Such men, cruel only from the necessity for suppressive evidence,

for they murder only to get rid of witnesses (and this is one of

the arguments adduced by those who desire the abrogation of capital

punishment),--these giants of dexterity and skill, whose sleight of

hand, whose rapid sight, whose every sense is as alert as that of a

savage, are heroes of evil only on the stage of their exploits. Not only

do their difficulties begin as soon as the crime is committed, for they

are as much bewildered by the need for concealing the stolen goods as

they were depressed by necessity--but they are as weak as a woman in

childbed. The vehemence of their schemes is terrific; in success they

become like children. In a word, their nature is that of the wild

beast--easy to kill when it is full fed. In prison these strange beings

are men in dissimulation and in secretiveness, which never yields till

the last moment, when they are crushed and broken by the tedium of

imprisonment.

It may hence be understood how it was that the three convicts, instead

of betraying their chief, were eager to serve him; and as they suspected

he was now the owner of the stolen seven hundred and fifty thousand

francs, they admired him for his calm resignation, under bolt and bar of

the Conciergerie, believing him capable of protecting them all.

When Monsieur Gault left the sham priest, he returned through the parlor

to his office, and went in search of Bibi-Lupin, who for twenty minutes,

since Jacques Collin had gone downstairs, had been on the watch with his

eye at a peephole in a window looking out on the prison-yard.

“Not one of them recognized him,” said Monsieur Gault, “and Napolitas,

who is on duty, did not hear a word. The poor priest all through the

night, in his deep distress, did not say a word which could imply that

his gown covers Jacques Collin.”

“That shows that he is used to prison life,” said the police agent.

Napolitas, Bibi-Lupin’s secretary, being unknown to the criminals

then in the Conciergerie, was playing the part of the young gentlemen

imprisoned for forgery.

“Well, but he wishes to be allowed to hear the confession of the young

fellow who is sentenced to death,” said the governor.

“To be sure! That is our last chance,” cried Bibi-Lupin. “I had

forgotten that. Theodore Calvi, the young Corsican, was the man chained

to Jacques Collin; they say that on the hulks Jacques Collin made him

famous pads----”

The convicts on the galleys contrive a kind of pad to slip between their

skin and the fetters to deaden the pressure of the iron ring on their

ankles and instep; these pads, made of tow and rags, are known as

patarasses.

“Who is warder over the man?” asked Bibi-Lupin.

“Coeur la Virole.”

“Very well, I will go and make up as a gendarme, and be on the watch; I

shall hear what they say. I will be even with them.”

“But if it should be Jacques Collin are you not afraid of his

recognizing you and throttling you?” said the governor to Bibi-Lupin.

“As a gendarme I shall have my sword,” replied the other; “and, besides,

if he is Jacques Collin, he will never do anything that will risk his

neck; and if he is a priest, I shall be safe.”

“Then you have no time to lose,” said Monsieur Gault; “it is half-past

eight. Father Sauteloup has just read the reply to his appeal, and

Monsieur Sanson is waiting in the order room.”

“Yes, it is to-day’s job, the ‘widow’s huzzars’” (les hussards de la

veuve, another horrible name for the functionaries of the guillotine)

“are ordered out,” replied Bibi-Lupin. “Still, I cannot wonder that the

prosecutor-general should hesitate; the boy has always declared that he

is innocent, and there is, in my opinion, no conclusive evidence against

him.”

“He is a thorough Corsican,” said Monsieur Gault; “he has not said a

word, and has held firm all through.”

The last words of the governor of the prison summed up the dismal tale

of a man condemned to die. A man cut off from among the living by

law belongs to the Bench. The Bench is paramount; it is answerable to

nobody, it obeys its own conscience. The prison belongs to the Bench,

which controls it absolutely. Poetry has taken possession of this social

theme, “the man condemned to death”--a subject truly apt to strike the

imagination! And poetry has been sublime on it. Prose has no resource

but fact; still, the fact is appalling enough to hold its own against

verse. The existence of a condemned man who has not confessed his crime,

or betrayed his accomplices, is one of fearful torment. This is no case

of iron boots, of water poured into the stomach, or of limbs racked by

hideous machinery; it is hidden and, so to speak, negative torture.

The condemned wretch is given over to himself with a companion whom he

cannot but trust.

The amiability of modern philanthropy fancies it has understood

the dreadful torment of isolation, but this is a mistake. Since the

abolition of torture, the Bench, in a natural anxiety to reassure the

too sensitive consciences of the jury, had guessed what a terrible

auxiliary isolation would prove to justice in seconding remorse.

Solitude is void; and nature has as great a horror of a moral void as

she has of a physical vacuum. Solitude is habitable only to a man of

genius who can people it with ideas, the children of the spiritual

world; or to one who contemplates the works of the Creator, to whom it

is bright with the light of heaven, alive with the breath and voice of

God. Excepting for these two beings--so near to Paradise--solitude is

to the mind what torture is to the body. Between solitude and the

torture-chamber there is all the difference that there is between a

nervous malady and a surgical disease. It is suffering multiplied by

infinitude. The body borders on the infinite through its nerves, as the

spirit does through thought. And, in fact, in the annals of the Paris

law courts the criminals who do not confess can be easily counted.

This terrible situation, which in some cases assumes appalling

importance--in politics, for instance, when a dynasty or a state is

involved--will find a place in the HUMAN COMEDY. But here a description

of the stone box in which after the Restoration, the law shut up a man

condemned to death in Paris, may serve to give an idea of the terrors of

a felon’s last day on earth.

Before the Revolution of July there was in the Conciergerie, and indeed

there still is, a condemned cell. This room, backing on the governor’s

office, is divided from it by a thick wall in strong masonry, and the

other side of it is formed by a wall seven or eight feet thick, which

supports one end of the immense _Salle des Pas-Perdus_. It is entered

through the first door in the long dark passage in which the eye

loses itself when looking from the middle of the vaulted gateway. This

ill-omened room is lighted by a funnel, barred by a formidable grating,

and hardly perceptible on going into the Conciergerie yard, for it has

been pierced in the narrow space between the office window close to the

railing of the gateway, and the place where the office clerk sits--a den

like a cupboard contrived by the architect at the end of the entrance

court.

This position accounts for the fact that the room thus enclosed

between four immensely thick walls should have been devoted, when the

Conciergerie was reconstituted, to this terrible and funereal service.

Escape is impossible. The passage, leading to the cells for solitary

confinement and to the women’s quarters, faces the stove where gendarmes

and warders are always collected together. The air-hole, the only outlet

to the open air, is nine feet above the floor, and looks out on the

first court, which is guarded by sentries at the outer gate. No human

power can make any impression on the walls. Besides, a man sentenced to

death is at once secured in a straitwaistcoat, a garment which precludes

all use of the hands; he is chained by one foot to his camp bed, and he

has a fellow prisoner to watch and attend on him. The room is paved with

thick flags, and the light is so dim that it is hard to see anything.

It is impossible not to feel chilled to the marrow on going in,

even now, though for sixteen years the cell has never been used,

in consequence of the changes effected in Paris in the treatment of

criminals under sentence. Imagine the guilty man there with his remorse

for company, in silence and darkness, two elements of horror, and you

will wonder how he ever failed to go mad. What a nature must that

be whose temper can resist such treatment, with the added misery of

enforced idleness and inaction.

And yet Theodore Calvi, a Corsican, now twenty-seven years of age,

muffled, as it were, in a shroud of absolute reserve, had for two months

held out against the effects of this dungeon and the insidious chatter

of the prisoner placed to entrap him.

These were the strange circumstances under which the Corsican had been

condemned to death. Though the case is a very curious one, our account

of it must be brief. It is impossible to introduce a long digression

at the climax of a narrative already so much prolonged, since its only

interest is in so far as it concerns Jacques Collin, the vertebral

column, so to speak, which, by its sinister persistency, connects _Le

Pere Goriot_ with _Illusions perdues_, and _Illusions perdues_ with this

Study. And, indeed, the reader’s imagination will be able to work out

the obscure case which at this moment was causing great uneasiness to

the jury of the sessions, before whom Theodore Calvi had been tried.

For a whole week, since the criminal’s appeal had been rejected by the

Supreme Court, Monsieur de Granville had been worrying himself over

the case, and postponing from day to day the order for carrying out the

sentence, so anxious was he to reassure the jury by announcing that on

the threshold of death the accused had confessed the crime.

A poor widow of Nanterre, whose dwelling stood apart from the township,

which is situated in the midst of the infertile plain lying between

Mount-Valerian, Saint-Germain, the hills of Sartrouville, and

Argenteuil, had been murdered and robbed a few days after coming into

her share of an unexpected inheritance. This windfall amounted to three

thousand francs, a dozen silver spoons and forks, a gold watch and

chain and some linen. Instead of depositing the three thousand francs

in Paris, as she was advised by the notary of the wine-merchant who had

left it her, the old woman insisted on keeping it by her. In the

first place, she had never seen so much money of her own, and then

she distrusted everybody in every kind of affairs, as most common and

country folk do. After long discussion with a wine-merchant of Nanterre,

a relation of her own and of the wine-merchant who had left her the

money, the widow decided on buying an annuity, on selling her house at

Nanterre, and living in the town of Saint-Germain.

The house she was living in, with a good-sized garden enclosed by a

slight wooden fence, was the poor sort of dwelling usually built by

small landowners in the neighborhood of Paris. It had been hastily

constructed, with no architectural design, of cement and rubble, the

materials commonly used near Paris, where, as at Nanterre, they are

extremely abundant, the ground being everywhere broken by quarries open

to the sky. This is the ordinary hut of the civilized savage. The house

consisted of a ground floor and one floor above, with garrets in the

roof.

