with so virile and noble an affection, that of an elder brother for
a frail refined child, in the possession of this clown, this chance
preceptor, him who had inflicted on his race an outrage so abject he
could have roared with fury, as when, during the war, it had been
necessary to assist at the capitulation of Metz and to give up his arms.
He felt then a solace in thinking that the bench of infamy on which
were seated burglars, swindlers, and murderers was waiting for this
man, and then the scaffold or the galleys. And he stifled the voice
which said: “You ought to speak.”
My God! what agony for him in these three months, during which there
had not been five minutes in which he had not struggled against these
contradictory sentiments.
On the field of drill, for he had returned to service; on horseback,
galloping over the roads of Lorraine; in his room thinking, over this
question: “What was he to do?”
Weeks had passed without any answer, but the moment had come when it
was necessary to act and to decide, for in two days--the trial must
occupy four sessions--Greslon would be judged and condemned. There
would be still some time after the conviction; but what of it! The
same debate would only have to be gone over again. He had not decided
to be silent until the last. He refrained from speaking, but he had
not vowed to himself that he would refrain from speaking. This was
the reason it had been physically impossible for him to accompany his
father to the Palais de Justice during this first session, of which he
should soon hear the account, as twelve was striking, twelve very harsh
strokes followed by a carillon in the steeple of a neighboring church.
“My captain, here is M. the Marquis,” said the orderly, who had heard
the rolling of a carriage, then its stop before the hotel, after which
he took a look out of the window.
“Ah, well, my father?” asked André anxiously as soon as the marquis had
entered.
“Ah, well! the jury is for us,” responded M. de Jussat. He was no
longer the broken down monomaniac whom Greslon had so bitterly mocked
in his memoir. His eyes were brilliant and there was youth in his
voice and gestures. The passion for vengeance, instead of breaking him
down, sustained him. He had forgotten his hypochondria, and his speech
was quick, impetuous, and clear. “They were drawn this morning. Among
the twelve jurors, there are three farmers, two retired officers, a
physician, two shopkeepers, two proprietors, a manufacturer, and a
professor, all good men, men of family, and who would wish to make
an example. The procureur-général is sure of a conviction. Ah! the
scoundrel! but I was happy, the only time in three months, when I saw
him between two gendarmes! But what audacity! He looked around the
hall. I was on the first bench. He saw me. Would you believe it, he
did not turn away his eyes? He looked at me fixedly as if he wished to
brave me. Ah! we must have his head, and we will have it.”
The old man had spoken with a savage accent and he had not noticed the
painful expression that his words had brought to the face of the count.
This last, at the picture of his enemy, thus conquered by public force,
seized by the gendarmes, as if caught in the gear of that anonymous
and invincible machine of justice, trembled with a chill of shame, the
shame of a man who has employed bravos in a work of death.
These gendarmes, and these magistrates, were really the bravos employed
in doing what he would so much have liked to do himself, with his own
hands and upon his own responsibility. Decidedly, it was cowardly not
to have spoken.
Then the look thrown by Greslon at the Marquis de Jussat, what did it
mean? Did he know that Charlotte had written her letter of confession
the evening before her suicide? And if he knew it, what did he think?
The idea alone that this young man could suspect the truth and despise
them for their silence lighted a fever in the blood of the count.
“No,” said he to himself when the marquis had gone back for the
afternoon session after a dinner eaten in haste, “I cannot keep silent.
I will speak, or I will write.”
He seated himself and began to trace mechanically these words at the
head of a sheet:
“Monsieur the President:”
The night fell while this unhappy man was still in the same place, his
brow in his hand, and not having written the first line of this letter.
He waited for the news of the second session, and it was with a shock
that he heard his father recount the details of it.
