At six o’clock next morning two vehicles with postilions, prison vans,
called in the vigorous language of the populace, _paniers a salade_,
came out of La Force to drive to the Conciergerie by the Palais de
Justice.
Few loafers in Paris can have failed to meet this prison cell on wheels;
still, though most stories are written for Parisian readers, strangers
will no doubt be satisfied to have a description of this formidable
machine. Who knows? A police of Russia, Germany, or Austria, the legal
body of countries to whom the “Salad-basket” is an unknown machine, may
profit by it; and in several foreign countries there can be no doubt
that an imitation of this vehicle would be a boon to prisoners.
This ignominious conveyance, yellow-bodied, on high wheels, and lined
with sheet-iron, is divided into two compartments. In front is a
box-seat, with leather cushions and an apron. This is the free seat of
the van, and accommodates a sheriff’s officer and a gendarme. A strong
iron trellis, reaching to the top, separates this sort of cab-front from
the back division, in which there are two wooden seats placed sideways,
as in an omnibus, on which the prisoners sit. They get in by a step
behind and a door, with no window. The nickname of Salad-basket arose
from the fact that the vehicle was originally made entirely of lattice,
and the prisoners were shaken in it just as a salad is shaken to dry it.
For further security, in case of accident, a mounted gendarme follows
the machine, especially when it conveys criminals condemned to death to
the place of execution. Thus escape is impossible. The vehicle, lined
with sheet-iron, is impervious to any tool. The prisoners, carefully
searched when they are arrested or locked up, can have nothing but
watch-springs, perhaps, to file through bars, and useless on a smooth
surface.
So the _panier a salade_, improved by the genius of the Paris police,
became the model for the prison omnibus (known in London as “Black
Maria”) in which convicts are transported to the hulks, instead of the
horrible tumbril which formerly disgraced civilization, though Manon
Lescaut had made it famous.
The accused are, in the first instance, despatched in the prison van
from the various prisons in Paris to the Palais de Justice, to be
questioned by the examining judge. This, in prison slang, is called
“going up for examination.” Then the accused are again conveyed
from prison to the Court to be sentenced when their case is only a
misdemeanor; or if, in legal parlance, the case is one for the
Upper Court, they are transferred from the house of detention to the
Conciergerie, the “Newgate” of the Department of the Seine.
Finally, the prison van carries the criminal condemned to death from
Bicetre to the Barriere Saint-Jacques, where executions are carried out,
and have been ever since the Revolution of July. Thanks to philanthropic
interference, the poor wretches no longer have to face the horrors of
the drive from the Conciergerie to the Place de Greve in a cart exactly
like that used by wood merchants. This cart is no longer used but to
bring the body back from the scaffold.
Without this explanation the words of a famous convict to his
accomplice, “It is now the horse’s business!” as he got into the van,
would be unintelligible. It is impossible to be carried to execution
more comfortably than in Paris nowadays.
At this moment the two vans, setting out at such an early hour, were
employed on the unwonted service of conveying two accused prisoners
from the jail of La Force to the Conciergerie, and each man had a
“Salad-basket” to himself.
Nine-tenths of my readers, ay, and nine-tenths of the remaining tenth,
are certainly ignorant of the vast difference of meaning in the words
incriminated, suspected, accused, and committed for trial--jail, house
of detention, and penitentiary; and they may be surprised to learn here
that it involves all our criminal procedure, of which a clear and brief
outline will presently be sketched, as much for their information as for
the elucidation of this history. However, when it is said that the first
van contained Jacques Collin and the second Lucien, who in a few hours
had fallen from the summit of social splendor to the depths of a prison
cell, curiosity will for the moment be satisfied.
The conduct of the two accomplices was characteristic; Lucien de
Rubempre shrank back to avoid the gaze of the passers-by, who looked at
the grated window of the gloomy and fateful vehicle on its road along
the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Rue du Martroi to reach the quay and the
Arch of Saint-Jean, the way, at that time, across the Place de l’Hotel
de Ville. This archway now forms the entrance gate to the residence of
the Prefet de la Seine in the huge municipal palace. The daring convict,
on the contrary, stuck his face against the barred grating, between
the officer and the gendarme, who, sure of their van, were chatting
together.
The great days of July 1830, and the tremendous storm that then burst,
have so completely wiped out the memory of all previous events, and
politics so entirely absorbed the French during the last six months
of that year, that no one remembers--or a few scarcely remember--the
various private, judicial, and financial catastrophes, strange as they
were, which, forming the annual flood of Parisian curiosity, were not
lacking during the first six months of the year. It is, therefore,
needful to mention how Paris was, for the moment, excited by the news of
the arrest of a Spanish priest, discovered in a courtesan’s house,
and that of the elegant Lucien de Rubempre, who had been engaged to
Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu, taken on the highroad to Italy,
close to the little village of Grez. Both were charged as being
concerned in a murder, of which the profits were stated at seven
millions of francs; and for some days the scandal of this trial
preponderated over the absorbing importance of the last elections held
under Charles X.
In the first place, the charge had been based on an application by the
Baron de Nucingen; then, Lucien’s apprehension, just as he was about to
be appointed private secretary to the Prime Minister, made a stir in
the very highest circles of society. In every drawing-room in Paris
more than one young man could recollect having envied Lucien when he
was honored by the notice of the beautiful Duchesse de Maufrigneuse; and
every woman knew that he was the favored attache of Madame de Serizy,
the wife of one of the Government bigwigs. And finally, his handsome
person gave him a singular notoriety in the various worlds that make
up Paris--the world of fashion, the financial world, the world of
courtesans, the young men’s world, the literary world. So for two days
past all Paris had been talking of these two arrests. The examining
judge in whose hands the case was put regarded it as a chance for
promotion; and, to proceed with the utmost rapidity, he had given
orders that both the accused should be transferred from La Force to
the Conciergerie as soon as Lucien de Rubempre could be brought from
Fontainebleau.
As the Abbe Carlos had spent but twelve hours in La Force, and Lucien
only half a night, it is useless to describe that prison, which
has since been entirely remodeled; and as to the details of their
consignment, it would be only a repetition of the same story at the
Conciergerie.
But before setting forth the terrible drama of a criminal inquiry, it
is indispensable, as I have said, that an account should be given of the
ordinary proceedings in a case of this kind. To begin with, its various
phases will be better understood at home and abroad, and, besides, those
who are ignorant of the action of the criminal law, as conceived of by
the lawgivers under Napoleon, will appreciate it better. This is all the
more important as, at this moment, this great and noble institution is
in danger of destruction by the system known as penitentiary.
A crime is committed; if it is flagrant, the persons incriminated
(inculpes) are taken to the nearest lock-up and placed in the cell known
to the vulgar as the Violon--perhaps because they make a noise there,
shrieking or crying. From thence the suspected persons (inculpes)
are taken before the police commissioner or magistrate, who holds a
preliminary inquiry, and can dismiss the case if there is any mistake;
finally, they are conveyed to the Depot of the Prefecture, where the
police detains them pending the convenience of the public prosecutor and
the examining judge. They, being served with due notice, more or less
quickly, according to the gravity of the case, come and examine the
prisoners who are still provisionally detained. Having due regard to
the presumptive evidence, the examining judge then issues a warrant for
their imprisonment, and sends the suspected persons to be confined in
a jail. There are three such jails (Maisons d’Arret) in
Paris--Sainte-Pelagie, La Force, and les Madelonettes.
Observe the word inculpe, incriminated, or suspected of crime. The
French Code has created three essential degrees of criminality--inculpe,
first degree of suspicion; prevenu, under examination; accuse, fully
committed for trial. So long as the warrant for committal remains
unsigned, the supposed criminal is regarded as merely under suspicion,
inculpe of the crime or felony; when the warrant has been issued, he
becomes “the accused” (prevenu), and is regarded as such so long as the
inquiry is proceeding; when the inquiry is closed, and as soon as the
Court has decided that the accused is to be committed for trial, he
becomes “the prisoner at the bar” (accuse) as soon as the superior
court, at the instance of the public prosecutor, has pronounced that the
charge is so far proved as to be carried to the Assizes.
Thus, persons suspected of crime go through three different stages,
three siftings, before coming up for trial before the judges of the
upper Court--the High Justice of the realm.
At the first stage, innocent persons have abundant means of exculpating
themselves--the public, the town watch, the police. At the second state
they appear before a magistrate face to face with the witnesses, and
are judged by a tribunal in Paris, or by the Collective Court of the
departments. At the third stage they are brought before a bench of
twelve councillors, and in case of any error or informality the prisoner
committed for trial at the Assizes may appeal for protection to the
Supreme court. The jury do not know what a slap in the face they give
to popular authority, to administrative and judicial functionaries, when
they acquit a prisoner. And so, in my opinion, it is hardly possible
that an innocent man should ever find himself at the bar of an Assize
Court in Paris--I say nothing of other seats of justice.
The detenu is the convict. French criminal law recognizes imprisonment
of three degrees, corresponding in legal distinction to these three
degrees of suspicion, inquiry, and conviction. Mere imprisonment is a
light penalty for misdemeanor, but detention is imprisonment with hard
labor, a severe and sometimes degrading punishment. Hence, those persons
who nowadays are in favor of the penitentiary system would upset an
admirable scheme of criminal law in which the penalties are judiciously
graduated, and they will end by punishing the lightest peccadilloes as
severely as the greatest crimes.
The reader may compare in the _Scenes of Political Life_ (for instance,
in Une Tenebreuse affaire) the curious differences subsisting between
the criminal law of Brumaire in the year IV., and that of the Code
Napoleon which has taken its place.
In most trials, as in this one, the suspected persons are at once
examined (and from inculpes become prevenus); justice immediately issues
a warrant for their arrest and imprisonment. In point of fact, in most
of such cases the criminals have either fled, or have been instantly
apprehended. Indeed, as we have seen the police, which is but an
instrument, and the officers of justice had descended on Esther’s house
with the swiftness of a thunderbolt. Even if there had not been the
reasons for revenge suggested to the superior police by Corentin, there
was a robbery to be investigated of seven hundred and fifty thousand
francs from the Baron de Nucingen.
Just as the first prison van, conveying Jacques Collin, reached
the archway of Saint-Jean--a narrow, dark passage, some block ahead
compelled the postilion to stop under the vault. The prisoner’s eyes
shone like carbuncles through the grating, in spite of his aspect as of
a dying man, which, the day before, had led the governor of La Force to
believe that the doctor must be called in. These flaming eyes, free to
rove at this moment, for neither the officer nor the gendarme looked
round at their “customer,” spoke so plain a language that a clever
examining judge, M. Popinot, for instance, would have identified the man
convicted for sacrilege.