The quarryman, her deceased husband, and the builder of this dwelling,

had put strong iron bars to all the windows; the front door was

remarkably thick. The man knew that he was alone there in the

open country--and what a country! His customers were the principal

master-masons in Paris, so the more important materials for his house,

which stood within five hundred yards of his quarry, had been brought

out in his own carts returning empty. He could choose such as suited him

where houses were pulled down, and got them very cheap. Thus the window

frames, the iron-work, the doors, shutters, and wooden fittings were all

derived from sanctioned pilfering, presents from his customers, and good

ones, carefully chosen. Of two window-frames, he could take the better.

The house, entered from a large stable-yard, was screened from the road

by a wall; the gate was of strong iron-railing. Watch-dogs were kept in

the stables, and a little dog indoors at night. There was a garden of

more than two acres behind.

His widow, without children, lived here with only a woman servant. The

sale of the quarry had paid off the owner’s debts; he had been dead

about two years. This isolated house was the widow’s sole possession,

and she kept fowls and cows, selling the eggs and milk at Nanterre.

Having no stableboy or carter or quarryman--her husband had made them do

every kind of work--she no longer kept up the garden; she only

gathered the few greens and roots that the stony ground allowed to grow

self-sown.

The price of the house, with the money she had inherited, would amount

to seven or eight thousand francs, and she could fancy herself living

very happily at Saint-Germain on seven or eight hundred francs a year,

which she thought she could buy with her eight thousand francs. She had

had many discussions over this with the notary at Saint-Germain, for she

refused to hand her money over for an annuity to the wine-merchant at

Nanterre, who was anxious to have it.

Under these circumstances, then, after a certain day the widow Pigeau

and her servant were seen no more. The front gate, the house door, the

shutters, all were closed. At the end of three days, the police, being

informed, made inquisition. Monsieur Popinot, the examining judge,

and the public prosecutor arrived from Paris, and this was what they

reported:--

Neither the outer gate nor the front door showed any marks of violence.

The key was in the lock of the door, inside. Not a single bar had been

wretched; the locks, shutters, and bolts were all untampered with. The

walls showed no traces that could betray the passage of the criminals.

The chimney-posts, of red clay, afforded no opportunity for ingress or

escape, and the roofing was sound and unbroken, showing no damage by

violence.

On entering the first-floor rooms, the magistrates, the gendarmes, and

Bibi-Lupin found the widow Pigeau strangled in her bed and the woman

strangled in hers, each by means of the bandana she wore as a nightcap.

The three thousand francs were gone, with the silver-plate and the

trinkets. The two bodies were decomposing, as were those of the little

dog and of a large yard-dog.

The wooden palings of the garden were examined; none were broken. The

garden paths showed no trace of footsteps. The magistrate thought it

probable that the robber had walked on the grass to leave no foot-prints

if he had come that way; but how could he have got into the house?

The back door to the garden had an outer guard of three iron bars,

uninjured; and there, too, the key was in the lock inside, as in the

front door.

All these impossibilities having been duly noted by Monsieur Popinot,

by Bibi-Lupin, who stayed there a day to examine every detail, by the

public prosecutor himself, and by the sergeant of the gendarmerie at

Nanterre, this murder became an agitating mystery, in which the Law and

the Police were nonplussed.

This drama, published in the _Gazette des Tribunaux_, took place in the

winter of 1828-29. God alone knows what excitement this puzzling crime

occasioned in Paris! But Paris has a new drama to watch every morning,

and forgets everything. The police, on the contrary, forgets nothing.

Three months after this fruitless inquiry, a girl of the town, whose

extravagance had invited the attention of Bibi-Lupin’s agents, who

watched her as being the ally of several thieves, tried to persuade a

woman she knew to pledge twelve silver spoons and forks and a gold watch

and chain. The friend refused. This came to Bibi-Lupin’s ears, and he

remembered the plate and the watch and chain stolen at Nanterre. The

commissioners of the Mont-de-Piete, and all the receivers of stolen

goods, were warned, while Manon la Blonde was subjected to unremitting

scrutiny.

It was very soon discovered that Manon la Blonde was madly in love with

a young man who was never to be seen, and was supposed to be deaf to all

the fair Manon’s proofs of devotion. Mystery on mystery. However, this

youth, under the diligent attentions of police spies, was soon seen

and identified as an escaped convict, the famous hero of the Corsican

vendetta, the handsome Theodore Calvi, known as Madeleine.

A man was turned on to entrap Calvi, one of those double-dealing buyers

of stolen goods who serve the thieves and the police both at once; he

promised to purchase the silver and the watch and chain. At the moment

when the dealer of the Cour Saint-Guillaume was counting out the cash

to Theodore, dressed as a woman, at half-past six in the evening, the

police came in and seized Theodore and the property.

The inquiry was at once begun. On such thin evidence it was impossible

to pass a sentence of death. Calvi never swerved, he never contradicted

himself. He said that a country woman had sold him these objects at

Argenteuil; that after buying them, the excitement over the murder

committed at Nanterre had shown him the danger of keeping this plate and

watch and chain in his possession, since, in fact, they were proved

by the inventory made after the death of the wine merchant, the widow

Pigeau’s uncle, to be those that were stolen from her. Compelled at last

by poverty to sell them, he said he wished to dispose of them by the

intervention of a person to whom no suspicion could attach.

And nothing else could be extracted from the convict, who, by his

taciturnity and firmness, contrived to insinuate that the wine-merchant

at Nanterre had committed the crime, and that the woman of whom he,

Theodore, had bought them was the wine-merchant’s wife. The unhappy

man and his wife were both taken into custody; but, after a week’s

imprisonment, it was amply proved that neither the husband nor the wife

had been out of their house at the time. Also, Calvi failed to recognize

in the wife the woman who, as he declared, had sold him the things.

As it was shown that Calvi’s mistress, implicated in the case, had spent

about a thousand francs since the date of the crime and the day when

Calvi tried to pledge the plate and trinkets, the evidence seemed strong

enough to commit Calvi and the girl for trial. This murder being the

eighteenth which Theodore had committed, he was condemned to death for

he seemed certainly to be guilty of this skilfully contrived crime.

Though he did not recognize the wine-merchant’s wife, both she and

her husband recognized him. The inquiry had proved, by the evidence of

several witnesses, that Theodore had been living at Nanterre for about

a month; he had worked at a mason’s, his face whitened with plaster, and

his clothes very shabby. At Nanterre the lad was supposed to be about

eighteen years old, for the whole month he must have been nursing that

brat (nourri ce poupon, i.e. hatching the crime).

The lawyers thought he must have had accomplices. The chimney-pots were

measured and compared with the size of Manon la Blonde’s body to see if

she could have got in that way; but a child of six could not have passed

up or down those red-clay pipes, which, in modern buildings, take

the place of the vast chimneys of old-fashioned houses. But for this

singular and annoying difficulty, Theodore would have been executed

within a week. The prison chaplain, it has been seen, could make nothing

of him.

All this business, and the name of Calvi, must have escaped the notice

of Jacques Collin, who, at the time, was absorbed in his single-handed

struggle with Contenson, Corentin, and Peyrade. It had indeed been a

point with _Trompe-la-Mort_ to forget as far as possible his chums

and all that had to do with the law courts; he dreaded a meeting which

should bring him face to face with a pal who might demand an account of

his boss which Collin could not possibly render.

The governor of the prison went forthwith to the public prosecutor’s

court, where he found the Attorney-General in conversation with Monsieur

de Granville, who had spent the whole night at the Hotel de Serizy, was,

in consequence of this important case, obliged to give a few hours

to his duties, though overwhelmed with fatigue and grief; for the

physicians could not yet promise that the Countess would recover her

sanity.

After speaking a few words to the governor, Monsieur de Granville took

the warrant from the attorney and placed it in Gault’s hands.

“Let the matter proceed,” said he, “unless some extraordinary

circumstances should arise. Of this you must judge. I trust to your

judgment. The scaffold need not be erected till half-past ten, so you

still have an hour. On such an occasion hours are centuries, and

many things may happen in a century. Do not allow him to think he is

reprieved; prepare the man for execution if necessary; and if nothing

comes of that, give Sanson the warrant at half-past nine. Let him wait!”

As the governor of the prison left the public prosecutor’s room, under

the archway of the passage into the hall he met Monsieur Camusot, who

was going there. He exchanged a few hurried words with the examining

judge; and after telling him what had been done at the Conciergerie

with regard to Jacques Collin, he went on to witness the meeting of

_Trompe-la-Mort_ and Madeleine; and he did not allow the so-called

priest to see the condemned criminal till Bibi-Lupin, admirably

disguised as a gendarme, had taken the place of the prisoner left in

charge of the young Corsican.

No words can describe the amazement of the three convicts when a warder

came to fetch Jacques Collin and led him to the condemned cell! With one

consent they rushed up to the chair on which Jacques Collin was sitting.

“To-day, isn’t it, monsieur?” asked Fil-de-Soie of the warder.

“Yes, Jack Ketch is waiting,” said the man with perfect indifference.

Charlot is the name by which the executioner is known to the populace

and the prison world in Paris. The nickname dates from the Revolution of

1789.

The words produced a great sensation. The prisoners looked at each

other.

“It is all over with him,” the warder went on; “the warrant has been

delivered to Monsieur Gault, and the sentence has just been read to

him.”

“And so the fair Madeleine has received the last sacraments?” said la

Pouraille, and he swallowed a deep mouthful of air.

“Poor little Theodore!” cried le Biffon; “he is a pretty chap too. What

a pity to drop your nut” (eternuer dans le son) “so young.”

