you have two children, you would like at least to be made peer of France."
"If you have the letters, Monsieur le Procureur General, my intervention is unnecessary," said Corentin, finding himself alone with Monsieur de Granville, who looked at him with very natural curiosity.
"Such a man as you can never be superfluous in so delicate a case," replied the magistrate, seeing that Corentin had heard or guessed everything.
Corentin bowed with a patronizing air.
"Do you know the man in question, monsieur?"
"Yes, Monsieur le Comte, it is Jacques Collin, the head of the 'Ten Thousand Francs Association,' the banker for three penal settlements, a convict who, for the last five years, has succeeded in concealing himself under the robe of the Abbe Carlos Herrera. How he ever came to be intrusted with a mission to the late King from the King of Spain is a question which we have all puzzled ourselves with trying to answer. I am now expecting information from Madrid, whither I have sent notes and a man. That convict holds the secrets of two kings."
"He is a man of mettle and temper. We have only two courses open to us," said the public prosecutor. "We must secure his fidelity, or get him out of the way."
"The same idea has struck us both, and that is a great honor for me," said Corentin. "I am obliged to have so many ideas, and for so many people, that out of them all I ought occasionally to meet a clever man."
He spoke so drily, and in so icy a tone, that Monsieur de Granville made no reply, and proceeded to attend to some pressing matters.
Mademoiselle Jacqueline Collin's amazement on seeing Jacques Collin in the Salle des Pas-Perdus is beyond imagining. She stood square on her feet, her hands on her hips, for she was dressed as a costermonger. Accustomed as she was to her nephew's conjuring tricks, this beat everything.
"Well, if you are going to stare at me as if I were a natural history show," said Jacques Collin, taking his aunt by the arm and leading her out of the hall, "we shall be taken for a pair of curious specimens; they may take us into custody, and then we should lose time."
And he went down the stairs of the Galerie Marchande leading to the Rue de la Barillerie. "Where is Paccard?"
"He is waiting for me at la Rousse's, walking up and down the flower market."
"And Prudence?"
"Also at her house, as my god-daughter."
"Let us go there."
"Look round and see if we are watched."
La Rousse, a hardware dealer living on the Quai aux Fleurs, was the widow of a famous murderer, one of the "Ten Thousand." In 1819, Jacques Collin had faithfully handed over twenty thousand francs and odd to this woman from her lover, after he had been executed. Trompe- la-Mort was the only person who knew of his pal's connection with the girl, at that time a milliner.
"I am your young man's boss," the boarder at Madame Vauquer's had told her, having sent for her to meet him at the Jardin des Plantes. "He may have mentioned me to you, my dear.--Any one who plays me false dies within a year; on the other hand, those who are true to me have nothing to fear from me. I am staunch through thick and thin, and would die without saying a word that would compromise anybody I wish well to. Stick to me as a soul sticks to the Devil, and you will find the benefit of it. I promised your poor Auguste that you should be happy; he wanted to make you a rich woman, and he got scragged for your sake.
"Don't cry; listen to me. No one in the world knows that you were mistress to a convict, to the murderer they choked off last Saturday; and I shall never tell. You are two-and-twenty, and pretty, and you have twenty-six thousand francs of your own; forget Auguste and get married; be an honest woman if you can. In return for peace and quiet, I only ask you to serve me now and then, me, and any one I may send you, but without stopping to think. I will never ask you to do anything that can get you into trouble, you or your children, or your husband, if you get one, or your family.
"In my line of life I often want a safe place to talk in or to hide in. Or I may want a trusty woman to carry a letter or do an errand. You will be one of my letter-boxes, one of my porters' lodges, one of my messengers, neither more nor less.
"You are too red-haired; Auguste and I used to call you la Rousse; you can keep that name. My aunt, an old-clothes dealer at the Temple, who will come and see you, is the only person in the world you are to obey; tell her everything that happens to you; she will find you a husband, and be very useful to you."
And thus the bargain was struck, a diabolical compact like that which had for so long bound Prudence Servien to Jacques Collin, and which the man never failed to tighten; for, like the Devil, he had a passion for recruiting.
In about 1821 Jacques Collin found la Rousse a husband in the person of the chief shopman under a rich wholesale tin merchant. This head- clerk, having purchased his master's house of business, was now a prosperous man, the father of two children, and one of the district Maire's deputies. La Rousse, now Madame Prelard, had never had the smallest ground for complaint, either of Jacques Collin or of his aunt; still, each time she was required to help them, Madame Prelard quaked in every limb. So, as she saw the terrible couple come into her shop, she turned as pale as death.
"We want to speak to you on business, madame," said Jacques Collin.
"My husband is in there," said she.
"Very well; we have no immediate need of you. I never put people out of their way for nothing."
"Send for a hackney coach, my dear," said Jacqueline Collin, "and tell my god-daughter to come down. I hope to place her as maid to a very great lady, and the steward of the house will take us there."
A shop-boy fetched the coach, and a few minutes later Europe, or, to be rid of the name under which she had served Esther, Prudence Servien, Paccard, Jacques Collin, and his aunt, were, to la Rousse's great joy, packed into a coach, ordered by Trompe-la-Mort to drive to the Barriere d'Ivry.
Prudence and Paccard, quaking in presence of the boss, felt like guilty souls in the presence of God.
"Where are the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs?" asked the boss, looking at them with the clear, penetrating gaze which so effectually curdled the blood of these tools of his, these ames damnees, when they were caught tripping, that they felt as though their scalp were set with as many pins as hairs.
"The seven hundred and THIRTY thousand francs," said Jacqueline Collin to her nephew, "are quite safe; I gave them to la Romette this morning in a sealed packet."