In fact, ever since the “salad-basket” had turned out of the gate of La
Force, Jacques Collin had studied everything on his way. Notwithstanding
the pace they had made, he took in the houses with an eager and
comprehensive glance from the ground floor to the attics. He saw and
noted every passer-by. God Himself is not more clear-seeing as to the
means and ends of His creatures than this man in observing the slightest
differences in the medley of things and people. Armed with hope, as
the last of the Horatii was armed with his sword, he expected help. To
anybody but this Machiavelli of the hulks, this hope would have
seemed so absolutely impossible to realize that he would have gone
on mechanically, as all guilty men do. Not one of them ever dreams of
resistance when he finds himself in the position to which justice and
the Paris police bring suspected persons, especially those who, like
Collin and Lucien, are in solitary confinement.
It is impossible to conceive of the sudden isolation in which a
suspected criminal is placed. The gendarmes who apprehend him, the
commissioner who questions him, those who take him to prison, the
warders who lead him to his cell--which is actually called a cachot, a
dungeon or hiding-place, those again who take him by the arms to put him
into a prison-van--every being that comes near him from the moment of
his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all he says, to be
repeated to the police or to the judge. This total severance, so simply
effected between the prisoner and the world, gives rise to a complete
overthrow of his faculties and a terrible prostration of mind,
especially when the man has not been familiarized by his antecedents
with the processes of justice. The duel between the judge and the
criminal is all the more appalling because justice has on its side the
dumbness of blank walls and the incorruptible coldness of its agents.
But Jacques Collin, or Carlos Herrera--it will be necessary to speak of
him by one or the other of these names according to the circumstances of
the case--had long been familiar with the methods of the police, of
the jail, and of justice. This colossus of cunning and corruption had
employed all his powers of mind, and all the resources of mimicry, to
affect the surprise and anility of an innocent man, while giving the
lawyers the spectacle of his sufferings. As has been told, Asie, that
skilled Locusta, had given him a dose of poison so qualified as to
produce the effects of a dreadful illness.
Thus Monsieur Camusot, the police commissioner, and the public
prosecutor had been baffled in their proceedings and inquiries by the
effects apparently of an apoplectic attack.
“He has taken poison!” cried Monsieur Camusot, horrified by the
sufferings of the self-styled priest when he had been carried down from
the attic writhing in convulsions.
Four constables had with great difficulty brought the Abbe Carlos
downstairs to Esther’s room, where the lawyers and the gendarmes were
assembled.
“That was the best thing he could do if he should be guilty,” replied
the public prosecutor.
“Do you believe that he is ill?” the police commissioner asked.
The police is always incredulous.
The three lawyers had spoken, as may be imagined, in a whisper;
but Jacques Collin had guessed from their faces the subject under
discussion, and had taken advantage of it to make the first brief
examination which is gone through on arrest absolutely impossible and
useless; he had stammered out sentences in which Spanish and French were
so mingled as to make nonsense.
At La Force this farce had been all the more successful in the first
instance because the head of the “safety” force--an abbreviation of
the title “Head of the brigade of the guardians of public
safety”--Bibi-Lupin, who had long since taken Jacques Collin into
custody at Madame Vauquer’s boarding-house, had been sent on special
business into the country, and his deputy was a man who hoped to succeed
him, but to whom the convict was unknown.
Bibi-Lupin, himself formerly a convict, and a comrade of Jacques
Collin’s on the hulks, was his personal enemy. This hostility had its
rise in quarrels in which Jacques Collin had always got the upper hand,
and in the supremacy over his fellow-prisoners which _Trompe-la-Mort_
had always assumed. And then, for ten years now, Jacques Collin had been
the ruling providence of released convicts in Paris, their head, their
adviser, and their banker, and consequently Bibi-Lupin’s antagonist.
Thus, though placed in solitary confinement, he trusted to the
intelligent and unreserved devotion of Asie, his right hand, and
perhaps, too, to Paccard, his left hand, who, as he flattered himself,
might return to his allegiance when once that thrifty subaltern had
safely bestowed the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs that he had
stolen. This was the reason why his attention had been so superhumanly
alert all along the road. And, strange to say! his hopes were about to
be amply fulfilled.
The two solid side-walls of the archway were covered, to a height of
six feet, with a permanent dado of mud formed of the splashes from the
gutter; for, in those days, the foot passenger had no protection from
the constant traffic of vehicles and from what was called the kicking of
the carts, but curbstones placed upright at intervals, and much ground
away by the naves of the wheels. More than once a heavy truck had
crushed a heedless foot-passenger under that arch-way. Such indeed Paris
remained in many districts and till long after. This circumstance may
give some idea of the narrowness of the Saint-Jean gate and the ease
with which it could be blocked. If a cab should be coming through from
the Place de Greve while a costermonger-woman was pushing her little
truck of apples in from the Rue du Martroi, a third vehicle of any kind
produced difficulties. The foot-passengers fled in alarm, seeking a
corner-stone to protect them from the old-fashioned axles, which had
attained such prominence that a law was passed at last to reduce their
length.
When the prison van came in, this passage was blocked by a market woman
with a costermonger’s vegetable cart--one of a type which is all the
more strange because specimens still exist in Paris in spite of the
increasing number of green-grocers’ shops. She was so thoroughly a
street hawker that a Sergeant de Ville, if that particular class of
police had been then in existence, would have allowed her to ply her
trade without inspecting her permit, in spite of a sinister countenance
that reeked of crime. Her head, wrapped in a cheap and ragged checked
cotton kerchief, was horrid with rebellious locks of hair, like the
bristles of a wild boar. Her red and wrinkled neck was disgusting, and
her little shawl failed entirely to conceal a chest tanned brown by the
sun, dust, and mud. Her gown was patchwork; her shoes gaped as though
they were grinning at a face as full of holes as the gown. And what an
apron! a plaster would have been less filthy. This moving and fetid rag
must have stunk in the nostrils of dainty folks ten yards away. Those
hands had gleaned a hundred harvest fields. Either the woman had
returned from a German witches’ Sabbath, or she had come out of a
mendicity asylum. But what eyes! what audacious intelligence, what
repressed vitality when the magnetic flash of her look and of Jacques
Collin’s met to exchange a thought!
“Get out of the way, you old vermin-trap!” cried the postilion in harsh
tones.
“Mind you don’t crush me, you hangman’s apprentice!” she retorted. “Your
cartful is not worth as much as mine.”
And by trying to squeeze in between two corner-stones to make way, the
hawker managed to block the passage long enough to achieve her purpose.
“Oh! Asie!” said Jacques Collin to himself, at once recognizing his
accomplice. “Then all is well.”
The post-boy was still exchanging amenities with Asie, and vehicles were
collecting in the Rue du Martroi.
“Look out, there--Pecaire fermati. Souni la--Vedrem,” shrieked old Asie,
with the Red-Indian intonations peculiar to these female costermongers,
who disfigure their words in such a way that they are transformed into a
sort onomatopoeia incomprehensible to any but Parisians.
In the confusion in the alley, and among the outcries of all the waiting
drivers, no one paid any heed to this wild yell, which might have been
the woman’s usual cry. But this gibberish, intelligible to Jacques
Collin, sent to his ear in a mongrel language of their own--a mixture of
bad Italian and Provencal--this important news:
“Your poor boy is nabbed. I am here to keep an eye on you. We shall meet
again.”
In the midst of his joy at having thus triumphed over the police, for
he hoped to be able to keep up communications, Jacques Collin had a blow
which might have killed any other man.
“Lucien in custody!” said he to himself.
He almost fainted. This news was to him more terrible than the rejection
of his appeal could have been if he had been condemned to death.
Now that both the prison vans are rolling along the Quai, the interest
of this story requires that I should add a few words about the
Conciergerie, while they are making their way thither. The Conciergerie,
a historical name--a terrible name,--a still more terrible thing, is
inseparable from the Revolutions of France, and especially those of
Paris. It has known most of our great criminals. But if it is the most
interesting of the buildings of Paris, it is also the least known--least
known to persons of the upper classes; still, in spite of the interest
of this historical digression, it should be as short as the journey of
the prison vans.
What Parisian, what foreigner, or what provincial can have failed to
observe the gloomy and mysterious features of the Quai des Lunettes--a
structure of black walls flanked by three round towers with conical
roofs, two of them almost touching each other? This quay, beginning at
the Pont du Change, ends at the Pont Neuf. A square tower--the Clock
Tower, or Tour de l’Horloge, whence the signal was given for the
massacre of Saint-Bartholomew--a tower almost as tall as that of
Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie, shows where the Palais de Justice stands,
and forms the corner of the quay.
These four towers and these walls are shrouded in the black winding
sheet which, in Paris, falls on every facade to the north. About
half-way along the quay at a gloomy archway we see the beginning of the
private houses which were built in consequence of the construction of
the Pont Neuf in the reign of Henry IV. The Place Royale was a replica
of the Place Dauphine. The style of architecture is the same, of brick
with binding courses of hewn stone. This archway and the Rue de Harlay
are the limit line of the Palais de Justice on the west. Formerly the
Prefecture de Police, once the residence of the Presidents of Parlement,
was a dependency of the Palace. The Court of Exchequer and Court of
Subsidies completed the Supreme Court of Justice, the Sovereign’s Court.
It will be seen that before the Revolution the Palace enjoyed that
isolation which now again is aimed at.
This block, this island of residences and official buildings, in
their midst the Sainte-Chapelle--that priceless jewel of Saint-Louis’
chaplet--is the sanctuary of Paris, its holy place, its sacred ark.
For one thing, this island was at first the whole of the city, for the
plot now forming the Place Dauphine was a meadow attached to the Royal
demesne, where stood a stamping mill for coining money. Hence the name
of Rue de la Monnaie--the street leading to the Pont Neuf. Hence, too,
the name of one of the round towers--the middle one--called the Tour
d’Argent, which would seem to show that money was originally coined
there. The famous mill, to be seen marked in old maps of Paris, may very
likely be more recent than the time when money was coined in the Palace
itself, and was erected, no doubt, for the practice of improved methods
in the art of coining.
The first tower, hardly detached from the Tour d’Argent, is the Tour
de Montgomery; the third, and smallest, but the best preserved of the
three, for it still has its battlements, is the Tour Bonbec.
The Sainte-Chapelle and its four towers--counting the clock tower as
one--clearly define the precincts; or, as a surveyor would say, the
perimeter of the Palace, as it was from the time of the Merovingians
till the accession of the first race of Valois; but to us, as a result
of certain alterations, this Palace is more especially representative of
the period of Saint-Louis.
Charles V. was the first to give the Palace up to the Parlement, then a
new institution, and went to reside in the famous Hotel Saint-Pol,
under the protection of the Bastille. The Palais des Tournelles was
subsequently erected backing on to the Hotel Saint-Pol. Thus, under the
later Valois, the kings came back from the Bastille to the Louvre, which
had been their first stronghold.