The warder went towards the gate, thinking that Jacques Collin was at

his heels. But the Spaniard walked very slowly, and when he was getting

near to Julien he tottered and signed to la Pouraille to give him his

arm.

“He is a murderer,” said Napolitas to the priest, pointing to la

Pouraille, and offering his own arm.

“No, to me he is an unhappy wretch!” replied Jacques Collin, with the

presence of mind and the unction of the Archbishop of Cambrai. And he

drew away from Napolitas, of whom he had been very suspicious from the

first. Then he said to his pals in an undertone:

“He is on the bottom step of the Abbaye de Monte-a-Regret, but I am the

Prior! I will show you how well I know how to come round the beaks. I

mean to snatch this boy’s nut from their jaws.”

“For the sake of his breeches!” said Fil-de-Soie with a smile.

“I mean to win his soul to heaven!” replied Jacques Collin fervently,

seeing some other prisoners about him. And he joined the warder at the

gate.

“He got in to save Madeleine,” said Fil-de-Soie. “We guessed rightly.

What a boss he is!”

“But how can he? Jack Ketch’s men are waiting. He will not even see the

kid,” objected le Biffon.

“The devil is on his side!” cried la Pouraille. “He claim our blunt!

Never! He is too fond of his old chums! We are too useful to him! They

wanted to make us blow the gaff, but we are not such flats! If he saves

his Madeleine, I will tell him all my secrets.”

The effect of this speech was to increase the devotion of the three

convicts to their boss; for at this moment he was all their hope.

Jacques Collin, in spite of Madeleine’s peril, did not forget to play

his part. Though he knew the Conciergerie as well as he knew the hulks

in the three ports, he blundered so naturally that the warder had to

tell him, “This way, that way,” till they reached the office. There,

at a glance, Jacques Collin recognized a tall, stout man leaning on the

stove, with a long, red face not without distinction: it was Sanson.

“Monsieur is the chaplain?” said he, going towards him with simple

cordiality.

The mistake was so shocking that it froze the bystanders.

“No, monsieur,” said Sanson; “I have other functions.”

Sanson, the father of the last executioner of that name--for he has

recently been dismissed--was the son of the man who beheaded Louis XVI.

After four centuries of hereditary office, this descendant of so many

executioners had tried to repudiate the traditional burden. The Sansons

were for two hundred years executioners at Rouen before being promoted

to the first rank in the kingdom, and had carried out the decrees of

justice from father to son since the thirteenth century. Few families

can boast of an office or of nobility handed down in a direct line

during six centuries.

This young man had been captain in a cavalry regiment, and was looking

forward to a brilliant military career, when his father insisted on his

help in decapitating the king. Then he made his son his deputy when,

in 1793, two guillotines were in constant work--one at the Barriere du

Trone, and the other in the Place de Greve. This terrible functionary,

now a man of about sixty, was remarkable for his dignified air, his

gentle and deliberate manners, and his entire contempt for Bibi-Lupin

and his acolytes who fed the machine. The only detail which betrayed

the blood of the mediaeval executioner was the formidable breadth

and thickness of his hands. Well informed too, caring greatly for his

position as a citizen and an elector, and an enthusiastic florist, this

tall, brawny man with his low voice, his calm reserve, his few words,

and a high bald forehead, was like an English nobleman rather than an

executioner. And a Spanish priest would certainly have fallen into the

mistake which Jacques Collin had intentionally made.

“He is no convict!” said the head warder to the governor.

“I begin to think so too,” replied Monsieur Gault, with a nod to that

official.

Jacques Collin was led to the cellar-like room where Theodore Calvi,

in a straitwaistcoat, was sitting on the edge of the wretched camp bed.

_Trompe-la-Mort_, under a transient gleam of light from the passage,

at once recognized Bibi-Lupin in the gendarme who stood leaning on his

sword.

“Io sono Gaba-Morto. Parla nostro Italiano,” said Jacques Collin very

rapidly. “Vengo ti salvar.”

“I am _Trompe-la-Mort_. Talk our Italian. I have come to save you.”

All the two chums wanted to say had, of course, to be incomprehensible

to the pretended gendarme; and as Bibi-Lupin was left in charge of

the prisoner, he could not leave his post. The man’s fury was quite

indescribable.

Theodore Calvi, a young man with a pale olive complexion, light hair,

and hollow, dull, blue eyes, well built, hiding prodigious strength

under the lymphatic appearance that is not uncommon in Southerners,

would have had a charming face but for the strongly-arched eyebrows and

low forehead that gave him a sinister expression, scarlet lips of savage

cruelty, and a twitching of the muscles peculiar to Corsicans, denoting

that excessive irritability which makes them so prompt to kill in any

sudden squabble.

Theodore, startled at the sound of that voice, raised his head, and at

first thought himself the victim of a delusion; but as the experience

of two months had accustomed him to the darkness of this stone box,

he looked at the sham priest, and sighed deeply. He did not recognize

Jacques Collin, whose face, scarred by the application of sulphuric

acid, was not that of his old boss.

“It is really your Jacques; I am your confessor, and have come to get

you off. Do not be such a ninny as to know me; and speak as if you were

making a confession.” He spoke with the utmost rapidity. “This young

fellow is very much depressed; he is afraid to die, he will confess

everything,” said Jacques Collin, addressing the gendarme.

Bibi-Lupin dared not say a word for fear of being recognized.

“Say something to show me that you are he; you have nothing but his

voice,” said Theodore.

“You see, poor boy, he assures me that he is innocent,” said Jacques

Collin to Bibi-Lupin, who dared not speak for fear of being recognized.

“Sempre mi,” said Jacques, returning close to Theodore, and speaking the

word in his ear.

“Sempre ti,” replied Theodore, giving the countersign. “Yes, you are the

boss----”

“Did you do the trick?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me the whole story, that I may see what can be done to save you;

make haste, Jack Ketch is waiting.”

The Corsican at once knelt down and pretended to be about to confess.

Bibi-Lupin did not know what to do, for the conversation was so rapid

that it hardly took as much time as it does to read it. Theodore hastily

told all the details of the crime, of which Jacques Collin knew nothing.

“The jury gave their verdict without proof,” he said finally.

“Child! you want to argue when they are waiting to cut off your

hair----”

“But I might have been sent to spout the wedge.--And that is the way

they judge you!--and in Paris too!”

“But how did you do the job?” asked _Trompe-la-Mort_.

“Ah! there you are.--Since I saw you I made acquaintance with a girl, a

Corsican, I met when I came to Paris.”

“Men who are such fools as to love a woman,” cried Jacques Collin,

“always come to grief that way. They are tigers on the loose, tigers who

blab and look at themselves in the glass.--You were a gaby.”

“But----”

“Well, what good did she do you--that curse of a moll?”

“That duck of a girl--no taller than a bundle of firewood, as slippery

as an eel, and as nimble as a monkey--got in at the top of the oven,

and opened the front door. The dogs were well crammed with balls, and

as dead as herrings. I settled the two women. Then when I got the swag,

Ginetta locked the door and got out again by the oven.”

“Such a clever dodge deserves life,” said Jacques Collin, admiring the

execution of the crime as a sculptor admires the modeling of a figure.

“And I was fool enough to waste all that cleverness for a thousand

crowns!”

“No, for a woman,” replied Jacques Collin. “I tell you, they deprive

us of all our wits,” and Jacques Collin eyed Theodore with a flashing

glance of contempt.

“But you were not there!” said the Corsican; “I was all alone----”

“And do you love the slut?” asked Jacques Collin, feeling that the

reproach was a just one.

“Oh! I want to live, but it is for you now rather than for her.”

“Be quite easy, I am not called _Trompe-la-Mort_ for nothing. I

undertake the case.”

“What! life?” cried the lad, lifting his swaddled hands towards the damp

vault of the cell.

“My little Madeleine, prepare to be lagged for life (penal servitude),”

replied Jacques Collin. “You can expect no less; they won’t crown you

with roses like a fatted ox. When they first set us down for Rochefort,

it was because they wanted to be rid of us! But if I can get you

ticketed for Toulon, you can get out and come back to Pantin (Paris),

where I will find you a tidy way of living.”

A sigh such as had rarely been heard under that inexorable roof struck

the stones, which sent back the sound that has no fellow in music, to

the ear of the astounded Bibi-Lupin.

“It is the effect of the absolution I promised him in return for his

revelations,” said Jacques Collin to the gendarme. “These Corsicans,

monsieur, are full of faith! But he is as innocent as the Immaculate

Babe, and I mean to try to save him.”

“God bless you, Monsieur l’Abbe!” said Theodore in French.

_Trompe-la-Mort_, more Carlos Herrera, more the canon than ever,

left the condemned cell, rushed back to the hall, and appeared before

Monsieur Gault in affected horror.

“Indeed, sir, the young man is innocent; he has told me who the guilty

person is! He was ready to die for a false point of honor--he is a

Corsican! Go and beg the public prosecutor to grant me five minutes’

interview. Monsieur de Granville cannot refuse to listen at once to

a Spanish priest who is suffering so cruelly from the blunders of the

French police.”

“I will go,” said Monsieur Gault, to the extreme astonishment of all the

witnesses of this extraordinary scene.

“And meanwhile,” said Jacques, “send me back to the prison-yard where

I may finish the conversion of a criminal whose heart I have touched

already--they have hearts, these people!”

This speech produced a sensation in all who heard it. The gendarmes, the

registry clerk, Sanson, the warders, the executioner’s assistant--all

awaiting orders to go and get the scaffold ready--to rig up the machine,

in prison slang--all these people, usually so indifferent, were agitated

by very natural curiosity.