"If you had not handed them over to Jacqueline," said Trompe-la-Mort, "you would have gone straight there," and he pointed to the Place de Greve, which they were just passing.
Prudence Servien, in her country fashion, made the sign of the Cross, as if she had seen a thunderbolt fall.
"I forgive you," said the boss, "on condition of your committing no more mistakes of this kind, and of your being henceforth to me what these two fingers are of my right hand," and he pointed to the first and middle fingers, "for this good woman is the thumb," and he slapped his aunt on the shoulder.
"Listen to me," he went on. "You, Paccard, have nothing more to fear; you may follow your nose about Pantin (Paris) as you please. I give you leave to marry Prudence Servien."
Paccard took Jacques Collin's hand and kissed it respectfully.
"And what must I do?" said he.
"Nothing; and you will have dividends and women, to say nothing of your wife--for you have a touch of the Regency about you, old boy!-- That comes of being such a fine man!"
Paccard colored under his sultan's ironical praises.
"You, Prudence," Jacques went on, "will want a career, a position, a future; you must remain in my service. Listen to me. There is a very good house in the Rue Sainte-Barbe belonging to that Madame de Saint- Esteve, whose name my aunt occasionally borrows. It is a very good business, with plenty of custom, bringing in fifteen to twenty thousand francs a year. Saint-Esteve puts a woman in to keep the shop----"
"La Gonore," said Jacqueline.
"Poor la Pouraille's moll," said Paccard. "That is where I bolted to with Europe the day that poor Madame van Bogseck died, our mis'ess."
"Who jabbers when I am speaking?" said Jacques Collin.
Perfect silence fell in the coach. Paccard and Prudence did not dare look at each other.
"The shop is kept by la Gonore," Jacques Collin went on. "If that is where you went to hide with Prudence, I see, Paccard, that you have wit enough to dodge the reelers (mislead the police), but not enough to puzzle the old lady," and he stroked his aunt's chin. "Now I see how she managed to find you.--It all fits beautifully. You may go back to la Gonore.--To go on: Jacqueline will arrange with Madame Nourrisson to purchase her business in the Rue Sainte-Barbe; and if you manage well, child, you may make a fortune out of it," he said to Prudence. "An Abbess at your age! It is worthy of a Daughter of France," he added in a hard tone.
Prudence flung her arms round Trompe-la-Mort's neck and hugged him; but the boss flung her off with a sharp blow, showing his extraordinary strength, and but for Paccard, the girl's head would have struck and broken the coach window.
"Paws off! I don't like such ways," said the boss stiffly. "It is disrespectful to me."
"He is right, child," said Paccard. "Why, you see, it is as though the boss had made you a present of a hundred thousand francs. The shop is worth that. It is on the Boulevard, opposite the Gymnase. The people come out of the theatre----"
"I will do more," said Trompe-la-Mort; "I will buy the house."
"And in six years we shall be millionaires," cried Paccard.
Tired of being interrupted, Trompe-la-Mort gave Paccard's shin a kick hard enough to break it; but the man's tendons were of india-rubber, and his bones of wrought iron.
"All right, boss, mum it is," said he.
"Do you think I am cramming you with lies?" said Jacques Collin, perceiving that Paccard had had a few drops too much. "Well, listen. In the cellar of that house there are two hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold----"
Again silence reigned in the coach.
"The coin is in a very hard bed of masonry. It must be got out, and you have only three nights to do it in. Jacqueline will help you.--A hundred thousand francs will buy up the business, fifty thousand will pay for the house; leave the remainder."
"Where?" said Paccard.
"In the cellar?" asked Prudence.
"Silence!" cried Jacqueline.
"Yes, but to get the business transferred, we must have the consent of the police authorities," Paccard objected.
"We shall have it," said Trompe-la-Mort. "Don't meddle in what does not concern you."
Jacqueline looked at her nephew, and was struck by the alteration in his face, visible through the stern mask under which the strong man generally hid his feelings.
"You, child," said he to Prudence Servien, "will receive from my aunt the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs----"
"Seven hundred and thirty," said Paccard.
"Very good, seven hundred and thirty then," said Jacques Collin. "You must return this evening under some pretext to Madame Lucien's house. Get out on the roof through the skylight; get down the chimney into your miss'ess' room, and hide the packet she had made of the money in the mattress----"
"And why not by the door?" asked Prudence Servien.
"Idiot! there are seals on everything," replied Jacques Collin. "In a few days the inventory will be taken, and you will be innocent of the theft."
"Good for the boss!" cried Paccard. "That is really kind!"
"Stop, coachman!" cried Jacques Collin's powerful voice.
The coach was close to the stand by the Jardin des Plantes.
"Be off, young 'uns," said Jacques Collin, "and do nothing silly! Be on the Pont des Arts this afternoon at five, and my aunt will let you know if there are any orders to the contrary.--We must be prepared for everything," he whispered to his aunt. "To-morrow," he went on, "Jacqueline will tell you how to dig up the gold without any risk. It is a ticklish job----"
Paccard and Prudence jumped out on to the King's highway, as happy as reprieved thieves.
"What a good fellow the boss is!" said Paccard.
"He would be the king of men if he were not so rough on women."
"Oh, yes! He is a sweet creature," said Paccard. "Did you see how he kicked me? Well, we deserved to be sent to old Nick; for, after all, we got him into this scrape."
"If only he does not drag us into some dirty job, and get us packed off to the hulks yet," said the wily Prudence.
"Not he! If he had that in his head, he would tell us; you don't know him.--He has provided handsomely for you. Here we are, citizens at large! Oh, when that man takes a fancy to you, he has not his match for good-nature."
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