The original residence of the French kings, the Palace of Saint-Louis,
which has preserved the designation of Le Palais, to indicate the Palace
of palaces, is entirely buried under the Palais de Justice; it forms the
cellars, for it was built, like the Cathedral, in the Seine, and with
such care that the highest floods in the river scarcely cover the lowest
steps. The Quai de l’Horloge covers, twenty feet below the surface, its
foundations of a thousand years old. Carriages run on the level of the
capitals of the solid columns under these towers, and formerly their
appearance must have harmonized with the elegance of the Palace, and
have had a picturesque effect over the water, since to this day those
towers vie in height with the loftiest buildings in Paris.
As we look down on this vast capital from the lantern of the Pantheon,
the Palace with the Sainte-Chapelle is still the most monumental of many
monumental buildings. The home of our kings, over which you tread as you
pace the immense hall known as the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_, was a miracle
of architecture; and it is so still to the intelligent eye of the poet
who happens to study it when inspecting the Conciergerie. Alas! for the
Conciergerie has invaded the home of kings. One’s heart bleeds to see
the way in which cells, cupboards, corridors, warders’ rooms, and halls
devoid of light or air, have been hewn out of that beautiful structure
in which Byzantine, Gothic, and Romanesque--the three phases of ancient
art--were harmonized in one building by the architecture of the twelfth
century.
This palace is a monumental history of France in the earliest times,
just as Blois is that of a later period. As at Blois you may admire in a
single courtyard the chateau of the Counts of Blois, that of Louis XII.,
that of Francis I., that of Gaston; so at the Conciergerie you will
find within the same precincts the stamp of the early races, and, in the
Sainte-Chapelle, the architecture of Saint-Louis.
Municipal Council (to you I speak), if you bestow millions, get a poet
or two to assist your architects if you wish to save the cradle of
Paris, the cradle of kings, while endeavoring to endow Paris and the
Supreme Court with a palace worthy of France. It is a matter for study
for some years before beginning the work. Another new prison or two like
that of La Roquette, and the palace of Saint-Louis will be safe.
In these days many grievances afflict this vast mass of buildings,
buried under the Palais de Justice and the quay, like some antediluvian
creature in the soil of Montmartre; but the worst affliction is that it
is the Conciergerie. This epigram is intelligible. In the early days of
the monarchy, noble criminals--for the villeins (a word signifying the
peasantry in French and English alike) and the citizens came under the
jurisdiction of the municipality or of their liege lord--the lords
of the greater or the lesser fiefs, were brought before the king and
guarded in the Conciergerie. And as these noble criminals were few, the
Conciergerie was large enough for the king’s prisoners.
It is difficult now to be quite certain of the exact site of the
original Conciergerie. However, the kitchens built by Saint-Louis still
exist, forming what is now called the mousetrap; and it is probable that
the original Conciergerie was situated in the place where, till 1825,
the Conciergerie prisons of the Parlement were still in use, under the
archway to the right of the wide outside steps leading to the supreme
Court. From thence, until 1825, condemned criminals were taken to
execution. From that gate came forth all the great criminals, all the
victims of political feeling--the Marechale d’Ancre and the Queen of
France, Semblancay and Malesherbes, Damien and Danton, Desrues and
Castaing. Fouquier-Tinville’s private room, like that of the public
prosecutor now, was so placed that he could see the procession of carts
containing the persons whom the Revolutionary tribunal had sentenced to
death. Thus this man, who had become a sword, could give a last glance
at each batch.
After 1825, when Monsieur de Peyronnet was Minister, a great change
was made in the Palais. The old entrance to the Conciergerie, where
the ceremonies of registering the criminal and of the last toilet were
performed, was closed and removed to where it now is, between the Tour
de l’Horloge and the Tour de Montgomery, in an inner court entered
through an arched passage. To the left is the “mousetrap,” to the right
the prison gates. The “salad-baskets” can drive into this irregularly
shaped courtyard, can stand there and turn with ease, and in case of a
riot find some protection behind the strong grating of the gate under
the arch; whereas they formerly had no room to move in the narrow space
dividing the outside steps from the right wing of the palace.
In our day the Conciergerie, hardly large enough for the prisoners
committed for trial--room being needed for about three hundred, men
and women--no longer receives either suspected or remanded criminals
excepting in rare cases, as, for instance, in these of Jacques Collin
and Lucien. All who are imprisoned there are committed for trial before
the Bench. As an exception criminals of the higher ranks are allowed
to sojourn there, since, being already disgraced by a sentence in open
court, their punishment would be too severe if they served their term of
imprisonment at Melun or at Poissy. Ouvrard preferred to be imprisoned
at the Conciergerie rather than at Sainte-Pelagie. At this moment of
writing Lehon the notary and the Prince de Bergues are serving their
time there by an exercise of leniency which, though arbitrary, is
humane.
As a rule, suspected criminals, whether they are to be subjected to a
preliminary examination--to “go up,” in the slang of the Courts--or
to appear before the magistrate of the lower Court, are transferred in
prison vans direct to the “mousetraps.”
The “mousetraps,” opposite the gate, consist of a certain number of old
cells constructed in the old kitchens of Saint-Louis’ building, whither
prisoners not yet fully committed are brought to await the hour when the
Court sits, or the arrival of the examining judge. The “mousetraps”
end on the north at the quay, on the east at the headquarters of the
Municipal Guard, on the west at the courtyard of the Conciergerie, and
on the south they adjoin a large vaulted hall, formerly, no doubt, the
banqueting-room, but at present disused.
Above the “mousetraps” is an inner guardroom with a window commanding
the court of the Conciergerie; this is used by the gendarmerie of the
department, and the stairs lead up to it. When the hour of trial strikes
the sheriffs call the roll of the prisoners, the gendarmes go down, one
for each prisoner, and each gendarme takes a criminal by the arm; and
thus, in couples, they mount the stairs, cross the guardroom, and are
led along the passages to a room contiguous to the hall where sits the
famous sixth chamber of the law (whose functions are those of an English
county court). The same road is trodden by the prisoners committed for
trial on their way to and from the Conciergerie and the Assize Court.
In the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_, between the door into the first court of
the inferior class and the steps leading to the sixth, the visitor must
observe the first time he goes there a doorway without a door or any
architectural adornment, a square hole of the meanest type. Through this
the judges and barristers find their way into the passages, into the
guardhouse, down into the prison cells, and to the entrance to the
Conciergerie.
The private chambers of all the examining judges are on different floors
in this part of the building. They are reached by squalid staircases,
a maze in which those to whom the place is unfamiliar inevitably lose
themselves. The windows of some look out on the quay, others on the yard
of the Conciergerie. In 1830 a few of these rooms commanded the Rue de
la Barillerie.
Thus, when a prison van turns to the left in this yard, it has brought
prisoners to be examined to the “mousetrap”; when it turns to the right,
it conveys prisoners committed for trial, to the Conciergerie. Now it
was to the right that the vehicle turned which conveyed Jacques Collin
to set him down at the prison gate. Nothing can be more sinister.
Prisoners and visitors see two barred gates of wrought iron, with a
space between them of about six feet. These are never both opened at
once, and through them everything is so cautiously scrutinized that
persons who have a visiting ticket pass the permit through the bars
before the key grinds in the lock. The examining judges, or even the
supreme judges, are not admitted without being identified. Imagine,
then, the chances of communications or escape!--The governor of the
Conciergerie would smile with an expression on his lips that would
freeze the mere suggestion in the most daring of romancers who defy
probability.
In all the annals of the Conciergerie no escape has been known but
that of Lavalette; but the certain fact of august connivance, now amply
proven, if it does not detract from the wife’s devotion, certainly
diminished the risk of failure.
The most ardent lover of the marvelous, judging on the spot of the
nature of the difficulties, must admit that at all times the obstacles
must have been, as they still are, insurmountable. No words can do
justice to the strength of the walls and vaulting; they must be seen.
Though the pavement of the yard is on a lower level than that of the
quay, in crossing this Barbican you go down several steps to enter an
immense vaulted hall, with solid walls graced with magnificent columns.
This hall abuts on the Tour de Montgomery--which is now part of the
governor’s residence--and on the Tour d’Argent, serving as a dormitory
for the warders, or porters, or turnkeys, as you may prefer to call
them. The number of the officials is less than might be supposed; there
are but twenty; their sleeping quarters, like their beds, are in no
respect different from those of the _pistoles_ or private cells. The
name _pistole_ originated, no doubt, in the fact that the prisoners
formerly paid a pistole (about ten francs) a week for this
accommodation, its bareness resembling that of the empty garrets in
which great men in poverty begin their career in Paris.
To the left, in the vast entrance hall, sits the Governor of the
Conciergerie, in a sort of office constructed of glass panes, where
he and his clerk keep the prison-registers. Here the prisoners for
examination, or committed for trial, have their names entered with a
full description, and are then searched. The question of their lodging
is also settled, this depending on the prisoner’s means.
Opposite the entrance to this hall there is a glass door. This opens
into a parlor where the prisoner’s relations and his counsel may speak
with him across a double grating of wood. The parlor window opens on
to the prison yard, the inner court where prisoners committed for trial
take air and exercise at certain fixed hours.
This large hall, only lighted by the doubtful daylight that comes in
through the gates--for the single window to the front court is screened
by the glass office built out in front of it--has an atmosphere and
a gloom that strike the eye in perfect harmony with the pictures that
force themselves on the imagination. Its aspect is all the more sinister
because, parallel with the Tours d’Argent and de Montgomery, you
discover those mysterious vaulted and overwhelming crypts which lead to
the cells occupied by the Queen and Madame Elizabeth, and to those known
as the secret cells. This maze of masonry, after being of old the scene
of royal festivities, is now the basement of the Palais de Justice.
Between 1825 and 1832 the operation of the last toilet was performed in
this enormous hall, between a large stove which heats it and the inner
gate. It is impossible even now to tread without a shudder on the paved
floor that has received the shock and the confidences of so many last
glances.
The apparently dying victim on this occasion could not get out of the
horrible vehicle without the assistance of two gendarmes, who took him
under the arms to support him, and led him half unconscious into the
office. Thus dragged along, the dying man raised his eyes to heaven in
such a way as to suggest a resemblance to the Saviour taken down
from the Cross. And certainly in no picture does Jesus present a more
cadaverous or tortured countenance than this of the sham Spaniard; he
looked ready to breathe his last sigh. As soon as he was seated in the
office, he repeated in a weak voice the speech he had made to everybody
since he was arrested:
“I appeal to His Excellency the Spanish Ambassador.”
“You can say that to the examining judge,” replied the Governor.
“Oh Lord!” said Jacques Collin, with a sigh. “But cannot I have a
breviary! Shall I never be allowed to see a doctor? I have not two hours
to live.”