Just then the rattle of a carriage with high-stepping horses was heard;

it stopped very suggestively at the gate of the Conciergerie on the

quay. The door was opened, and the step let down in such haste, that

every one supposed that some great personage had arrived. Presently a

lady waving a sheet of blue paper came forward to the outer gate of the

prison, followed by a footman and a chasseur. Dressed very handsomely,

and all in black, with a veil over her bonnet, she was wiping her eyes

with a floridly embroidered handkerchief.

Jacques Collin at once recognized Asie, or, to give the woman her true

name, Jacqueline Collin, his aunt. This horrible old woman--worthy of

her nephew--whose thoughts were all centered in the prisoner, and who

was defending him with intelligence and mother-wit that were a match for

the powers of the law, had a permit made out the evening before in the

name of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse’s waiting-maid by the request of

Monsieur de Serizy, allowing her to see Lucien de Rubempre, and the Abbe

Carlos Herrera so soon as he should be brought out of the secret cells.

On this the Colonel, who was the Governor-in-Chief of all the prisons

had written a few words, and the mere color of the paper revealed

powerful influences; for these permits, like theatre-tickets, differ in

shape and appearance.

So the turnkey hastened to open the gate, especially when he saw the

chasseur with his plumes and an uniform of green and gold as dazzling as

a Russian General’s, proclaiming a lady of aristocratic rank and almost

royal birth.

“Oh, my dear Abbe!” exclaimed this fine lady, shedding a torrent of

tears at the sight of the priest, “how could any one ever think of

putting such a saintly man in here, even by mistake?”

The Governor took the permit and read, “Introduced by His Excellency the

Comte de Serizy.”

“Ah! Madame de San-Esteban, Madame la Marquise,” cried Carlos Herrera,

“what admirable devotion!”

“But, madame, such interviews are against the rules,” said the good

old Governor. And he intercepted the advance of this bale of black

watered-silk and lace.

“But at such a distance!” said Jacques Collin, “and in your

presence----” and he looked round at the group.

His aunt, whose dress might well dazzle the clerk, the Governor,

the warders, and the gendarmes, stank of musk. She had on, besides

a thousand crowns of lace, a black India cashmere shawl, worth six

thousand francs. And her chasseur was marching up and down outside with

the insolence of a lackey who knows that he is essential to an exacting

princess. He spoke never a word to the footman, who stood by the gate on

the quay, which is always open by day.

“What do you wish? What can I do?” said Madame de San-Esteban in the

lingo agreed upon by this aunt and nephew.

This dialect consisted in adding terminations in ar or in or, or in al

or in i to every word, whether French or slang, so as to disguise it by

lengthening it. It was a diplomatic cipher adapted to speech.

“Put all the letters in some safe place; take out those that are most

likely to compromise the ladies; come back, dressed very poorly, to the

_Salle des Pas-Perdus_, and wait for my orders.”

Asie, otherwise Jacqueline, knelt as if to receive his blessing, and the

sham priest blessed his aunt with evengelical unction.

“Addio, Marchesa,” said he aloud. “And,” he added in their private

language, “find Europe and Paccard with the seven hundred and fifty

thousand francs they bagged. We must have them.”

“Paccard is out there,” said the pious Marquise, pointing to the

chasseur, her eyes full of tears.

This intuitive comprehension brought not merely a smile to the man’s

lips, but a gesture of surprise; no one could astonish him but his

aunt. The sham Marquise turned to the bystanders with the air of a woman

accustomed to give herself airs.

“He is in despair at being unable to attend his son’s funeral,” said

she in broken French, “for this monstrous miscarriage of justice

has betrayed the saintly man’s secret.--I am going to the funeral

mass.--Here, monsieur,” she added to the Governor, handing him a purse

of gold, “this is to give your poor prisoners some comforts.”

“What slap-up style!” her nephew whispered in approval.

Jacques Collin then followed the warder, who led him back to the yard.

Bibi-Lupin, quite desperate, had at last caught the eye of a real

gendarme, to whom, since Jacques Collin had gone, he had been addressing

significant “Ahems,” and who took his place on guard in the condemned

cell. But _Trompe-la-Mort’s_ sworn foe was released too late to see

the great lady, who drove off in her dashing turn-out, and whose voice,

though disguised, fell on his ear with a vicious twang.

“Three hundred shiners for the boarders,” said the head warder, showing

Bibi-Lupin the purse, which Monsieur Gault had handed over to his clerk.

“Let’s see, Monsieur Jacomety,” said Bibi-Lupin.

The police agent took the purse, poured out the money into his hand, and

examined it curiously.

“Yes, it is gold, sure enough!” said he, “and a coat-of-arms on the

purse! The scoundrel! How clever he is! What an all-round villain! He

does us all brown----and all the time! He ought to be shot down like a

dog!”

“Why, what’s the matter?” asked the clerk, taking back the money.

“The matter! Why, the hussy stole it!” cried Bibi-Lupin, stamping with

rage on the flags of the gateway.

The words produced a great sensation among the spectators, who were

standing at a little distance from Monsieur Sanson. He, too, was still

standing, his back against the large stove in the middle of the vaulted

hall, awaiting the order to crop the felon’s hair and erect the scaffold

on the Place de Greve.

On re-entering the yard, Jacques Collin went towards his chums at a pace

suited to a frequenter of the galleys.

“What have you on your mind?” said he to la Pouraille.

“My game is up,” said the man, whom Jacques Collin led into a corner.

“What I want now is a pal I can trust.”

“What for?”

La Pouraille, after telling the tale of all his crimes, but in thieves’

slang, gave an account of the murder and robbery of the two Crottats.

“You have my respect,” said Jacques Collin. “The job was well done; but

you seem to me to have blundered afterwards.”

“In what way?”

“Well, having done the trick, you ought to have had a Russian

passport, have made up as a Russian prince, bought a fine coach with a

coat-of-arms on it, have boldly deposited your money in a bank, have got

a letter of credit on Hamburg, and then have set out posting to Hamburg

with a valet, a ladies’ maid, and your mistress disguised as a Russian

princess. At Hamburg you should have sailed for Mexico. A chap of

spirit, with two hundred and eighty thousand francs in gold, ought to be

able to do what he pleases and go where he pleases, flathead!”

“Oh yes, you have such notions because you are the boss. Your nut is

always square on your shoulders--but I----”

“In short, a word of good advice in your position is like broth to a

dead man,” said Jacques Collin, with a serpentlike gaze at his old pal.

“True enough!” said la Pouraille, looking dubious. “But give me the

broth, all the same. If it does not suit my stomach, I can warm my feet

in it----”

“Here you are nabbed by the Justice, with five robberies and three

murders, the latest of them those of two rich and respectable folks....

Now, juries do not like to see respectable folks killed. You will be put

through the machine, and there is not a chance for you.”

“I have heard all that,” said la Pouraille lamentably.

“My aunt Jacqueline, with whom I have just exchanged a few words in the

office, and who is, as you know, a mother to the pals, told me that the

authorities mean to be quit of you; they are so much afraid of you.”

“But I am rich now,” said La Pouraille, with a simplicity which showed

how convinced a thief is of his natural right to steal. “What are they

afraid of?”

“We have no time for philosophizing,” said Jacques Collin. “To come back

to you----”

“What do you want with me?” said la Pouraille, interrupting his boss.

“You shall see. A dead dog is still worth something.”

“To other people,” said la Pouraille.

“I take you into my game!” said Jacques Collin.

“Well, that is something,” said the murderer. “What next?”

“I do not ask you where your money is, but what you mean to do with it?”

La Pouraille looked into the convict’s impenetrable eye, and Jacques

coldly went on: “Have you a trip you are sweet upon, or a child, or a

pal to be helped? I shall be outside within an hour, and I can do much

for any one you want to be good-natured to.”

La Pouraille still hesitated; he was delaying with indecision. Jacques

Collin produced a clinching argument.

“Your whack of our money would be thirty thousand francs. Do you leave

it to the pals? Do you bequeath it to anybody? Your share is safe; I can

give it this evening to any one you leave it to.”

The murderer gave a little start of satisfaction.

“I have him!” said Jacques Collin to himself. “But we have no time to

play. Consider,” he went on in la Pouraille’s ear, “we have not ten

minutes to spare, old chap; the public prosecutor is to send for me,

and I am to have a talk with him. I have him safe, and can ring the old

boss’ neck. I am certain I shall save Madeleine.”

“If you save Madeleine, my good boss, you can just as easily----”

“Don’t waste your spittle,” said Jacques Collin shortly. “Make your

will.”

“Well, then--I want to leave the money to la Gonore,” replied la

Pouraille piteously.

“What! Are you living with Moses’ widow--the Jew who led the swindling

gang in the South?” asked Jacques Collin.

For _Trompe-la-Mort_, like a great general, knew the person of every one

of his army.

“That’s the woman,” said la Pouraille, much flattered.

“A pretty woman,” said Jacques Collin, who knew exactly how to manage

his dreadful tools. “The moll is a beauty; she is well informed, and

stands by her mates, and a first-rate hand. Yes, la Gonore has made a

new man of you! What a flat you must be to risk your nut when you have

a trip like her at home! You noodle; you should have set up some

respectable little shop and lived quietly.--And what does she do?”

“She is settled in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, managing a house----”

“And she is to be your legatee? Ah, my dear boy, this is what such sluts

bring us to when we are such fools as to love them.”

“Yes, but don’t you give her anything till I am done for.”

“It is a sacred trust,” said Jacques Collin very seriously.

“And nothing to the pals?”

“Nothing! They blowed the gaff for me,” answered la Pouraille

vindictively.