“Ah! my dear André! You were right not to come! What infamy! Ah! what
infamy! Greslon was questioned. He continues his system and refuses
to say anything. That is nothing. The experts reported the results of
their analyses. Our good doctor first. His voice trembled, the dear
man, when he described his impression at seeing our poor Charlotte,
you know, in her room. And then Professor Armand; you could not have
endured this horrible thing, this autopsy of our angel in that room in
which there were certainly five hundred persons. And then the Paris
chemist. If there could be any doubt after that! The bottle which that
monster used, was on the table. I saw it. And then--how did he dare?
His lawyer, an official advocate, however, and who has not even the
excuse of being the friend of his client. His advocate. But how shall I
tell you? He asked if Charlotte had had a lover. There was a murmur of
disgust in the hall, of indignation from everybody. She, my child, so
pure, so noble, a saint! I could have choked the man. Even the assassin
was moved, he whom nothing touches. I saw him. At that moment he put
his head in his hands and wept. Answer, ought it not to be forbidden
by law, to speak in that way of a victim in open court? What did this
rogue believe then, that she had a lover? A lover! She a lover!”
The old man’s indignation was so strong that he suddenly burst into
tears. The son, in presence of this touching grief felt his heart melt
and the tears fill his eyes, and the two men embraced one another
without a word.
“You see,” resumed the father when he was able to speak, “this is
the dreadful side of these trials, the public discussion of the most
private matters. I have told you before that I was sure she was unhappy
all winter because Maxime was absent. She loved him, but was not
willing that it should be seen. It was this that aroused Greslon’s
jealousy when he came to the house and found her so gracious, so
unpretentious, he believed that he could win her. How could she have
suspected such a thing, when I who have had so much experience of men,
never saw or guessed any thing?”
Once started on this subject the marquis talked all through the dinner,
then during the whole evening. He enjoyed the consolation, the only one
possible in certain crises, of recollecting aloud. And the religious
worship which the unhappy father preserved for the dead was for the
son, who listened without responding, something tragical at this moment
when he was preparing to do what? Was he really about to bring this
terrible blow on the old man? In his own room, with the great silence
of a provincial city around him, he took up his sister’s letter and
read it again, although he knew by heart every phrase in it. There
arose from these pages traced by the hand forever still, a sigh so
profound, a breath of agony so sad and so heartrending! The illusion of
the girl had been so mad, her struggles so sincere, her awakening so
bitter, that the count felt again the tears flow down his cheeks. This
was the second time that he had wept that day, he who, since the death
of Charlotte, had kept his eyes dry and burning with hate.
He said: “Greslon has deserved--” He remained motionless some
minutes, and, walking toward the chimney in which the fire was just
extinguished, he placed on the half-consumed log the leaves of the
letter. He struck a match and slipped it under the paper. He saw the
line of flame develop all around, then again the frail writing, then
transform this only proof of the miserable amour and suicide into a
blackish mass.
The brother finished by mixing this debris with the ashes. He lay down
saying aloud: “It is done,” and he slept, as on the night after his
first battle, the exhausted sleep which succeeds with men of action,
great expenditure of will, and he did not open his eyes until nine
o’clock the next day.
“Monsieur, the marquis forbade me to wake you,” said Pourat when,
called by his master, he opened the shutters. The sunlight entered,
the bright sunlight instead of the sad and lowering sky of the evening
before. “He has been gone an hour. My captain knows that to-day they
are going to take the accused by the subterranean passage, everybody is
so excited against him.”
“What subterranean passage?” asked André.
“That one which goes from the jail to the Palais de Justice. They
use it for great criminals, those who might be torn to pieces by the
public. Faith, captain, if I saw that fellow go by, I believe I should
feel like knocking him over on the spot. Those enraged dogs do not
judge, they kill. But,” he continued, “I have forgotten the morning’s
letters in the salon.”
He returned in a minute, having in his hand three envelopes. André, who
threw a glance at the first two, saw at once from whom they came. The
third was in an unknown hand. It had been addressed to Lunéville, from
Paris, then sent on to Riom. The count opened it, and read the three
lines which Sixte had written before taking the train for Riom. The
hands of this brave officer who did not know the meaning of the word
fear, began to tremble. He became as pale as the paper which he held in
his trembling hands, so pale that Pourat said to him with fear:
“My captain is ill.”