As Carlos Herrera was to be placed in close confinement in the secret
cells, it was needless to ask him whether he claimed the benefits of the
pistole (as above described), that is to say, the right of having one
of the rooms where the prisoner enjoys such comfort as the law permits.
These rooms are on the other side of the prison-yard, of which mention
will presently be made. The sheriff and the clerk calmly carried out the
formalities of the consignment to prison.
“Monsieur,” said Jacques Collin to the Governor in broken French, “I am,
as you see, a dying man. Pray, if you can, tell that examining judge
as soon as possible that I crave as a favor what a criminal must most
dread, namely, to be brought before him as soon as he arrives; for my
sufferings are really unbearable, and as soon as I see him the mistake
will be cleared up----”
As an universal rule every criminal talks of a mistake. Go to the hulks
and question the convicts; they are almost all victims of a miscarriage
of justice. So this speech raises a faint smile in all who come into
contact with the suspected, accused, or condemned criminal.
“I will mention your request to the examining judge,” replied the
Governor.
“And I shall bless you, monsieur!” replied the false Abbe, raising his
eyes to heaven.
As soon as his name was entered on the calendar, Carlos Herrera,
supported under each arm by a man of the municipal guard, and followed
by a turnkey instructed by the Governor as to the number of the cell in
which the prisoner was to be placed, was led through the subterranean
maze of the Conciergerie into a perfectly wholesome room, whatever
certain philanthropists may say to the contrary, but cut off from all
possible communication with the outer world.
As soon as he was removed, the warders, the Governor, and his clerk
looked at each other as though asking each other’s opinion, and
suspicion was legible on every face; but at the appearance of the second
man in custody the spectators relapsed into their usual doubting
frame of mind, concealed under the air of indifference. Only in very
extraordinary cases do the functionaries of the Conciergerie feel any
curiosity; the prisoners are no more to them than a barber’s customers
are to him. Hence all the formalities which appall the imagination are
carried out with less fuss than a money transaction at a banker’s, and
often with greater civility.
Lucien’s expression was that of a dejected criminal. He submitted to
everything, and obeyed like a machine. All the way from Fontainebleau
the poet had been facing his ruin, and telling himself that the hour of
expiation had tolled. Pale and exhausted, knowing nothing of what had
happened at Esther’s house during his absence, he only knew that he was
the intimate ally of an escaped convict, a situation which enabled him
to guess at disaster worse than death. When his mind could command
a thought, it was that of suicide. He must, at any cost, escape the
ignominy that loomed before him like the phantasm of a dreadful dream.
Jacques Collin, as the more dangerous of the two culprits, was placed
in a cell of solid masonry, deriving its light from one of the narrow
yards, of which there are several in the interior of the Palace, in the
wing where the public prosecutor’s chambers are. This little yard is
the airing-ground for the female prisoners. Lucien was taken to the
same part of the building, to a cell adjoining the rooms let to
misdemeanants; for, by orders from the examining judge, the Governor
treated him with some consideration.
Persons who have never had anything to do with the action of the law
usually have the darkest notions as to the meaning of solitary or secret
confinement. Ideas as to the treatment of criminals have not yet
become disentangled from the old pictures of torture chambers, of the
unhealthiness of a prison, the chill of stone walls sweating tears, the
coarseness of the jailers and of the food--inevitable accessories of
the drama; but it is not unnecessary to explain here that these
exaggerations exist only on the stage, and only make lawyers and judges
smile, as well as those who visit prisons out of curiosity, or who come
to study them.
For a long time, no doubt, they were terrible. In the days of the old
Parlement, of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., the accused were, no doubt,
flung pell-mell into a low room underneath the old gateway. The prisons
were among the crimes of 1789, and it is enough only to see the cells
where the Queen and Madame Elizabeth were incarcerated to conceive a
horror of old judicial proceedings.
In our day, though philanthropy has brought incalculable mischief on
society, it has produced some good for the individual. It is to Napoleon
that we owe our Criminal Code; and this, even more than the Civil
Code--which still urgently needs reform on some points--will remain one
of the greatest monuments of his short reign. This new view of criminal
law put an end to a perfect abyss of misery. Indeed, it may be said
that, apart from the terrible moral torture which men of the better
classes must suffer when they find themselves in the power of the law,
the action of that power is simple and mild to a degree that would
hardly be expected. Suspected or accused criminals are certainly not
lodged as if they were at home; but every necessary is supplied to them
in the prisons of Paris. Besides, the burden of feelings that weighs on
them deprives the details of daily life of their customary value. It
is never the body that suffers. The mind is in such a phase of violence
that every form of discomfort or of brutal treatment, if such there
were, would be easily endured in such a frame of mind. And it must be
admitted that an innocent man is quickly released, especially in Paris.
So Lucien, on entering his cell, saw an exact reproduction of the first
room he had occupied in Paris at the Hotel Cluny. A bed to compare with
those in the worst furnished apartments of the Quartier Latin, straw
chairs with the bottoms out, a table and a few utensils, compose
the furniture of such a room, in which two accused prisoners are not
unfrequently placed together when they are quiet in their ways, and
their misdeeds are not crimes of violence, but such as forgery or
bankruptcy.
This resemblance between his starting-point, in the days of his
innocency, and his goal, the lowest depths of degradation and sham,
was so direct an appeal to his last chord of poetic feeling, that the
unhappy fellow melted into tears. For four hours he wept, as rigid in
appearance as a figure of stone, but enduring the subversion of all his
hopes, the crushing of all his social vanity, and the utter overthrow
of his pride, smarting in each separate _I_ that exists in an ambitious
man--a lover, a success, a dandy, a Parisian, a poet, a libertine, and a
favorite. Everything in him was broken by this fall as of Icarus.
Carlos Herrera, on the other hand, as soon as he was locked into his
cell and found himself alone, began pacing it to and fro like the polar
bear in his cage. He carefully examined the door and assured himself
that, with the exception of the peephole, there was not a crack in it.
He sounded all the walls, he looked up the funnel down which a dim light
came, and he said to himself, “I am safe enough!”
He sat down in a corner where the eye of a prying warder at the grating
of the peephole could not see him. Then he took off his wig, and hastily
ungummed a piece of paper that did duty as lining. The side of the paper
next his head was so greasy that it looked like the very texture of the
wig. If it had occurred to Bibi-Lupin to snatch off the wig to establish
the identity of the Spaniard with Jacques Collin, he would never have
thought twice about the paper, it looked so exactly like part of the
wigmaker’s work. The other side was still fairly white, and clean enough
to have a few lines written on it. The delicate and tiresome task of
unsticking it had been begun in La Force; two hours would not have been
long enough; it had taken him half of the day before. The prisoner began
by tearing this precious scrap of paper so as to have a strip four or
five lines wide, which he divided into several bits; he then replaced
his store of paper in the same strange hiding-place, after damping the
gummed side so as to make it stick again. He felt in a lock of his hair
for one of those pencil leads as thin as a stout pin, then recently
invented by Susse, and which he had put in with some gum; he broke off
a scrap long enough to write with and small enough to hide in his ear.
Having made these preparations with the rapidity and certainty of hand
peculiar to old convicts, who are as light-fingered as monkeys, Jacques
Collin sat down on the edge of his bed to meditate on his instructions
to Asie, in perfect confidence that he should come across her, so
entirely did he rely on the woman’s genius.
“During the preliminary examination,” he reflected, “I pretended to be a
Spaniard and spoke broken French, appealed to my Ambassador, and alleged
diplomatic privilege, not understanding anything I was asked, the
whole performance varied by fainting, pauses, sighs--in short, all
the vagaries of a dying man. I must stick to that. My papers are all
regular. Asie and I can eat up Monsieur Camusot; he is no great shakes!
“Now I must think of Lucien; he must be made to pull himself together. I
must get at the boy at whatever cost, and show him some plan of conduct,
otherwise he will give himself up, give me up, lose all! He must be
taught his lesson before he is examined. And besides, I must find some
witnesses to swear to my being a priest!”
Such was the position, moral and physical, of these two prisoners, whose
fate at the moment depended on Monsieur Camusot, examining judge to
the Inferior Court of the Seine, and sovereign master, during the time
granted to him by the Code, of the smallest details of their existence,
since he alone could grant leave for them to be visited by the
chaplains, the doctor, or any one else in the world.
No human authority--neither the King, nor the Keeper of the Seals, nor
the Prime Minister, can encroach on the power of an examining judge;
nothing can stop him, no one can control him. He is a monarch,
subject only to his conscience and the Law. At the present time,
when philosophers, philanthropists, and politicians are constantly
endeavoring to reduce every social power, the rights conferred on the
examining judges have become the object of attacks that are all the more
serious because they are almost justified by those rights, which, it
must be owned, are enormous. And yet, as every man of sense will own,
that power ought to remain unimpaired; in certain cases, its exercise
can be mitigated by a strong infusion of caution; but society is already
threatened by the ineptitude and weakness of the jury--which is, in
fact, the really supreme bench, and which ought to be composed only of
choice and elected men--and it would be in danger of ruin if this pillar
were broken which now upholds our criminal procedure.
Arrest on suspicion is one of the terrible but necessary powers of which
the risk to society is counterbalanced by its immense importance. And
besides, distrust of the magistracy in general is a beginning of social
dissolution. Destroy that institution, and reconstruct it on another
basis; insist--as was the case before the Revolution--that judges should
show a large guarantee of fortune; but, at any cost, believe in it! Do
not make it an image of society to be insulted!
In these days a judge, paid as a functionary, and generally a poor man,
has in the place of his dignity of old a haughtiness of demeanor that
seems odious to the men raised to be his equals; for haughtiness is
dignity without a solid basis. That is the vicious element in the
present system. If France were divided into ten circuits, the magistracy
might be reinstated by conferring its dignities on men of fortune; but
with six-and-twenty circuits this is impossible.
The only real improvement to be insisted on in the exercise of the power
intrusted to the examining judge, is an alteration in the conditions of
preliminary imprisonment. The mere fact of suspicion ought to make no
difference in the habits of life of the suspected parties. Houses of
detention for them ought to be constructed in Paris, furnished and
arranged in such a way as greatly to modify the feeling of the public
with regard to suspected persons. The law is good, and is necessary; its
application is in fault, and public feeling judges the laws from the
way in which they are carried out. And public opinion in France
condemns persons under suspicion, while, by an inexplicable reaction, it
justifies those committed for trial. This, perhaps, is a result of the
essentially refractory nature of the French.
This illogical temper of the Parisian people was one of the factors
which contributed to the climax of this drama; nay, as may be seen, it
was one of the most important.