“Who did? Shall I serve ‘em out?” asked Jacques Collin eagerly, trying

to rouse the last sentiment that survives in these souls till the last

hour. “Who knows, old pal, but I might at the same time do them a bad

turn and serve you with the public prosecutor?”

The murderer looked at his boss with amazed satisfaction.

“At this moment,” the boss replied to this expressive look, “I am

playing the game only for Theodore. When this farce is played out, old

boy, I might do wonders for a chum--for you are a chum of mine.”

“If I see that you really can put off the engagement for that poor

little Theodore, I will do anything you choose--there!”

“But the trick is done. I am sure to save his head. If you want to get

out of the scrape, you see, la Pouraille, you must be ready to do a good

turn--we can do nothing single-handed----”

“That’s true,” said the felon.

His confidence was so strong, and his faith in the boss so fanatical,

that he no longer hesitated. La Pouraille revealed the names of his

accomplices, a secret hitherto well kept. This was all Jacques needed to

know.

“That is the whole story. Ruffard was the third in the job with me and

Godet----”

“Arrache-Laine?” cried Jacques Collin, giving Ruffard his nickname among

the gang.

“That’s the man.--And the blackguards peached because I knew where they

had hidden their whack, and they did not know where mine was.”

“You are making it all easy, my cherub!” said Jacques Collin.

“What?”

“Well,” replied the master, “you see how wise it is to trust me

entirely. Your revenge is now part of the hand I am playing.--I do

not ask you to tell me where the dibs are, you can tell me at the last

moment; but tell me all about Ruffard and Godet.”

“You are, and you always will be, our boss; I have no secrets from you,”

replied la Pouraille. “My money is in the cellar at la Gonore’s.”

“And you are not afraid of her telling?”

“Why, get along! She knows nothing about my little game!” replied la

Pouraille. “I make her drunk, though she is of the sort that would never

blab even with her head under the knife.--But such a lot of gold----!”

“Yes, that turns the milk of the purest conscience,” replied Jacques

Collin.

“So I could do the job with no peepers to spy me. All the chickens

were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet underground behind some

wine-bottles. And I spread some stones and mortar over them.”

“Good,” said Jacques Collin. “And the others?”

“Ruffard’s pieces are with la Gonore in the poor woman’s bedroom, and

he has her tight by that, for she might be nabbed as accessory after the

fact, and end her days in Saint-Lazare.”

“The villain! The reelers teach a thief what’s what,” said Jacques.

“Godet left his pieces at his sister’s, a washerwoman; honest girl, she

may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it. The pal

raised the tiles of the floor, put them back again, and guyed.”

“Now do you know what I want you to do?” said Jacques Collin, with a

magnetizing gaze at la Pouraille.

“What?”

“I want you to take Madeleine’s job on your shoulders.”

La Pouraille started queerly; but he at once recovered himself and stood

at attention under the boss’ eye.

“So you shy at that? You dare to spoil my game? Come, now! Four murders

or three. Does it not come to the same thing?”

“Perhaps.”

“By the God of good-fellowship, there is no blood in your veins! And I

was thinking of saving you!”

“How?”

“Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family, you will

only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for your nut if we

keep the blunt, but at this moment you are worth seven hundred thousand

francs, you flat.”

“Good for you, boss!” cried la Pouraille in great glee.

“And then,” said Jacques Collin, “besides casting all the murders on

Ruffard--Bibi-Lupin will be finely cold. I have him this time.”

La Pouraille was speechless at this suggestion; his eyes grew round, and

he stood like an image.

He had been three months in custody, and was committed for trial, and

his chums at La Force, to whom he had never mentioned his accomplices,

had given him such small comfort, that he was entirely hopeless after

his examination, and this simple expedient had been quite overlooked by

these prison-ridden minds. This semblance of a hope almost stupefied his

brain.

“Have Ruffard and Godet had their spree yet? Have they forked out any of

the yellow boys?” asked Jacques Collin.

“They dare not,” replied la Pouraille. “The wretches are waiting till

I am turned off. That is what my moll sent me word by la Biffe when she

came to see le Biffon.”

“Very well; we will have their whack of money in twenty-four hours,”

said Jacques Collin. “Then the blackguards cannot pay up, as you will;

you will come out as white as snow, and they will be red with all that

blood! By my kind offices you will seem a good sort of fellow led away

by them. I shall have money enough of yours to prove alibis on the other

counts, and when you are back on the hulks--for you are bound to go

there--you must see about escaping. It is a dog’s life, still it is

life!”

La Pouraille’s eyes glittered with suppressed delirium.

“With seven hundred thousand francs you can get a good many drinks,”

said Jacques Collin, making his pal quite drunk with hope.

“Ay, ay, boss!”

“I can bamboozle the Minister of Justice.--Ah, ha! Ruffard will shell

out to do for a reeler. Bibi-Lupin is fairly gulled!”

“Very good, it is a bargain,” said la Pouraille with savage glee. “You

order, and I obey.”

And he hugged Jacques Collin in his arms, while tears of joy stood in

his eyes, so hopeful did he feel of saving his head.

“That is not all,” said Jacques Collin; “the public prosecutor does not

swallow everything, you know, especially when a new count is entered

against you. The next thing is to bring a moll into the case by blowing

the gaff.”

“But how, and what for?”

“Do as I bid you; you will see.” And _Trompe-la-Mort_ briefly told the

secret of the Nanterre murders, showing him how necessary it was to find

a woman who would pretend to be Ginetta. Then he and la Pouraille, now

in good spirits, went across to le Biffon.

“I know how sweet you are on la Biffe,” said Jacques Collin to this man.

The expression in le Biffon’s eyes was a horrible poem.

“What will she do while you are on the hulks?”

A tear sparkled in le Biffon’s fierce eyes.

“Well, suppose I were to get her lodgings in the Lorcefe des Largues”

(the women’s La Force, i. e. les Madelonnettes or Saint-Lazare) “for a

stretch, allowing that time for you to be sentenced and sent there, to

arrive and to escape?”

“Even you cannot work such a miracle. She took no part in the job,”

replied la Biffe’s partner.

“Oh, my good Biffon,” said la Pouraille, “our boss is more powerful than

God Almighty.”

“What is your password for her?” asked Jacques Collin, with the

assurance of a master to whom nothing can be refused.

“Sorgue a Pantin (night in Paris). If you say that she knows you have

come from me, and if you want her to do as you bid her, show her a

five-franc piece and say Tondif.”

“She will be involved in the sentence on la Pouraille, and let off

with a year in quod for snitching,” said Jacques Collin, looking at la

Pouraille.

La Pouraille understood his boss’ scheme, and by a single look promised

to persuade le Biffon to promote it by inducing la Biffe to take upon

herself this complicity in the crime la Pouraille was prepared to

confess.

“Farewell, my children. You will presently hear that I have saved my

boy from Jack Ketch,” said _Trompe-la-Mort_. “Yes, Jack Ketch and his

hairdresser were waiting in the office to get Madeleine ready.--There,”

he added, “they have come to fetch me to go to the public prosecutor.”

And, in fact, a warder came out of the gate and beckoned to this

extraordinary man, who, in face of the young Corsican’s danger, had

recovered his own against his own society.

It is worthy of note that at the moment when Lucien’s body was taken

away from him, Jacques Collin had, with a crowning effort, made up

his mind to attempt a last incarnation, not as a human being, but as

a _thing_. He had at last taken the fateful step that Napoleon took

on board the boat which conveyed him to the Bellerophon. And a strange

concurrence of events aided this genius of evil and corruption in his

undertaking.

But though the unlooked-for conclusion of this life of crime may perhaps

be deprived of some of the marvelous effect which, in our day, can

be given to a narrative only by incredible improbabilities, it is

necessary, before we accompany Jacques Collin to the public prosecutor’s

room, that we should follow Madame Camusot in her visits during the time

we have spent in the Conciergerie.

One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly

observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic

arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself

romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks

of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it

constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity

of facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of

“situation” forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and

purified by the writer.

Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the morning almost in

good taste--a difficult task for the wife of a judge who for six years

has lived in a provincial town. Her object was to give no hold for

criticism to the Marquise d’Espard or the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, in

a call so early as between eight and nine in the morning. Amelie Cecile

Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only half succeeded; and in a

matter of dress is this not a twofold blunder?

Few people can imagine how useful the women of Paris are to ambitious

men of every class; they are equally necessary in the world of fashion

and the world of thieves, where, as we have seen, they fill a most

important part. For instance, suppose that a man, not to find himself

left in the lurch, must absolutely get speech within a given time

with the high functionary who was of such immense importance under the

Restoration, and who is to this day called the Keeper of the Seals--a

man, let us say, in the most favorable position, a judge, that is to

say, a man familiar with the way of things. He is compelled to seek out

the presiding judge of a circuit, or some private or official secretary,

and prove to him his need of an immediate interview. But is a Keeper of

the Seals ever visible “that very minute”? In the middle of the day, if

he is not at the Chamber, he is at the Privy Council, or signing papers,

or hearing a case. In the early morning he is out, no one knows

where. In the evening he has public and private engagements. If every

magistrate could claim a moment’s interview under any pretext that might

occur to him, the Supreme Judge would be besieged.

The purpose of a private and immediate interview is therefore submitted

to the judgment of one of those mediatory potentates who are but an

obstacle to be removed, a door that can be unlocked, so long as it is

not held by a rival. A woman at once goes to another woman; she can get

straight into her bedroom if she can arouse the curiosity of mistress

or maid, especially if the mistress is under the stress of a strong

interest or pressing necessity.