“Leave me,” said the count brusquely. “I will dress myself alone.”
He had need to recover from the sudden blow which had just struck him.
There was some one in the world who knew the terrible secret, some
one who knew the mystery of Charlotte’s death and who was not Robert
Greslon, for he had seen some of the young man’s writing and this was
quite unlike it.
This was a shock of terror such as the most courageous might feel
before a fact so absolutely unexpected that it takes on a supernatural
character. If the brother of Charlotte had seen his sister, alive there
before him, he could not have been more prostrated with astonishment.
Some one knew of the suicide of the young girl, and of the letter
written by her before her death, and possibly all the rest. And this
some one, this mysterious witness of the truth, what did he think of
him? The question with which the note ended told plainly enough.
Suddenly the count remembered what he had dared to do. He remembered
the letter thrown into the fire, and the purple of shame rushed to his
cheeks. The resolution, taken the evening before, could not be kept.
That any man should have the right to say: “The Count de Jussat has
committed a cowardly act,” was more than this gentleman so proud of his
honor, was able to endure. The trouble of the night before, that he
had believed ended, revived, and was rendered more intolerable by the
return of his father who said:
“They have heard all the witnesses. I have deposed. But what was very
hard was to find myself in the small hall with Greslon’s mother. It
is a chance if she does not come down here. She is at the Hôtel du
Commerce, where she has begged me to come to talk with her. Ah! what a
scene! She has a face not to be forgotten, a severe face, with black
eyes which have, as it were, a fire in their tears. She walked up to
me and spoke to me. She adjured me to say that her son was innocent,
that I knew it, that I had no right to depose against him. Yes, it was
a terrible scene, and the gendarme interrupted it. The unhappy woman!
I cannot feel hard toward her. He is her son. What a strange thing
that a rascal like him can still have in the world a heart that loves
him, even as I loved Charlotte, as I love you! Alas!” continued the old
man. “It is one o’clock. The attorney-general is going to speak. Then
the defense. Between five and six o’clock we shall have the verdict.
Ah, but that will satisfy the heart to see him when the sentence is
pronounced! It is only just. He has committed murder. He ought to die.”
When the count was again alone, he began to walk up and down, as the
evening before, while Pourat with the valet of M. de Jussat, cleared
away the table. These two men have since declared that their master had
never seemed so violently uneasy, as during the thirty minutes that
they were busy in the room. Their astonishment was very great when he
asked to have his uniform got ready.
In a quarter of an hour he was dressed and left the hotel. One
detail made the brave Pourat shiver. He stated that the officer took
his revolver with him which had been placed for two nights on the
nightstand. The soldier communicated his fears to his companion.
“If this Greslon is acquitted,” said he, “the captain is the man to
blow his brains out on the spot.”
“We ought to follow him, perhaps?” responded the
_valet-de-chambre_.
While the two servants were deliberating, the count followed the main
street which led to the Palais de Justice. He knew it, for he had
often been to Riom in his childhood. This old parliamentary city, with
its large hotels with the high windows, built in black Volvic stone,
seemed more empty, more silent, more dead than usual as the brother of
Charlotte walked toward the court.
Near the approaches to Palais there was a dense crowd which filled
the narrow Rue Saint-Louis by which one reaches the hall of assize.
The Greslon case had attracted all who had an hour to spare. André
could scarcely force his way through the mass of people, composed of
countrymen and small shopkeepers who were conversing with passionate
animation.
He arrived at the steps which lead to the vestibule. Two soldiers
guarded the door, charged to keep back the crowd. The count seemed to
hesitate, then, instead of entering, he pushed on to the end of the
street. He reached a terrace, which, situated between the sinister
walls of the central building and the dark mass of the Palais, gave a
view of the immense plain of the Limagne.