To enter into the secret of the terrible scenes which are acted out in
the examining judge’s chambers; to understand the respective positions
of the two belligerent powers, the Law and the examinee, the object
of whose contest is a certain secret kept by the prisoner from the
inquisition of the magistrate--well named in prison slang, “the curious
man”--it must always be remembered that persons imprisoned under
suspicion know nothing of what is being said by the seven or eight
publics that compose _the Public_, nothing of how much the police know,
or the authorities, or the little that newspapers can publish as to the
circumstances of the crime.
Thus, to give a man in custody such information as Jacques Collin had
just received from Asie as to Lucien’s arrest, is throwing a rope to
a drowning man. As will be seen, in consequence of this ignorance, a
stratagem which, without this warning, must certainly have been equally
fatal to the convict, was doomed to failure.
Monsieur Camusot, the son-in-law of one of the clerks of the cabinet,
too well known for any account of his position and connection to be
necessary here, was at this moment almost as much perplexed as Carlos
Herrera in view of the examination he was to conduct. He had formerly
been President of a Court of the Paris circuit; he had been raised from
that position and called to be a judge in Paris--one of the most coveted
posts in the magistracy--by the influence of the celebrated Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse, whose husband, attached to the Dauphin’s person, and
Colonel of a cavalry regiment of the Guards, was as much in favor with
the King as she was with MADAME. In return for a very small service
which he had done the Duchess--an important matter to her--on occasion
of a charge of forgery brought against the young Comte d’Esgrignon by a
banker of Alencon (see _La Cabinet des Antiques_; _Scenes de la vie
de Province_), he was promoted from being a provincial judge to be
president of his Court, and from being president to being an examining
judge in Paris.
For eighteen months now he had sat on the most important Bench in the
kingdom; and had once, at the desire of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse,
had an opportunity of forwarding the ends of a lady not less influential
than the Duchess, namely, the Marquise d’Espard, but he had failed. (See
the _Commission in Lunacy_.)
Lucien, as was told at the beginning of the Scene, to be revenged on
Madame d’Espard, who aimed at depriving her husband of his liberty of
action, was able to put the true facts before the Public Prosecutor and
the Comte de Serizy. These two important authorities being thus won over
to the Marquis d’Espard’s party, his wife had barely escaped the censure
of the Bench by her husband’s generous intervention.
On hearing, yesterday, of Lucien’s arrest, the Marquise d’Espard had
sent her brother-in-law, the Chevalier d’Espard, to see Madame Camusot.
Madame Camusot had set off forthwith to call on the notorious Marquise.
Just before dinner, on her return home, she had called her husband aside
in the bedroom.
“If you can commit that little fop Lucien de Rubempre for trial, and
secure his condemnation,” said she in his ear, “you will be Councillor
to the Supreme Court----”
“How?”
“Madame d’Espard longs to see that poor young man guillotined. I
shivered as I heard what a pretty woman’s hatred can be!”
“Do not meddle in questions of the law,” said Camusot.
“I! meddle!” said she. “If a third person could have heard us, he could
not have guessed what we were talking about. The Marquise and I were as
exquisitely hypocritical to each other as you are to me at this moment.
She began by thanking me for your good offices in her suit, saying
that she was grateful in spite of its having failed. She spoke of the
terrible functions devolved on you by the law, ‘It is fearful to have to
send a man to the scaffold--but as to that man, it would be no more than
justice,’ and so forth. Then she lamented that such a handsome young
fellow, brought to Paris by her cousin, Madame du Chatelet, should have
turned out so badly. ‘That,’ said she, ‘is what bad women like Coralie
and Esther bring young men to when they are corrupt enough to share
their disgraceful profits!’ Next came some fine speeches about charity
and religion! Madame du Chatelet had said that Lucien deserved a
thousand deaths for having half killed his mother and his sister.
“Then she spoke of a vacancy in the Supreme Court--she knows the
Keeper of the Seals. ‘Your husband, madame, has a fine opportunity of
distinguishing himself,’ she said in conclusion--and that is all.”
“We distinguish ourselves every day when we do our duty,” said Camusot.
“You will go far if you are always the lawyer even to your wife,” cried
Madame Camusot. “Well, I used to think you a goose. Now I admire you.”
The lawyer’s lips wore one of those smiles which are as peculiar to them
as dancers’ smiles are to dancers.
“Madame, can I come in?” said the maid.
“What is it?” said her mistress.
“Madame, the head lady’s-maid came from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse
while you were out, and she will be obliged if you would go at once to
the Hotel de Cadignan.”
“Keep dinner back,” said the lawyer’s wife, remembering that the driver
of the hackney coach that had brought her home was waiting to be paid.
She put her bonnet on again, got into the coach, and in twenty minutes
was at the Hotel de Cadignan. Madame Camusot was led up the private
stairs, and sat alone for ten minutes in a boudoir adjoining the
Duchess’ bedroom. The Duchess presently appeared, splendidly dressed,
for she was starting for Saint-Cloud in obedience to a Royal invitation.
“Between you and me, my dear, a few words are enough.”
“Yes, Madame la Duchesse.”
“Lucien de Rubempre is in custody, your husband is conducting the
inquiry; I will answer for the poor boy’s innocence; see that he is
released within twenty-four hours.--This is not all. Some one will ask
to-morrow to see Lucien in private in his cell; your husband may be
present if he chooses, so long as he is not discovered. The King looks
for high courage in his magistrates in the difficult position in which
he will presently find himself; I will bring your husband forward, and
recommend him as a man devoted to the King even at the risk of his
head. Our friend Camusot will be made first a councillor, and then the
President of Court somewhere or other.--Good-bye.--I am under orders,
you will excuse me, I know?
“You will not only oblige the public prosecutor, who cannot give an
opinion in this affair; you will save the life of a dying woman, Madame
de Serizy. So you will not lack support.
“In short, you see, I put my trust in you, I need not say--you know----”
She laid a finger to her lips and disappeared.
“And I had not a chance of telling her that Madame d’Espard wants to see
Lucien on the scaffold!” thought the judge’s wife as she returned to her
hackney cab.
She got home in such a state of anxiety that her husband, on seeing her,
asked:
“What is the matter, Amelie?”
“We stand between two fires.”
She told her husband of her interview with the Duchess, speaking in his
ear for fear the maid should be listening at the door.
“Now, which of them has the most power?” she said in conclusion. “The
Marquise was very near getting you into trouble in the silly business of
the commission on her husband, and we owe everything to the Duchess.
“One made vague promises, while the other tells you you shall first be
Councillor and then President.--Heaven forbid I should advise you; I
will never meddle in matters of business; still, I am bound to repeat
exactly what is said at Court and what goes on----”
“But, Amelie, you do not know what the Prefet of police sent me this
morning, and by whom? By one of the most important agents of the
superior police, the Bibi-Lupin of politics, who told me that the
Government had a secret interest in this trial.--Now let us dine and go
to the Varietes. We will talk all this over to-night in my private room,
for I shall need your intelligence; that of a judge may not perhaps be
enough----”
Nine magistrates out of ten would deny the influence of the wife over
her husband in such cases; but though this may be a remarkable exception
in society, it may be insisted on as true, even if improbable. The
magistrate is like the priest, especially in Paris, where the best of
the profession are to be found; he rarely speaks of his business in
the Courts, excepting of settled cases. Not only do magistrates’
wives affect to know nothing; they have enough sense of propriety to
understand that it would damage their husbands if, when they are told
some secret, they allowed their knowledge to be suspected.
Nevertheless, on some great occasions, when promotion depends on the
decision taken, many a wife, like Amelie, has helped the lawyer in his
study of a case. And, after all, these exceptions, which, of course, are
easily denied, since they remain unknown, depend entirely on the way in
which the struggle between two natures has worked out in home-life. Now,
Madame Camusot controlled her husband completely.
When all in the house were asleep, the lawyer and his wife sat down to
the desk, where the magistrate had already laid out the documents in the
case.
“Here are the notes, forwarded to me, at my request, by the Prefet of
police,” said Camusot.
“_The Abbe Carlos Herrera_.
“This individual is undoubtedly the man named Jacques Collin,
known as _Trompe-la-Mort_, who was last arrested in 1819, in the
dwelling-house of a certain Madame Vauquer, who kept a common
boarding-house in the Rue Nueve-Sainte-Genevieve, where he lived
in concealment under the alias of Vautrin.”
A marginal note in the Prefet’s handwriting ran thus:
“Orders have been sent by telegraph to Bibi-Lupin, chief of the
Safety department, to return forthwith, to be confronted with the
prisoner, as he is personally acquainted with Jacques Collin, whom
he, in fact, arrested in 1819 with the connivance of a
Mademoiselle Michonneau.
“The boarders who then lived in the Maison Vauquer are still
living, and may be called to establish his identity.
“The self-styled Carlos Herrera is Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre’s
intimate friend and adviser, and for three years past has
furnished him with considerable sums, evidently obtained by
dishonest means.
“This partnership, if the identity of the Spaniard with Jacques
Collin can be proved, must involve the condemnation of Lucien de
Rubempre.
“The sudden death of Peyrade, the police agent, is attributable to
poison administered at the instigation of Jacques Collin,
Rubempre, or their accomplices. The reason for this murder is the
fact that justice had for a long time been on the traces of these
clever criminals.”
And again, on the margin, the magistrate pointed to this note written by
the Prefet himself:
“This is the fact to my personal knowledge; and I also know that
the Sieur Lucien de Rubempre has disgracefully tricked the Comte
de Serizy and the Public Prosecutor.”
“What do you say to this, Amelie?”
“It is frightful!” repled his wife. “Go on.”
“The transformation of the convict Jacques Collin into a Spanish priest
is the result of some crime more clever than that by which Coignard made
himself Comte de Sainte-Helene.”
“_Lucien de Rubempre_.
“Lucien Chardon, son of an apothecary at Angouleme--his mother a
Demoiselle de Rubempre--bears the name of Rubempre in virtue of a
royal patent. This was granted by the request of Madame la
Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Monsieur le Comte de Serizy.
“This young man came to Paris in 182... without any means of
subsistence, following Madame la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, then
Madame de Bargeton, a cousin of Madame d’Espard’s.
“He was ungrateful to Madame de Bargeton, and cohabited with a
girl named Coralie, an actress at the Gymnase, now dead, who left
Monsieur Camusot, a silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, to
live with Rubempre.
“Ere long, having sunk into poverty through the insufficiency of
the money allowed him by this actress, he seriously compromised
his brother-in-law, a highly respected printer of Angouleme, by
giving forged bills, for which David Sechard was arrested, during
a short visit paid to Angouleme by Lucien. In consequence of this
affair Rubempre fled, but suddenly reappeared in Paris with the
Abbe Carlos Herrera.
“Though having no visible means of subsistence, the said Lucien de
Rubempre spent on an average three hundred thousand francs during
the three years of his second residence in Paris, and can only
have obtained the money from the self-styled Abbe Carlos Herrera
--but how did he come by it?