Call this female potentate Madame la Marquise d’Espard, with whom a

Minister has to come to terms; this woman writes a little scented note,

which her man-servant carries to the Minister’s man-servant. The note

greets the Minister on his waking, and he reads it at once. Though

the Minister has business to attend to, the man is enchanted to have a

reason for calling on one of the Queens of Paris, one of the Powers of

the Faubourg Saint-Germain, one of the favorites of the Dauphiness, of

MADAME, or of the King. Casimir Perier, the only real statesman of the

Revolution of July, would leave anything to call on a retired Gentleman

of the bed-chamber to King Charles X.

This theory accounts for the magical effect of the words:

“Madame,--Madame Camusot, on very important business, which she says you

know of,” spoken in Madame d’Espard’s ear by her maid, who thought she

was awake.

And the Marquise desired that Amelie should be shown in at once.

The magistrate’s wife was attentively heard when she began with these

words:

“Madame la Marquise, we have ruined ourselves by trying to avenge

you----”

“How is that, my dear?” replied the Marquise, looking at Madame Camusot

in the dim light that fell through the half-open door. “You are vastly

sweet this morning in that little bonnet. Where do you get that shape?”

“You are very kind, madame.--Well, you know that Camusot’s way of

examining Lucien de Rubempre drove the young man to despair, and he

hanged himself in prison.”

“Oh, what will become of Madame de Serizy?” cried the Marquise,

affecting ignorance, that she might hear the whole story once more.

“Alas! they say she is quite mad,” said Amelie. “If you could persuade

the Lord Keeper to send for my husband this minute, by special

messenger, to meet him at the Palais, the Minister would hear some

strange mysteries, and report them, no doubt, to the King.... Then

Camusot’s enemies would be reduced to silence.”

“But who are Camusot’s enemies?” asked Madame d’Espard.

“The public prosecutor, and now Monsieur de Serizy.”

“Very good, my dear,” replied Madame d’Espard, who owed to Monsieur

de Granville and the Comte de Serizy her defeat in the disgraceful

proceedings by which she had tried to have her husband treated as

a lunatic, “I will protect you; I never forget either my foes or my

friends.”

She rang; the maid drew open the curtains, and daylight flooded the

room; she asked for her desk, and the maid brought it in. The Marquise

hastily scrawled a few lines.

“Tell Godard to go on horseback, and carry this note to the Chancellor’s

office.--There is no reply,” said she to the maid.

The woman went out of the room quickly, but, in spite of the order,

remained at the door for some minutes.

“There are great mysteries going forward then?” asked Madame d’Espard.

“Tell me all about it, dear child. Has Clotilde de Grandlieu put a

finger in the pie?”

“You will know everything from the Lord Keeper, for my husband has told

me nothing. He only told me he was in danger. It would be better for us

that Madame de Serizy should die than that she should remain mad.”

“Poor woman!” said the Marquise. “But was she not mad already?”

Women of the world, by a hundred ways of pronouncing the same phrase,

illustrate to attentive hearers the infinite variety of musical modes.

The soul goes out into the voice as it does into the eyes; it vibrates

in light and in air--the elements acted on by the eyes and the voice. By

the tone she gave to the two words, “Poor woman!” the Marquise betrayed

the joy of satisfied hatred, the pleasure of triumph. Oh! what woes did

she not wish to befall Lucien’s protectress. Revenge, which nothing can

assuage, which can survive the person hated, fills us with dark terrors.

And Madame Camusot, though harsh herself, vindictive, and quarrelsome,

was overwhelmed. She could find nothing to say, and was silent.

“Diane told me that Leontine went to the prison,” Madame d’Espard went

on. “The dear Duchess is in despair at such a scandal, for she is

so foolish as to be very fond of Madame de Serizy; however, it is

comprehensible: they both adored that little fool Lucien at about the

same time, and nothing so effectually binds or severs two women as

worshiping at the same altar. And our dear friend spent two hours

yesterday in Leontine’s room. The poor Countess, it seems, says dreadful

things! I heard that it was disgusting! A woman of rank ought not to

give way to such attacks.--Bah! A purely physical passion.--The Duchess

came to see me as pale as death; she really was very brave. There are

monstrous things connected with this business.”

“My husband will tell the Keeper of the Seals all he knows for his

own justification, for they wanted to save Lucien, and he, Madame la

Marquise, did his duty. An examining judge always has to question people

in private at the time fixed by law! He had to ask the poor little

wretch something, if only for form’s sake, and the young fellow did not

understand, and confessed things----”

“He was an impertinent fool!” said Madame d’Espard in a hard tone.

The judge’s wife kept silence on hearing this sentence.

“Though we failed in the matter of the Commission in Lunacy, it was not

Camusot’s fault, I shall never forget that,” said the Marquise after

a pause. “It was Lucien, Monsieur de Serizy, Monsieur de Bauvan, and

Monsieur de Granville who overthrew us. With time God will be on my

side; all those people will come to grief.--Be quite easy, I will send

the Chevalier d’Espard to the Keeper of the Seals that he may desire

your husbands’s presence immediately, if that is of any use.”

“Oh! madame----”

“Listen,” said the Marquise. “I promise you the ribbon of the Legion

of Honor at once--to-morrow. It will be a conspicuous testimonial of

satisfaction with your conduct in this affair. Yes, it implies further

blame on Lucien; it will prove him guilty. Men do not commonly hang

themselves for the pleasure of it.--Now, good-bye, my pretty dear----”

Ten minutes later Madame Camusot was in the bedroom of the beautiful

Diane de Maufrigneuse, who had not gone to bed till one, and at nine

o’clock had not yet slept.

However insensible duchesses may be, even these women, whose hearts

are of stone, cannot see a friend a victim to madness without being

painfully impressed by it.

And besides, the connection between Diane and Lucien, though at an end

now eighteen months since, had left such memories with the Duchess that

the poor boy’s disastrous end had been to her also a fearful blow. All

night Diane had seen visions of the beautiful youth, so charming,

so poetical, who had been so delightful a lover--painted as Leontine

depicted him, with the vividness of wild delirium. She had letters from

Lucien that she had kept, intoxicating letters worthy to compare with

Mirabeau’s to Sophie, but more literary, more elaborate, for Lucien’s

letters had been dictated by the most powerful of passions--Vanity.

Having the most bewitching of duchesses for his mistress, and seeing her

commit any folly for him--secret follies, of course--had turned Lucien’s

head with happiness. The lover’s pride had inspired the poet. And the

Duchess had treasured these touching letters, as some old men keep

indecent prints, for the sake of their extravagant praise of all that

was least duchess-like in her nature.

“And he died in a squalid prison!” cried she to herself, putting the

letters away in a panic when she heard her maid knocking gently at her

door.

“Madame Camusot,” said the woman, “on business of the greatest

importance to you, Madame la Duchesse.”

Diane sprang to her feet in terror.

“Oh!” cried she, looking at Amelie, who had assumed a duly condoling

air, “I guess it all--my letters! It is about my letters. Oh, my

letters, my letters!”

She sank on to a couch. She remembered now how, in the extravagance of

her passion, she had answered Lucien in the same vein, had lauded the

man’s poetry as he has sung the charms of the woman, and in what a

strain!

“Alas, yes, madame, I have come to save what is dearer to you than

life--your honor. Compose yourself and get dressed, we must go to the

Duchesse de Grandlieu; happily for you, you are not the only person

compromised.”

“But at the Palais, yesterday, Leontine burned, I am told, all the

letters found at poor Lucien’s.”

“But, madame, behind Lucien there was Jacques Collin!” cried the

magistrate’s wife. “You always forget that horrible companionship which

beyond question led to that charming and lamented young man’s end. That

Machiavelli of the galleys never loses his head! Monsieur Camusot is

convinced that the wretch has in some safe hiding-place all the most

compromising letters written by you ladies to his----”

“His friend,” the Duchess hastily put in. “You are right, my child.

We must hold council at the Grandlieus’. We are all concerned in this

matter, and Serizy happily will lend us his aid.”

Extreme peril--as we have observed in the scenes in the

Conciergerie--has a hold over the soul not less terrible than that of

powerful reagents over the body. It is a mental Voltaic battery. The

day, perhaps, is not far off when the process shall be discovered

by which feeling is chemically converted into a fluid not unlike the

electric fluid.

The phenomena were the same in the convict and the Duchess. This

crushed, half-dying woman, who had not slept, who was so particular over

her dressing, had recovered the strength of a lioness at bay, and the

presence of mind of a general under fire. Diane chose her gown and got

through her dressing with the alacrity of a grisette who is her own

waiting-woman. It was so astounding, that the lady’s-maid stood for a

moment stock-still, so greatly was she surprised to see her mistress

in her shift, not ill pleased perhaps to let the judge’s wife discern

through the thin cloud of lawn a form as white and as perfect as that

of Canova’s Venus. It was like a gem in a fold of tissue paper. Diane

suddenly remembered where a pair of stays had been put that fastened

in front, sparing a woman in a hurry the ill-spent time and fatigue of

being laced. She had arranged the lace trimming of her shift and the

fulness of the bosom by the time the maid had fetched her petticoat, and

crowned the work by putting on her gown. While Amelie, at a sign from

the maid, hooked the bodice behind, the woman brought out a pair of

thread stockings, velvet boots, a shawl, and a bonnet. Amelie and the

maid each drew on a stocking.

“You are the loveliest creature I ever saw!” said Amelie, insidiously

kissing Diane’s elegant and polished knee with an eager impulse.

“Madame has not her match!” cried the maid.

“There, there, Josette, hold your tongue,” replied the Duchess.--“Have

you a carriage?” she went on, to Madame Camusot. “Then come along, my

dear, we can talk on the road.”

And the Duchess ran down the great stairs of the Hotel de Cadignan,

putting on her gloves as she went--a thing she had never been known to

do.