A fountain charmed the silence of this spot, and the sound of its
murmuring could be heard even above the noise of the crowd in the
neighboring street. André sat down on a bench near the fountain. He
was never able to tell why he remained there more than half an hour,
nor the exact reason why he arose, walked toward the Palais, wrote his
name and some words on a card, and gave this card to a soldier to be
carried by the bailiff to the president.
He had the very distinct feeling that he must act, almost in spite
of himself, and as in a dream. His resolution nevertheless was taken
and he felt that he should not weaken again, although he apprehended
with horrible anguish the meeting with his father, who was over there,
beyond those people whose heads were bent forward, their shoulders
curved.
He felt in his agony the only solace he could experience when the
bailiff came for him. For, instead of introducing him at once into the
hall, this man led him through a passage to a small room which was,
without doubt, the office of the president. Some packets were lying
on the table. An overcoat and a hat hung on a peg. Arrived there, his
guide said to him:
“Monsieur the president will come to you as soon as the
attorney-general has finished.” What unexpected consolation in his
pain! The punishment of deposing in public and before his father
would be spared him! This hope was of short duration. The officer had
not been ten minutes in the office of the president when the latter
entered: a large old man, with a face yellow from bile and with gray
hair, whom the contrast of his red robe made look greenish. After the
first words and before the affirmation of the count that he brought
proof of the innocence of the accused:
“On these conditions, monsieur,” said the president, “I cannot receive
your confidences. The audience is to be resumed and you will be heard
as a witness, provided neither the prosecution nor the defense object.”
Thus none of the stations toward his Calvary could the brother of
Charlotte avoid. He was about to come in contact with this impassible
machinery of justice, which does not stop, which cannot stop on account
of human sensibility. He must seat himself in the witness chamber, and
recall the scene which had passed there between his father and the
mother of Greslon, then enter the hall of assize. He could see the
bare wall with the image of the crucified which overlooked this hall,
the heads turned toward him in supreme attention, the president among
his judges, and the attorney-general, all in their red robes; the
jurors on the left of the court. Robert Greslon was on the right on the
prisoner’s bench, his arms folded, livid but impassible, and everybody
crowded everywhere, behind the magistrates, in the tribunes.
On the witness bench André recognized his father and his white hairs.
Ah! how this sight cut him to the heart--the heart which did not
falter however, when the president, after asking the counsel and
attorney-general if they did not object to hearing the witness, asked
him to state his name and title and take oath according to the formula.
The magistrates who assisted at this scene are unanimous in declaring
that they never experienced an emotion in court at all comparable to
that which seized the audience and themselves when this man, whose
heroic past all were acquainted with through the articles published
in the journals, began in a firm voice, but one which betrayed
excruciating grief:
“Gentlemen of the jury: I have only a few words to say. My sister was
not assassinated, she killed herself. The night before her death she
wrote me a letter in which she announced her resolution to die, and
why. Gentlemen, I believe that I had the right to conceal this suicide,
I burned this letter. If the man whom you have before you,” and he
indicated Greslon with his left hand--“did not give the poison, he
has done worse. But this is not for your justice to consider, and he
ought not to be convicted as an assassin. He is innocent. In default of
material proof which I can no longer give, I bring you my word.”
These sentences fell one by one, amid the anguish of the whole
audience. There was a cry followed by groans.
“He is mad,” said a voice, “he is mad, do not listen to him.”
“No, my Father,” replied Count André, who recognized the voice of the
marquis, and who turned toward the old man, who lay back, crushed, on
his bench. “I am not mad. I have done what honor compelled. I hope,
monsieur the president, that I may be spared from saying any more.”
There was entreaty in his voice, the voice of this proud man, as he
uttered this last sentence, and it so affected the hearers that a
murmur ran through the crowd when the president replied:
“To my great regret, monsieur, I cannot grant what you ask. The extreme
importance of the deposition which you have just made does not permit
justice to rest upon the information which is our duty--a very painful
duty--to ask you to state precisely.”