“He has recently laid out above a million francs in repurchasing
the Rubempre estates to fulfil the conditions on which he was to
be allowed to marry Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu. This
marriage has been broken off in consequence of inquiries made by
the Grandlieu family, the said Lucien having told them that he had
obtained the money from his brother-in-law and his sister; but the
information obtained, more especially by Monsieur Derville,
attorney-at-law, proves that not only were that worthy couple
ignorant of his having made this purchase, but that they believed
the said Lucien to be deeply in debt.
“Moreover, the property inherited by the Sechards consists of
houses; and the ready money, by their affidavit, amounted to about
two hundred thousand francs.
“Lucien was secretly cohabiting with Esther Gobseck; hence there
can be no doubt that all the lavish gifts of the Baron de
Nucingen, the girl’s protector, were handed over to the said
Lucien.
“Lucien and his companion, the convict, have succeeded in keeping
their footing in the face of the world longer than Coignard did,
deriving their income from the prostitution of the said Esther,
formerly on the register of the town.”
Though these notes are to a great extent a repetition of the story
already told, it was necessary to reproduce them to show the part
played by the police in Paris. As has already been seen from the note on
Peyrade, the police has summaries, almost invariably correct, concerning
every family or individual whose life is under suspicion, or whose
actions are of a doubtful character. It knows every circumstance of
their delinquencies. This universal register and account of consciences
is as accurately kept as the register of the Bank of France and its
accounts of fortunes. Just as the Bank notes the slightest delay in
payment, gauges every credit, takes stock of every capitalist, and
watches their proceedings, so does the police weigh and measure the
honesty of each citizen. With it, as in a Court of Law, innocence has
nothing to fear; it has no hold on anything but crime.
However high the rank of a family, it cannot evade this social
providence.
And its discretion is equal to the extent of its power. This vast
mass of written evidence compiled by the police--reports, notes, and
summaries--an ocean of information, sleeps undisturbed, as deep and
calm as the sea. Some accident occurs, some crime or misdemeanor becomes
aggressive,--then the law refers to the police, and immediately, if any
documents bear on the suspected criminal, the judge is informed. These
records, an analysis of his antecedents, are merely side-lights, and
unknown beyond the walls of the Palais de Justice. No legal use can be
made of them; Justice is informed by them, and takes advantage of them;
but that is all. These documents form, as it were, the inner lining
of the tissue of crimes, their first cause, which is hardly ever made
public. No jury would accept it; and the whole country would rise up
in wrath if excerpts from those documents came out in the trial at the
Assizes. In fact, it is the truth which is doomed to remain in the well,
as it is everywhere and at all times. There is not a magistrate who,
after twelve years’ experience in Paris, is not fully aware that the
Assize Court and the police authorities keep the secret of half these
squalid atrocities, or who does not admit that half the crimes that are
committed are never punished by the law.
If the public could know how reserved the _employes_ of the police
are--who do not forget--they would reverence these honest men as much as
they do Cheverus. The police is supposed to be astute, Machiavellian; it
is, in fact most benign. But it hears every passion in its paroxysms, it
listens to every kind of treachery, and keeps notes of all. The police
is terrible on one side only. What it does for justice it does no less
for political interests; but in these it is as ruthless and as one-sided
as the fires of the Inquisition.
“Put this aside,” said the lawyer, replacing the notes in their cover;
“this is a secret between the police and the law. The judge will
estimate its value, but Monsieur and Madame Camusot must know nothing of
it.”
“As if I needed telling that!” said his wife.
“Lucien is guilty,” he went on; “but of what?”
“A man who is the favorite of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, of the
Comtesse de Serizy, and loved by Clotilde de Grandlieu, is not guilty,”
said Amelie. “The other _must_ be answerable for everything.”
“But Lucien is his accomplice,” cried Camusot.
“Take my advice,” said Amelie. “Restore this priest to the diplomatic
career he so greatly adorns, exculpate this little wretch, and find some
other criminal----”
“How you run on!” said the magistrate with a smile. “Women go to the
point, plunging through the law as birds fly through the air, and find
nothing to stop them.”
“But,” said Amelie, “whether he is a diplomate or a convict, the Abbe
Carlos will find some one to get him out of the scrape.”
“I am only a considering cap; you are the brain,” said Camusot.
“Well, the sitting is closed; give your Melie a kiss; it is one
o’clock.”
And Madame Camusot went to bed, leaving her husband to arrange his
papers and his ideas in preparation for the task of examining the two
prisoners next morning.
And thus, while the prison vans were conveying Jacques Collin and Lucien
to the Conciergerie, the examining judge, having breakfasted, was
making his way across Paris on foot, after the unpretentious fashion of
Parisian magistrates, to go to his chambers, where all the documents in
the case were laid ready for him.
This was the way of it: Every examining judge has a head-clerk, a sort
of sworn legal secretary--a race that perpetuates itself without any
premiums or encouragement, producing a number of excellent souls in whom
secrecy is natural and incorruptible. From the origin of the Parlement
to the present day, no case has ever been known at the Palais de Justice
of any gossip or indiscretion on the part of a clerk bound to the
Courts of Inquiry. Gentil sold the release given by Louise de Savoie to
Semblancay; a War Office clerk sold the plan of the Russian campaign to
Czernitchef; and these traitors were more or less rich. The prospect of
a post in the Palais and professional conscientiousness are enough to
make a judge’s clerk a successful rival of the tomb--for the tomb has
betrayed many secrets since chemistry has made such progress.
This official is, in fact, the magistrate’s pen. It will be understood
by many readers that a man may gladly be the shaft of a machine,
while they wonder why he is content to remain a bolt; still a bolt is
content--perhaps the machinery terrifies him.
Camusot’s clerk, a young man of two-and-twenty, named Coquart, had come
in the morning to fetch all the documents and the judge’s notes, and
laid everything ready in his chambers, while the lawyer himself was
wandering along the quays, looking at the curiosities in the shops, and
wondering within himself:--
“How on earth am I to set to work with such a clever rascal as this
Jacques Collin, supposing it is he? The head of the Safety will know
him. I must look as if I knew what I was about, if only for the sake of
the police! I see so many insuperable difficulties, that the best plan
would be to enlighten the Marquise and the Duchess by showing them the
notes of the police, and I should avenge my father, from whom Lucien
stole Coralie.--If I can unveil these scoundrels, my skill will
be loudly proclaimed, and Lucien will soon be thrown over by his
friends.--Well, well, the examination will settle all that.”
He turned into a curiosity shop, tempted by a Boule clock.
“Not to be false to my conscience, and yet to oblige two great
ladies--that will be a triumph of skill,” thought he. “What, do you
collect coins too, monsieur?” said Camusot to the Public Prosecutor,
whom he found in the shop.
“It is a taste dear to all dispensers of justice,” said the Comte de
Granville, laughing. “They look at the reverse side of every medal.”
And after looking about the shop for some minutes, as if continuing his
search, he accompanied Camusot on his way down the quay without it ever
occurring to Camusot that anything but chance had brought them together.
“You are examining Monsieur de Rubempre this morning,” said the Public
Prosecutor. “Poor fellow--I liked him.”
“There are several charges against him,” said Camusot.
“Yes, I saw the police papers; but some of the information came from an
agent who is independent of the Prefet, the notorious Corentin, who had
caused the death of more innocent men than you will ever send guilty men
to the scaffold, and----But that rascal is out of your reach.--Without
trying to influence the conscience of such a magistrate as you are, I
may point out to you that if you could be perfectly sure that Lucien was
ignorant of the contents of that woman’s will, it would be self-evident
that he had no interest in her death, for she gave him enormous sums of
money.”
“We can prove his absence at the time when this Esther was poisoned,”
said Camusot. “He was at Fontainebleau, on the watch for Mademoiselle de
Grandlieu and the Duchesse de Lenoncourt.”
“And he still cherished such hopes of marrying Mademoiselle de
Grandlieu,” said the Public Prosecutor--“I have it from the Duchesse
de Grandlieu herself--that it is inconceivable that such a clever young
fellow should compromise his chances by a perfectly aimless crime.”
“Yes,” said Camusot, “especially if Esther gave him all she got.”
“Derville and Nucingen both say that she died in ignorance of the
inheritance she had long since come into,” added Granville.
“But then what do you suppose is the meaning of it all?” asked Camusot.
“For there is something at the bottom of it.”
“A crime committed by some servant,” said the Public Prosecutor.
“Unfortunately,” remarked Camusot, “it would be quite like Jacques
Collin--for the Spanish priest is certainly none other than that
escaped convict--to have taken possession of the seven hundred and fifty
thousand francs derived from the sale of the certificate of shares given
to Esther by Nucingen.”
“Weigh everything with care, my dear Camusot. Be prudent. The Abbe
Carlos Herrera has diplomatic connections; still, an envoy who had
committed a crime would not be sheltered by his position. Is he or is he
not the Abbe Carlos Herrera? That is the important question.”
And Monsieur de Granville bowed, and turned away, as requiring no
answer.
“So he too wants to save Lucien!” thought Camusot, going on by the Quai
des Lunettes, while the Public Prosecutor entered the Palais through the
Cour de Harlay.
On reaching the courtyard of the Conciergerie, Camusot went to the
Governor’s room and led him into the middle of the pavement, where no
one could overhear them.
“My dear sir, do me the favor of going to La Force, and inquiring of
your colleague there whether he happens at this moment to have there any
convicts who were on the hulks at Toulon between 1810 and 1815; or have
you any imprisoned here? We will transfer those of La Force here for a
few days, and you will let me know whether this so-called Spanish priest
is known to them as Jacques Collin, otherwise _Trompe-la-Mort_.”
“Very good, Monsieur Camusot.--But Bibi-Lupin is come...”
“What, already?” said the judge.
“He was at Melun. He was told that _Trompe-la-Mort_ had to be
identified, and he smiled with joy. He awaits your orders.”
“Send him to me.”
The Governor was then able to lay before Monsieur Camusot Jacques
Collin’s request, and he described the man’s deplorable condition.
“I intended to examine him first,” replied the magistrate, “but not on
account of his health. I received a note this morning from the Governor
of La Force. Well, this rascal, who described himself to you as having
been dying for twenty-four hours past, slept so soundly that they went
into his cell there, with the doctor for whom the Governor had sent,
without his hearing them; the doctor did not even feel his pulse, he
left him to sleep--which proves that his conscience is as tough as his
health. I shall accept this feigned illness only so far as it may enable
me to study my man,” added Monsieur Camusot, smiling.
“We live to learn every day with these various grades of prisoners,”
said the Governor of the prison.