“To the Hotel de Grandlieu, and drive fast,” said she to one of her men,

signing to him to get up behind.

The footman hesitated--it was a hackney coach.

“Ah! Madame la Duchesse, you never told me that the young man had

letters of yours. Otherwise Camusot would have proceeded differently...”

“Leontine’s state so occupied my thoughts that I forgot myself entirely.

The poor woman was almost crazy the day before yesterday; imagine the

effect on her of this tragical termination. If you could only know,

child, what a morning we went through yesterday! It is enough to make

one forswear love!--Yesterday Leontine and I were dragged across Paris

by a horrible old woman, an old-clothes buyer, a domineering creature,

to that stinking and blood-stained sty they call the Palace of Justice,

and I said to her as I took her there: ‘Is not this enough to make us

fall on our knees and cry out like Madame de Nucingen, when she went

through one of those awful Mediterranean storms on her way to Naples,

“Dear God, save me this time, and never again----!”’

“These two days will certainly have shortened my life.--What fools we

are ever to write!--But love prompts us; we receive pages that fire the

heart through the eyes, and everything is in a blaze! Prudence deserts

us--we reply----”

“But why reply when you can act?” said Madame Camusot.

“It is grand to lose oneself utterly!” cried the Duchess with pride. “It

is the luxury of the soul.”

“Beautiful women are excusable,” said Madame Camusot modestly. “They

have more opportunities of falling than we have.”

The Duchess smiled.

“We are always too generous,” said Diane de Maufrigneuse. “I shall do

just like that odious Madame d’Espard.”

“And what does she do?” asked the judge’s wife, very curious.

“She has written a thousand love-notes----”

“So many!” exclaimed Amelie, interrupting the Duchess.

“Well, my dear, and not a word that could compromise her is to be found

in any one of them.”

“You would be incapable of maintaining such coldness, such caution,”

said Madame Camusot. “You are a woman; you are one of those angels who

cannot stand out against the devil----”

“I have made a vow to write no more letters. I never in my life wrote

to anybody but that unhappy Lucien.--I will keep his letters to my dying

day! My dear child, they are fire, and sometimes we want----”

“But if they were found!” said Amelie, with a little shocked expression.

“Oh! I should say they were part of a romance I was writing; for I have

copied them all, my dear, and burned the originals.”

“Oh, madame, as a reward allow me to read them.”

“Perhaps, child,” said the Duchess. “And then you will see that he did

not write such letters as those to Leontine.”

This speech was woman all the world over, of every age and every land.

Madame Camusot, like the frog in la Fontaine’s fable, was ready to burst

her skin with the joy of going to the Grandlieus’ in the society of the

beautiful Diane de Maufrigneuse. This morning she would forge one of the

links that are so needful to ambition. She could already hear herself

addressed as Madame la Presidente. She felt the ineffable gladness of

triumphing over stupendous obstacles, of which the greatest was her

husband’s ineptitude, as yet unrevealed, but to her well known. To win

success for a second-rate man! that is to a woman--as to a king--the

delight which tempts great actors when they act a bad play a hundred

times over. It is the very drunkenness of egoism. It is in a way the

Saturnalia of power.

Power can prove itself to itself only by the strange misapplication

which leads it to crown some absurd person with the laurels of success

while insulting genius--the only strong-hold which power cannot touch.

The knighting of Caligula’s horse, an imperial farce, has been, and

always will be, a favorite performance.

In a few minutes Diane and Amelie had exchanged the elegant disorder

of the fair Diane’s bedroom for the severe but dignified and splendid

austerity of the Duchesse de Grandlieu’s rooms.

She, a Portuguese, and very pious, always rose at eight to attend

mass at the little church of Sainte-Valere, a chapelry to Saint-Thomas

d’Aquin, standing at that time on the esplanade of the Invalides. This

chapel, now destroyed, was rebuilt in the Rue de Bourgogne, pending the

building of a Gothic church to be dedicated to Sainte-Clotilde.

On hearing the first words spoken in her ear by Diane de Maufrigneuse,

this saintly lady went to find Monsieur de Grandlieu, and brought him

back at once. The Duke threw a flashing look at Madame Camusot, one of

those rapid glances with which a man of the world can guess at a whole

existence, or often read a soul. Amelie’s dress greatly helped the Duke

to decipher the story of a middle-class life, from Alencon to Mantes,

and from Mantes to Paris.

Oh! if only the lawyer’s wife could have understood this gift in dukes,

she could never have endured that politely ironical look; she saw the

politeness only. Ignorance shares the privileges of fine breeding.

“This is Madame Camusot, a daughter of Thirion’s--one of the Cabinet

ushers,” said the Duchess to her husband.

The Duke bowed with extreme politeness to the wife of a legal official,

and his face became a little less grave.

The Duke had rung for his valet, who now came in.

“Go to the Rue Saint-Honore: take a coach. Ring at a side door, No. 10.

Tell the man who opens the door that I beg his master will come here,

and if the gentleman is at home, bring him back with you.--Mention my

name, that will remove all difficulties.

“And do not be gone more than a quarter of an hour in all.”

Another footman, the Duchess’ servant, came in as soon as the other was

gone.

“Go from me to the Duc de Chaulieu, and send up this card.”

The Duke gave him a card folded down in a particular way. When the two

friends wanted to meet at once, on any urgent or confidential business

which would not allow of note-writing, they used this means of

communication.

Thus we see that similar customs prevail in every rank of society,

and differ only in manner, civility, and small details. The world of

fashion, too, has its argot, its slang; but that slang is called style.

“Are you quite sure, madame, of the existence of the letters you say

were written by Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu to this young man?”

said the Duc de Grandlieu.

And he cast a look at Madame Camusot as a sailor casts a sounding line.

“I have not seen them, but there is reason to fear it,” replied Madame

Camusot, quaking.

“My daughter can have written nothing we would not own to!” said the

Duchess.

“Poor Duchess!” thought Diane, with a glance at the Duke that terrified

him.

“What do you think, my dear little Diane?” said the Duke in a whisper,

as he led her away into a recess.

“Clotilde is so crazy about Lucien, my dear friend, that she had made

an assignation with him before leaving. If it had not been for little

Lenoncourt, she would perhaps have gone off with him into the forest

of Fontainebleau. I know that Lucien used to write letters to her which

were enough to turn the brain of a saint.--We are three daughters of Eve

in the coils of the serpent of letter-writing.”

The Duke and Diane came back to the Duchess and Madame Camusot, who were

talking in undertones. Amelie, following the advice of the Duchesse de

Maufrigneuse, affected piety to win the proud lady’s favor.

“We are at the mercy of a dreadful escaped convict!” said the Duke, with

a peculiar shrug. “This is what comes of opening one’s house to people

one is not absolutely sure of. Before admitting an acquaintance, one

ought to know all about his fortune, his relations, all his previous

history----”

This speech is the moral of my story--from the aristocratic point of

view.

“That is past and over,” said the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. “Now we must

think of saving that poor Madame de Serizy, Clotilde, and me----”

“We can but wait for Henri; I have sent to him. But everything really

depends on the man Gentil is gone to fetch. God grant that man may be

in Paris!--Madame,” he added to Madame Camusot, “thank you so much for

having thought of us----”

This was Madame Camusot’s dismissal. The daughter of the court usher

had wit enough to understand the Duke; she rose. But the Duchess de

Maufrigneuse, with the enchanting grace which had won her so much

friendship and discretion, took Amelie by the hand as if to show her, in

a way, to the Duke and Duchess.

“On my own account,” said she, “to say nothing of her having been up

before daybreak to save us all, I may ask for more than a remembrance

for my little Madame Camusot. In the first place, she has already done

me such a service as I cannot forget; and then she is wholly devoted to

our side, she and her husband. I have promised that her Camusot shall

have advancement, and I beg you above everything to help him on, for my

sake.”

“You need no such recommendation,” said the Duke to Madame Camusot. “The

Grandlieus always remember a service done them. The King’s adherents

will ere long have a chance of distinguishing themselves; they will be

called upon to prove their devotion; your husband will be placed in the

front----”

Madame Camusot withdrew, proud, happy, puffed up to suffocation. She

reached home triumphant; she admired herself, she made light of the

public prosecutor’s hostility. She said to herself:

“Supposing we were to send Monsieur de Granville flying----”

It was high time for Madame Camusot to vanish. The Duc de Chaulieu, one

of the King’s prime favorites, met the bourgeoise on the outer steps.

“Henri,” said the Duc de Grandlieu when he heard his friend announced,

“make haste, I beg of you, to get to the Chateau, try to see the

King--the business of this;” and he led the Duke into the window-recess,

where he had been talking to the airy and charming Diane.

Now and then the Duc de Chaulieu glanced in the direction of the flighty

Duchess, who, while talking to the pious Duchess and submitting to be

lectured, answered the Duc de Chaulieu’s expressive looks.

“My dear child,” said the Duc de Grandlieu to her at last, the _aside_

being ended, “do be good! Come, now,” and he took Diane’s hands,

“observe the proprieties of life, do not compromise yourself any more,

write no letters. Letters, my dear, have caused as much private woe as

public mischief. What might be excusable in a girl like Clotilde, in

love for the first time, had no excuse in----”

“An old soldier who has been under fire,” said Diane with a pout.

This grimace and the Duchess’ jest brought a smile to the face of the

two much-troubled Dukes, and of the pious Duchess herself.

“But for four years I have never written a billet-doux.--Are we saved?”

asked Diane, who hid her curiosity under this childishness.

“Not yet,” said the Duc de Chaulieu. “You have no notion how difficult

it is to do an arbitrary thing. In a constitutional king it is what

infidelity is in a wife: it is adultery.”