“That is well, monsieur, I also will do my duty to the end.”
There was in the accent with which the witness uttered this sentence
such resolution that the murmur of the crowd gave way suddenly to
silence, and the president was heard saying:
“You spoke of a letter, monsieur, which your sister had written to you.
Permit me to say that it is at least extraordinary that your first idea
was not to enlighten justice by communicating it at once.”
“It contained,” said the count, “a secret which I would have been
willing to conceal at the price of my blood.”
He has since told the friend who remained so true to the end of this
drama, Maxime de Plane, that this was the most terrible moment of
his sacrifice--but his emotion was suppressed by its very excess. He
was obliged to give all the details of the letter--and recount his
own sensations, and confess all his agonies. As to what followed, he
has declared that he could recall only a few material details--and
those the most unexpected--the coldness to his hand of an iron column
against which he was leaning when he ought to have been sitting on the
witness bench from which some one came to take him to his father who
had fainted at the last words of his deposition. He noticed also the
drawling Lorraine accent of the procureur-général who had risen to
abandon the prosecution.
How much time elapsed between the speeches of the procureur and of
Greslon’s counsel, the retiring of the jury and its re-entrance with a
negative verdict, he never knew. He has never known how he employed
his evening, after the doorkeeper had invited him to leave. He
remembers to have walked a great distance. Some citizens of Combronde
met him on the road to this village. He went to an inn where he wrote
some letters, addressed, one to his father, one to his mother and a
third to his colonel, and a last to Maxime de Plane. At nine o’clock he
knocked at the door of the Hôtel du Commerce, where his father had told
him the mother of Greslon had gone, and he asked the _concierge_
if M. Greslon was there. This fellow had heard of the dramatic scene.
He guessed from the uniform of the captain who he was, and had the good
sense to reply that M. Robert Greslon had not appeared. Unfortunately
he thought it right to inform the young man, who was at that moment
with his mother and M. Adrien Sixte. This last could not resist the
supplications of the widow who, having met him in the corridor of the
hotel, had conjured him to aid her in comforting her son.
“Monsieur,” said the _concierge_ to Robert after having asked
permission to speak to him apart, “be careful, M. de Jussat is looking
for you.”
“Where is he?” asked Greslon feverishly.
“He cannot have left the street,” responded the _concierge_, “but
I told him that you were not here.”
“You did wrong,” replied Greslon. And taking his hat, he rushed toward
the stairs.
“Where are you going?” implored his mother. The young man did not
answer. Perhaps he did not even hear this cry, he was in such haste to
go down the stairs. The idea that Count André believed him cowardly
enough to hide himself maddened him. He had not long to look for his
enemy. The count was on the opposite side of the street, watching the
door. Robert saw him and walked straight up to him.
“You have something to say to me, monsieur?” he asked proudly.
“Yes,” said the count.
“I am at your service,” continued Greslon, “for whatever reparation
that it may please you to exact. I will not leave Riom, I give you my
word.”
“No, monsieur,” responded André de Jussat, “one does not fight with
such men as you, one executes them.”
He drew his revolver from his pocket, and as the other, instead of
fleeing, remained standing before him and seemed to say: “I dare you,”
he lodged a bullet in his head. The noise of the report, and a cry of
agony were heard at the same time at the hotel, and when they ran to
see the cause, they found Count André standing against the wall, who,
throwing down his pistol and, folding his arms said simply, pointing to
the body of his sister’s lover at his feet:
“I have executed justice.”
And he allowed himself to be arrested without any resistance.
During the night which followed this tragic scene, the admirers of the
“Psychology of God” of the “Theory of the Passions” and of the “Anatomy
of the Will,” would have been astonished if they could have seen what
was passing in room No. 3 of the Hôtel du Commerce, and in the mind of
their implacable and powerful master. At the foot of the bed on which
lay the dead man, with his brow bandaged, knelt the mother of Robert
Greslon.