The Prefecture of police adjoins the Conciergerie, and the magistrates,
like the Governor, knowing all the subterranean passages, can get to and
fro with the greatest rapidity. This explains the miraculous ease with
which information can be conveyed, during the sitting of the Courts, to
the officials and the presidents of the Assize Courts. And by the
time Monsieur Camusot had reached the top of the stairs leading to
his chambers, Bibi-Lupin was there too, having come by the _Salle des
Pas-Perdus_.
“What zeal!” said Camusot, with a smile.
“Ah, well, you see if it is _he_,” replied the man, “you will see great
fun in the prison-yard if by chance there are any old stagers here.”
“Why?”
“_Trompe-la-Mort_ sneaked their chips, and I know that they have vowed
to be the death of him.”
_They_ were the convicts whose money, intrusted to _Trompe-la-Mort_, had
all been made away with by him for Lucien, as has been told.
“Could you lay your hand on the witnesses of his former arrest?”
“Give me two summonses of witnesses and I will find you some to-day.”
“Coquart,” said the lawyer, as he took off his gloves, and placed
his hat and stick in a corner, “fill up two summonses by monsieur’s
directions.”
He looked at himself in the glass over the chimney shelf, where stood,
in the place of a clock, a basin and jug. On one side was a bottle of
water and a glass, on the other a lamp. He rang the bell; his usher came
in a few minutes after.
“Is anybody here for me yet?” he asked the man, whose business it was to
receive the witnesses, to verify their summons, and to set them in the
order of their arrival.
“Yes, sir.”
“Take their names, and bring me the list.”
The examining judges, to save time, are often obliged to carry on
several inquiries at once. Hence the long waiting inflicted on the
witnesses, who have seats in the ushers’ hall, where the judges’ bells
are constantly ringing.
“And then,” Camusot went on, “bring up the Abbe Carlos Herrera.”
“Ah, ha! I was told that he was a priest in Spanish. Pooh! It is a
new edition of Collet, Monsieur Camusot,” said the head of the Safety
department.
“There is nothing new!” replied Camusot.
And he signed the two formidable documents which alarm everybody, even
the most innocent witnesses, whom the law thus requires to appear, under
severe penalties in case of failure.
By this time Jacques Collin had, about half an hour since, finished his
deep meditations, and was armed for the fray. Nothing is more perfectly
characteristic of this type of the mob in rebellion against the law than
the few words he had written on the greasy scraps of paper.
The sense of the first--for it was written in the language, the very
slang of slang, agreed upon by Asie and himself, a cipher of words--was
as follows:--
“Go to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse or Madame de Serizy: one of
them must see Lucien before he is examined, and give him the
enclosed paper to read. Then find Europe and Paccard; those two
thieves must be at my orders, and ready to play any part I may
set them.
“Go to Rastignac; tell him, from the man he met at the opera-ball,
to come and swear that the Abbe Carlos Herrera has no resemblance
to Jacques Collin who was apprehended at Vauquer’s. Do the same
with Dr. Bianchon, and get Lucien’s two women to work to the same
end.”
On the enclosed fragment were these words in good French:
“Lucien, confess nothing about me. I am the Abbe Carlos Herrera.
Not only will this be your exculpation; but, if you do not lose
your head, you will have seven millions and your honor cleared.”
These two bits of paper, gummed on the side of the writing so as to look
like one piece, were then rolled tightly, with a dexterity peculiar to
men who have dreamed of getting free from the hulks. The whole thing
assumed the shape and consistency of a ball of dirty rubbish, about as
big as the sealing-wax heads which thrifty women stick on the head of a
large needle when the eye is broken.
“If I am examined first, we are saved; if it is the boy, all is lost,”
said he to himself while he waited.
His plight was so sore that the strong man’s face was wet with white
sweat. Indeed, this wonderful man saw as clearly in his sphere of crime
as Moliere did in his sphere of dramatic poetry, or Cuvier in that of
extinct organisms. Genius of whatever kind is intuition. Below this
highest manifestation other remarkable achievements may be due to
talent. This is what divides men of the first rank from those of the
second.
Crime has its men of genius. Jacques Collin, driven to bay, had hit
on the same notion as Madame Camusot’s ambition and Madame de Serizy’s
passion, suddenly revived by the shock of the dreadful disaster which
was overwhelming Lucien. This was the supreme effort of human intellect
directed against the steel armor of Justice.
On hearing the rasping of the heavy locks and bolts of his door, Jacques
Collin resumed his mask of a dying man; he was helped in this by the
intoxicating joy that he felt at the sound of the warder’s shoes in the
passage. He had no idea how Asie would get near him; but he relied
on meeting her on the way, especially after her promise given in the
Saint-Jean gateway.
After that fortunate achievement she had gone on to the Place de Greve.
Till 1830 the name of La Greve (the Strand) had a meaning that is now
lost. Every part of the river-shore from the Pont d’Arcole to the Pont
Louis-Philippe was then as nature had made it, excepting the paved way
which was at the top of the bank. When the river was in flood a boat
could pass close under the houses and at the end of the streets running
down to the river. On the quay the footpath was for the most part raised
with a few steps; and when the river was up to the houses, vehicles had
to pass along the horrible Rue de la Mortellerie, which has now been
completely removed to make room for enlarging the Hotel de Ville.
So the sham costermonger could easily and quickly run her truck down to
the bottom of the quay, and hide it there till the real owner--who was,
in fact, drinking the price of her wares, sold bodily to Asie, in one
of the abominable taverns in the Rue de la Mortellerie--should return
to claim it. At that time the Quai Pelletier was being extended, the
entrance to the works was guarded by a crippled soldier, and the barrow
would be quite safe in his keeping.
Asie then jumped into a hackney cab on the Place de l’Hotel de Ville,
and said to the driver, “To the Temple, and look sharp, I’ll tip you
well.”
A woman dressed like Asie could disappear, without any questions
being asked, in the huge market-place, where all the rags in Paris are
gathered together, where a thousand costermongers wander round, and two
hundred old-clothes sellers are chaffering.
The two prisoners had hardly been locked up when she was dressing
herself in a low, damp entresol over one of those foul shops where
remnants are sold, pieces stolen by tailors and dressmakers--an
establishment kept by an old maid known as La Romette, from her
Christian name Jeromette. La Romette was to the “purchasers of
wardrobes” what these women are to the better class of so-called ladies
in difficulties--Madame la Ressource, that is to say, money-lenders at a
hundred per cent.
“Now, child,” said Asie, “I have got to be figged out. I must be a
Baroness of the Faubourg Saint-Germain at the very least. And sharp’s
the word, for my feet are in hot oil. You know what gowns suit me.
Hand up the rouge-pot, find me some first-class bits of lace, and the
swaggerest jewelry you can pick out.--Send the girl to call a coach, and
have it brought to the back door.”
“Yes, madame,” the woman replied very humbly, and with the eagerness of
a maid waiting on her mistress.
If there had been any one to witness the scene, he would have understood
that the woman known as Asie was at home here.
“I have had some diamonds offered me,” said la Romette as she dressed
Asie’s head.
“Stolen?”
“I should think so.”
“Well, then, however cheap they may be, we must do without ‘em. We must
fight shy of the beak for a long time to come.”
It will now be understood how Asie contrived to be in the _Salle des
Pas-Perdus_ of the Palais de Justice with a summons in her hand, asking
her way along the passages and stairs leading to the examining judge’s
chambers, and inquiring for Monsieur Camusot, about a quarter of an hour
before that gentleman’s arrival.
Asie was not recognizable. After washing off her “make-up” as an old
woman, like an actress, she applied rouge and pearl powder, and covered
her head with a well-made fair wig. Dressed exactly as a lady of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain might be if in search of a dog she had lost, she
looked about forty, for she shrouded her features under a splendid black
lace veil. A pair of stays, severely laced, disguised her cook’s figure.
With very good gloves and a rather large bustle, she exhaled the perfume
of powder a la Marechale. Playing with a bag mounted in gold, she
divided her attention between the walls of the building, where she found
herself evidently for the first time, and the string by which she led
a dainty little spaniel. Such a dowager could not fail to attract the
notice of the black-robed natives of the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_.
Besides the briefless lawyers who sweep this hall with their gowns,
and speak of the leading advocates by their Christian names, as fine
gentlemen address each other, to produce the impression that they are
of the aristocracy of the law, patient youths are often to be seen,
hangers-on of the attorneys, waiting, waiting, in hope of a case put
down for the end of the day, which they may be so lucky as to be called
to plead if the advocates retained for the earlier cases should not come
out in time.
A very curious study would be that of the differences between these
various black gowns, pacing the immense hall in threes, or sometimes
in fours, their persistent talk filling the place with a loud, echoing
hum--a hall well named indeed, for this slow walk exhausts the lawyers
as much as the waste of words. But such a study has its place in the
volumes destined to reveal the life of Paris pleaders.
Asie had counted on the presence of these youths; she laughed in her
sleeve at some of the pleasantries she overheard, and finally succeeded
in attracting the attention of Massol, a young lawyer whose time was
more taken up by the _Police Gazette_ than by clients, and who came up
with a laugh to place himself at the service of a woman so elegantly
scented and so handsomely dressed.
Asie put on a little, thin voice to explain to this obliging gentleman
that she appeared in answer to a summons from a judge named Camusot.
“Oh! in the Rubempre case?”
So the affair had its name already.
“Oh, it is not my affair. It is my maid’s, a girl named Europe, who was
with me twenty-four hours, and who fled when she saw my servant bring in
a piece of stamped paper.”
Then, like any old woman who spends her life gossiping in the
chimney-corner, prompted by Massol, she poured out the story of her woes
with her first husband, one of the three Directors of the land revenue.
She consulted the young lawyer as to whether she would do well to enter
on a lawsuit with her son-in-law, the Comte de Gross-Narp, who made her
daughter very miserable, and whether the law allowed her to dispose of
her fortune.
In spite of all his efforts, Massol could not be sure whether the
summons were addressed to the mistress or the maid. At the first moment
he had only glanced at this legal document of the most familiar aspect;
for, to save time, it is printed, and the magistrates’ clerks have only
to fill in the blanks left for the names and addresses of the witnesses,
the hour for which they are called, and so forth.
Asie made him tell her all about the Palais, which she knew more
intimately than the lawyer did. Finally, she inquired at what hour
Monsieur Camusot would arrive.
“Well, the examining judges generally are here by about ten o’clock.”
“It is now a quarter to ten,” said she, looking at a pretty little
watch, a perfect gem of goldsmith’s work, which made Massol say to
himself:
“Where the devil will Fortune make herself at home next!”
At this moment Asie had come to the dark hall looking out on the yard of
the Conciergerie, where the ushers wait. On seeing the gate through the
window, she exclaimed:
“What are those high walls?”
“That is the Conciergerie.”
“Oh! so that is the Conciergerie where our poor queen----Oh! I should so
like to see her cell!”
