“Never having loved any one on earth but Monsieur Lucien Chardon
de Rubempre, and being resolved to end my life rather than relapse
into vice and the life of infamy from which he rescued me, I give
and bequeath to the said Lucien Chardon de Rubempre all I may
possess at the time of my decease, on condition of his founding a
mass in perpetuity in the parish church of Saint-Roch for the
repose of her who gave him her all, to her last thought.
“ESTHER GOBSECK.”
“That is quite in her style,” thought _Trompe-la-Mort_.
By seven in the evening this document, written and sealed, was placed by
Asie under Esther’s bolster.
“Jacques,” said she, flying upstairs again, “just as I came out of the
room justice marched in----”
“The justice of the peace you mean?”
“No, my son. The justice of the peace was there, but he had gendarmes
with him. The public prosecutor and the examining judge are there too,
and the doors are guarded.”
“This death has made a stir very quickly,” remarked Jacques Collin.
“Ay, and Paccard and Europe have vanished; I am afraid they may have
scared away the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs,” said Asie.
“The low villains!” said Collin. “They have done for us by their
swindling game.”
Human justice, and Paris justice, that is to say, the most suspicious,
keenest, cleverest, and omniscient type of justice--too clever, indeed,
for it insists on interpreting the law at every turn--was at last on the
point of laying its hand on the agents of this horrible intrigue.
The Baron of Nucingen, on recognizing the evidence of poison, and
failing to find his seven hundred and fifty thousand francs, imagined
that one of two persons whom he greatly disliked--either Paccard or
Europe--was guilty of the crime. In his first impulse of rage he flew to
the prefecture of police. This was a stroke of a bell that called up all
Corentin’s men. The officials of the prefecture, the legal profession,
the chief of the police, the justice of the peace, the examining
judge,--all were astir. By nine in the evening three medical men were
called in to perform an autopsy on poor Esther, and inquiries were set
on foot.
_Trompe-la-Mort_, warned by Asie, exclaimed:
“No one knows that I am here; I may take an airing.” He pulled himself
up by the skylight of his garret, and with marvelous agility was
standing in an instant on the roof, whence he surveyed the surroundings
with the coolness of a tiler.
“Good!” said he, discerning a garden five houses off in the Rue de
Provence, “that will just do for me.”
“You are paid out, _Trompe-la-Mort_,” said Contenson, suddenly emerging
from behind a stack of chimneys. “You may explain to Monsieur Camusot
what mass you were performing on the roof, Monsieur l’Abbe, and, above
all, why you were escaping----”
“I have enemies in Spain,” said Carlos Herrera.
“We can go there by way of your attic,” said Contenson.
The sham Spaniard pretended to yield; but, having set his back and feet
across the opening of the skylight, he gripped Contenson and flung
him off with such violence that the spy fell in the gutter of the Rue
Saint-Georges.
Contenson was dead on his field of honor; Jacques Collin quietly dropped
into the room again and went to bed.
“Give me something that will make me very sick without killing me,”
said he to Asie; “for I must be at death’s door, to avoid answering
inquisitive persons. I have just got rid of a man in the most natural
way, who might have unmasked me.”
At seven o’clock on the previous evening Lucien had set out in his own
chaise to post to Fontainebleau with a passport he had procured in the
morning; he slept in the nearest inn on the Nemours side. At six in the
morning he went alone, and on foot, through the forest as far as Bouron.
“This,” said he to himself, as he sat down on one of the rocks that
command the fine landscape of Bouron, “is the fatal spot where
Napoleon dreamed of making a final tremendous effort on the eve of his
abdication.”
At daybreak he heard the approach of post-horses and saw a britska drive
past, in which sat the servants of the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu
and Clotilde de Grandlieu’s maid.
“Here they are!” thought Lucien. “Now, to play the farce well, and I
shall be saved!--the Duc de Grandlieu’s son-in-law in spite of him!”
It was an hour later when he heard the peculiar sound made by a superior
traveling carriage, as the berline came near in which two ladies were
sitting. They had given orders that the drag should be put on for the
hill down to Bouron, and the man-servant behind the carriage had it
stopped.
At this instant Lucien came forward.
“Clotilde!” said he, tapping on the window.
“No,” said the young Duchess to her friend, “he shall not get into the
carriage, and we will not be alone with him, my dear. Speak to him for
the last time--to that I consent; but on the road, where we will walk
on, and where Baptiste can escort us.--The morning is fine, we are well
wrapped up, and have no fear of the cold. The carriage can follow.”
The two women got out.
“Baptiste,” said the Duchess, “the post-boy can follow slowly; we want
to walk a little way. You must keep near us.”
Madeleine de Mortsauf took Clotilde by the arm and allowed Lucien to
talk. They thus walked on as far as the village of Grez. It was now
eight o’clock, and there Clotilde dismissed Lucien.
“Well, my friend,” said she, closing this long interview with much
dignity, “I never shall marry any one but you. I would rather believe
in you than in other men, in my father and mother--no woman ever gave
greater proof of attachment surely?--Now, try to counteract the fatal
prejudices which militate against you.”
Just then the tramp of galloping horses was heard, and, to the great
amazement of the ladies, a force of gendarmes surrounded the little
party.
“What do you want?” said Lucien, with the arrogance of a dandy.
“Are you Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre?” asked the public prosecutor of
Fontainebleau.
“Yes, monsieur.”
“You will spend to-night in La Force,” said he. “I have a warrant for
the detention of your person.”
“Who are these ladies?” asked the sergeant.
“To be sure.--Excuse me, ladies--your passports? For Monsieur Lucien,
as I am instructed, had acquaintances among the fair sex, who for him
would----”
“Do you take the Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu for a prostitute?” said
Madeleine, with a magnificent flash at the public prosecutor.
“You are handsome enough to excuse the error,” the magistrate very
cleverly retorted.
“Baptiste, produce the passports,” said the young Duchess with a smile.
“And with what crime is Monsieur de Rubempre charged?” asked Clotilde,
whom the Duchess wished to see safe in the carriage.
“Of being accessory to a robbery and murder,” replied the sergeant of
gendarmes.
Baptiste lifted Mademoiselle de Grandlieu into the chaise in a dead
faint.
By midnight Lucien was entering La Force, a prison situated between the
Rue Payenne and the Rue des Ballets, where he was placed in solitary
confinement.
The Abbe Carlos Herrera was also there, having been arrested that
evening.