“Impossible, Madame la Baronne,” replied the young lawyer, on whose
arm the dowager was now leaning. “A permit is indispensable, and very
difficult to procure.”
“I have been told,” she went on, “that Louis XVIII. himself composed the
inscription that is to be seen in Marie-Antoinette’s cell.”
“Yes, Madame la Baronne.”
“How much I should like to know Latin that I might study the words of
that inscription!” said she. “Do you think that Monsieur Camusot could
give me a permit?”
“That is not in his power; but he could take you there.”
“But his business----” objected she.
“Oh!” said Massol, “prisoners under suspicion can wait.”
“To be sure,” said she artlessly, “they are under suspicion.--But I know
Monsieur de Granville, your public prosecutor----”
This hint had a magical effect on the ushers and the young lawyer.
“Ah, you know Monsieur de Granville?” said Massol, who was inclined to
ask the client thus sent to him by chance her name and address.
“I often see him at my friend Monsieur de Serizy’s house. Madame de
Serizy is a connection of mine through the Ronquerolles.”
“Well, if Madame wishes to go down to the Conciergerie,” said an usher,
“she----”
“Yes,” said Massol.
So the Baroness and the lawyer were allowed to pass, and they presently
found themselves in the little guard-room at the top of the stairs
leading to the “mousetrap,” a spot well known to Asie, forming, as has
been said, a post of observation between those cells and the Court of
the Sixth Chamber, through which everybody is obliged to pass.
“Will you ask if Monsieur Camusot is come yet?” said she, seeing some
gendarmes playing cards.
“Yes, madame, he has just come up from the ‘mousetrap.’”
“The mousetrap!” said she. “What is that?--Oh! how stupid of me not to
have gone straight to the Comte de Granville.--But I have not time
now. Pray take me to speak to Monsieur Camusot before he is otherwise
engaged.”
“Oh, you have plenty of time for seeing Monsieur Camusot,” said Massol.
“If you send him in your card, he will spare you the discomfort of
waiting in the ante-room with the witnesses.--We can be civil here to
ladies like you.--You have a card about you?”
At this instant Asie and her lawyer were exactly in front of the window
of the guardroom whence the gendarmes could observe the gate of the
Conciergerie. The gendarmes, brought up to respect the defenders of the
widow and the orphan, were aware too of the prerogative of the gown,
and for a few minutes allowed the Baroness to remain there escorted by
a pleader. Asie listened to the terrible tales which a young lawyer is
ready to tell about that prison-gate. She would not believe that those
who were condemned to death were prepared for the scaffold behind those
bars; but the sergeant-at-arms assured her it was so.
“How much I should like to see it done!” cried she.
And there she remained, prattling to the lawyer and the sergeant, till
she saw Jacques Collin come out supported by two gendarmes, and preceded
by Monsieur Camusot’s clerk.
“Ah, there is a chaplain no doubt going to prepare a poor wretch----”
“Not at all, Madame la Baronne,” said the gendarme. “He is a prisoner
coming to be examined.”
“What is he accused of?”
“He is concerned in this poisoning case.”
“Oh! I should like to see him.”
“You cannot stay here,” said the sergeant, “for he is under close
arrest, and he must pass through here. You see, madame, that door leads
to the stairs----”
“Oh! thank you!” cried the Baroness, making for the door, to rush down
the stairs, where she at once shrieked out, “Oh! where am I?”
This cry reached the ear of Jacques Collin, who was thus prepared to
see her. The sergeant flew after Madame la Baronne, seized her by the
middle, and lifted her back like a feather into the midst of a group
of five gendarmes, who started up as one man; for in that guardroom
everything is regarded as suspicious. The proceeding was arbitrary, but
the arbitrariness was necessary. The young lawyer himself had cried
out twice, “Madame! madame!” in his horror, so much did he fear finding
himself in the wrong.
The Abbe Carlos Herrera, half fainting, sank on a chair in the
guardroom.
“Poor man!” said the Baroness. “Can he be a criminal?”
The words, though spoken low to the young advocate, could be heard
by all, for the silence of death reigned in that terrible guardroom.
Certain privileged persons are sometimes allowed to see famous criminals
on their way through this room or through the passages, so that the
clerk and the gendarmes who had charge of the Abbe Carlos made no
remark. Also, in consequence of the devoted zeal of the sergeant who
had snatched up the Baroness to hinder any communication between the
prisoner and the visitors, there was a considerable space between them.
“Let us go on,” said Jacques Collin, making an effort to rise.
At the same moment the little ball rolled out of his sleeve, and the
spot where it fell was noted by the Baroness, who could look about her
freely from under her veil. The little pellet, being damp and sticky,
did not roll; for such trivial details, apparently unimportant, had all
been duly considered by Jacques Collin to insure success.
When the prisoner had been led up the higher part of the steps, Asie
very unaffectedly dropped her bag and picked it up again; but in
stooping she seized the pellet which had escaped notice, its color being
exactly like that of the dust and mud on the floor.
“Oh dear!” cried she, “it goes to my heart.--He is dying----”
“Or seems to be,” replied the sergeant.
“Monsieur,” said Asie to the lawyer, “take me at once to Monsieur
Camusot; I have come about this case; and he might be very glad to see
me before examining that poor priest.”
The lawyer and the Baroness left the guardroom, with its greasy,
fuliginous walls; but as soon as they reached the top of the stairs,
Asie exclaimed:
“Oh, and my dog! My poor little dog!” and she rushed off like a mad
creature down the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_, asking every one where her dog
was. She got to the corridor beyond (la Galerie Marchande, or Merchant’s
Hall, as it is called), and flew to the staircase, saying, “There he
is!”
These stairs lead to the Cour de Harlay, through which Asie, having
played out the farce, passed out and took a hackney cab on the Quai des
Orfevres, where there is a stand; thus she vanished with the summons
requiring “Europe” to appear, her real name being unknown to the police
and the lawyers.
“Rue Neuve-Saint-Marc,” cried she to the driver.
Asie could depend on the absolute secrecy of an old-clothes purchaser,
known as Madame Nourrisson, who also called herself Madame de
Saint-Esteve; and who would lend Asie not merely her personality, but
her shop at need, for it was there that Nucingen had bargained for the
surrender of Esther. Asie was quite at home there, for she had a bedroom
in Madame Nourrisson’s establishment.
She paid the driver, and went up to her room, nodding to Madame
Nourrisson in a way to make her understand that she had not time to say
two words to her.
As soon as she was safe from observation, Asie unwrapped the papers
with the care of a savant unrolling a palimpsest. After reading the
instructions, she thought it wise to copy the lines intended for Lucien
on a sheet of letter-paper; then she went down to Madame Nourrisson, to
whom she talked while a little shop-girl went to fetch a cab from the
Boulevard des Italiens. She thus extracted the addresses of the Duchesse
de Maufrigneuse and of Madame de Serizy, which were known to Madame
Nourrisson by her dealings with their maids.
All this running about and elaborate business took up more than two
hours. Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who lived at the top of the
Faubourg Saint-Honore, kept Madame de Saint-Esteve waiting an hour,
although the lady’s-maid, after knocking at the boudoir door, had handed
in to her mistress a card with Madame de Saint-Esteve’s name, on which
Asie had written, “Called about pressing business concerning Lucien.”
Her first glance at the Duchess’ face showed her how till-timed her
visit must be; she apologized for disturbing Madame la Duchesse when she
was resting, on the plea of the danger in which Lucien stood.
“Who are you?” asked the Duchess, without any pretence at politeness,
as she looked at Asie from head to foot; for Asie, though she might be
taken for a Baroness by Maitre Massol in the _Salle des Pas-Perdus_,
when she stood on the carpet in the boudoir of the Hotel de Cadignan,
looked like a splash of mud on a white satin gown.
“I am a dealer in cast-off clothes, Madame la Duchesse; for in such
matters every lady applies to women whose business rests on a basis of
perfect secrecy. I have never betrayed anybody, though God knows how
many great ladies have intrusted their diamonds to me by the month while
wearing false jewels made to imitate them exactly.”
“You have some other name?” said the Duchess, smiling at a reminiscence
recalled to her by this reply.
“Yes, Madame la Duchesse, I am Madame de Saint-Esteve on great
occasions, but in the trade I am Madame Nourrisson.”
“Well, well,” said the Duchess in an altered tone.
“I am able to be of great service,” Asie went on, “for we hear the
husbands’ secrets as well as the wives’. I have done many little jobs
for Monsieur de Marsay, whom Madame la Duchesse----”
“That will do, that will do!” cried the Duchess. “What about Lucien?”
“If you wish to save him, madame, you must have courage enough to lose
no time in dressing. But, indeed, Madame la Duchesse, you could not look
more charming than you do at this moment. You are sweet enough to charm
anybody, take an old woman’s word for it! In short, madame, do not wait
for your carriage, but get into my hackney coach. Come to Madame de
Serizy’s if you hope to avert worse misfortunes than the death of that
cherub----”
“Go on, I will follow you,” said the Duchess after a moment’s
hesitation. “Between us we may give Leontine some courage...”
Notwithstanding the really demoniacal activity of this Dorine of
the hulks, the clock was striking two when she and the Duchesse de
Maufrigneuse went into the Comtesse de Serizy’s house in the Rue de la
Chaussee-d’Antin. Once there, thanks to the Duchess, not an instant was
lost. The two women were at once shown up to the Countess, whom they
found reclining on a couch in a miniature chalet, surrounded by a garden
fragrant with the rarest flowers.
“That is well,” said Asie, looking about her. “No one can overhear us.”
“Oh! my dear, I am half dead! Tell me, Diane, what have you done?” cried
the Duchess, starting up like a fawn, and, seizing the Duchess by the
shoulders, she melted into tears.
“Come, come, Leontine; there are occasions when women like us must not
cry, but act,” said the Duchess, forcing the Countess to sit down on the
sofa by her side.
Asie studied the Countess’ face with the scrutiny peculiar to those old
hands, which pierces to the soul of a woman as certainly as a surgeon’s
instrument probes a wound!--the sorrow that engraves ineradicable lines
on the heart and on the features. She was dressed without the least
touch of vanity. She was now forty-five, and her printed muslin wrapper,
tumbled and untidy, showed her bosom without any art or even stays! Her
eyes were set in dark circles, and her mottled cheeks showed the traces
of bitter tears. She wore no sash round her waist; the embroidery on her
petticoat and shift was all crumpled. Her hair, knotted up under a lace
cap, had not been combed for four-and-twenty hours, and showed as a
thin, short plait and ragged little curls. Leontine had forgotten to put
on her false hair.
“You are in love for the first time in your life?” said Asie
sententiously.
Leontine then saw the woman and started with horror.
“Who is that, my dear Diane?” she asked of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse.
“Whom should I bring with me but a woman who is devoted to Lucien and
willing to help us?”