“The fascinating sin,” said the Duc de Grandlieu.

“Forbidden fruit!” said Diane, smiling. “Oh! how I wish I were the

Government, for I have none of that fruit left--I have eaten it all.”

“Oh! my dear, my dear!” said the elder Duchess, “you really go too far.”

The two Dukes, hearing a coach stop at the door with the clatter of

horses checked in full gallop, bowed to the ladies and left them, going

into the Duc de Grandlieu’s study, whither came the gentleman from the

Rue Honore-Chevalier--no less a man than the chief of the King’s private

police, the obscure but puissant Corentin.

“Go on,” said the Duc de Grandlieu; “go first, Monsieur de Saint-Denis.”

Corentin, surprised that the Duke should have remembered him, went

forward after bowing low to the two noblemen.

“Always about the same individual, or about his concerns, my dear sir,”

said the Duc de Grandlieu.

“But he is dead,” said Corentin.

“He has left a partner,” said the Duc de Chaulieu, “a very tough

customer.”

“The convict Jacques Collin,” replied Corentin.

“Will you speak, Ferdinand?” said the Duke de Chaulieu to his friend.

“That wretch is an object of fear,” said the Duc de Grandlieu, “for

he has possessed himself, so as to be able to levy blackmail, of the

letters written by Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse to Lucien

Chardon, that man’s tool. It would seem that it was a matter of system

in the young man to extract passionate letters in return for his own,

for I am told that Mademoiselle de Grandlieu had written some--at least,

so we fear--and we cannot find out from her--she is gone abroad.”

“That little young man,” replied Corentin, “was incapable of so much

foresight. That was a precaution due to the Abbe Carlos Herrera.”

Corentin rested his elbow on the arm of the chair on which he was

sitting, and his head on his hand, meditating.

“Money!--The man has more than we have,” said he. “Esther Gobseck served

him as a bait to extract nearly two million francs from that well of

gold called Nucingen.--Gentlemen, get me full legal powers, and I will

rid you of the fellow.”

“And--the letters?” asked the Duc de Grandlieu.

“Listen to me, gentlemen,” said Corentin, standing up, his weasel-face

betraying his excitement.

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his black doeskin trousers,

shaped over the shoes. This great actor in the historical drama of the

day had only stopped to put on a waistcoat and frock-coat, and had not

changed his morning trousers, so well he knew how grateful men can be

for immediate action in certain cases. He walked up and down the room

quite at his ease, haranguing loudly, as if he had been alone.

“He is a convict. He could be sent off to Bicetre without trial, and put

in solitary confinement, without a soul to speak to, and left there to

die.--But he may have given instructions to his adherents, foreseeing

this possibility.”

“But he was put into the secret cells,” said the Duc de Grandlieu, “the

moment he was taken into custody at that woman’s house.”

“Is there such a thing as a secret cell for such a fellow as he is?”

said Corentin. “He is a match for--for me!”

“What is to be done?” said the Dukes to each other by a glance.

“We can send the scoundrel back to the hulks at once--to Rochefort; he

will be dead in six months! Oh! without committing any crime,” he added,

in reply to a gesture on the part of the Duc de Grandlieu. “What do you

expect? A convict cannot hold out more than six months of a hot summer

if he is made to work really hard among the marshes of the Charente. But

this is of no use if our man has taken precautions with regard to the

letters. If the villain has been suspicious of his foes, and that is

probable, we must find out what steps he has taken. Then, if the present

holder of the letters is poor, he is open to bribery. So, no, we must

make Jacques Collin speak. What a duel! He will beat me. The better plan

would be to purchase those letters by exchange for another document--a

letter of reprieve--and to place the man in my gang. Jacques Collin is

the only man alive who is clever enough to come after me, poor Contenson

and dear old Peyrade both being dead! Jacques Collin killed those two

unrivaled spies on purpose, as it were, to make a place for himself. So,

you see, gentlemen, you must give me a free hand. Jacques Collin is in

the Conciergerie. I will go to see Monsieur de Granville in his Court.

Send some one you can trust to meet me there, for I must have a letter

to show to Monsieur de Granville, who knows nothing of me. I will hand

the letter to the President of the Council, a very impressive sponsor.

You have half an hour before you, for I need half an hour to dress,

that is to say, to make myself presentable to the eyes of the public

prosecutor.”

“Monsieur,” said the Duc de Chaulieu, “I know your wonderful skill. I

only ask you to say Yes or No. Will you be bound to succeed?”

“Yes, if I have full powers, and your word that I shall never be

questioned about the matter.--My plan is laid.”

This sinister reply made the two fine gentlemen shiver. “Go on, then,

monsieur,” said the Duc de Chaulieu. “You can set down the charges of

the case among those you are in the habit of undertaking.”

Corentin bowed and went away.

Henri de Lenoncourt, for whom Ferdinand de Grandlieu had a carriage

brought out, went off forthwith to the King, whom he was privileged to

see at all times in right of his office.

Thus all the various interests that had got entangled from the highest

to the lowest ranks of society were to meet presently in Monsieur

de Granville’s room at the Palais, all brought together by necessity

embodied in three men--Justice in Monsieur de Granville, and the family

in Corentin, face to face with Jacques Collin, the terrible foe who

represented social crime in its fiercest energy.

What a duel is that between justice and arbitrary wills on one side and

the hulks and cunning on the other! The hulks--symbolical of that daring

which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails itself of any

means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed justice, but is

the hideous outcome of the starving stomach--the swift and bloodthirsty

pretext of hunger. Is it not attack as against self-protection, theft as

against property? The terrible quarrel between the social state and the

natural man, fought out on the narrowest possible ground! In short, it

is a terrible and vivid image of those compromises, hostile to social

interests, which the representatives of authority, when they lack power,

submit to with the fiercest rebels.

When Monsieur Camusot was announced, the public prosecutor signed that

he should be admitted. Monsieur de Granville had foreseen this visit,

and wished to come to an understanding with the examining judge as to

how to wind up this business of Lucien’s death. The end could no

longer be that on which he had decided the day before in agreement with

Camusot, before the suicide of the hapless poet.

“Sit down, Monsieur Camusot,” said Monsieur de Granville, dropping into

his armchair. The public prosecutor, alone with the inferior judge,

made no secret of his depressed state. Camusot looked at Monsieur de

Granville and observed his almost livid pallor, and such utter fatigue,

such complete prostration, as betrayed greater suffering perhaps than

that of the condemned man to whom the clerk had announced the rejection

of his appeal. And yet that announcement, in the forms of justice, is a

much as to say, “Prepare to die; your last hour has come.”

“I will return later, Monsieur le Comte,” said Camusot. “Though business

is pressing----”

“No, stay,” replied the public prosecutor with dignity. “A magistrate,

monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how to hide them. I was in

fault if you saw any traces of agitation in me----”

Camusot bowed apologetically.

“God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities of our life.

A man might sink under less! I have just spent the night with one of

my most intimate friends.--I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de

Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy.--We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy,

the Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning, taking

it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de Serizy’s bedside,

fearing each time that we might find her dead or irremediably insane.

Desplein, Bianchon, and Sinard never left the room, and she has two

nurses. The Count worships his wife. Imagine the night I have spent,

between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with despair. And a

statesman’s despair is not like that of an idiot. Serizy, as calm as

if he were sitting in his place in council, clutched his chair to force

himself to show us an unmoved countenance, while sweat stood over the

brows bent by so much hard thought.--Worn out by want of sleep, I dozed

from five till half-past seven, and I had to be here by half-past eight

to warrant an execution. Take my word for it, Monsieur Camusot, when a

judge has been toiling all night in such gulfs of sorrow, feeling the

heavy hand of God on all human concerns, and heaviest on noble souls,

it is hard to sit down here, in front of a desk, and say in cold blood,

‘Cut off a head at four o’clock! Destroy one of God’s creatures full

of life, health, and strength!’--And yet this is my duty! Sunk in grief

myself, I must order the scaffold----

“The condemned wretch cannot know that his judge suffers anguish equal

to his own. At this moment he and I, linked by a sheet of paper--I,

society avenging itself; he, the crime to be avenged--embody the same

duty seen from two sides; we are two lives joined for the moment by the

sword of the law.

“Who pities the judge’s deep sorrow? Who can soothe it? Our glory is

to bury it in the depth of our heart. The priest with his life given to

God, the soldier with a thousand deaths for his country’s sake, seem

to me far happier than the magistrate with his doubts and fears and

appalling responsibility.

“You know who the condemned man is?” Monsieur de Granville went on.

“A young man of seven-and-twenty--as handsome as he who killed himself

yesterday, and as fair; condemned against all our anticipations, for the

only proof against him was his concealment of the stolen goods. Though

sentenced, the lad will confess nothing! For seventy days he has held

out against every test, constantly declaring that he is innocent. For

two months I have felt two heads on my shoulders! I would give a year of

my life if he would confess, for juries need encouragement; and imagine

what a blow it would be to justice if some day it should be discovered

that the crime for which he is punished was committed by another.

“In Paris everything is so terribly important; the most trivial

incidents in the law courts have political consequences.

“The jury, an institution regarded by the legislators of the Revolution

as a source of strength, is, in fact, an instrument of social ruin, for

it fails in action; it does not sufficiently protect society. The jury

trifles with its functions. The class of jurymen is divided into

two parties, one averse to capital punishment; the result is a total

upheaval of true equality in administration of the law. Parricide, a

most horrible crime, is in some departments treated with leniency, while

in others a common murder, so to speak, is punished with death. [There

are in penal servitude twenty-three parricides who have been allowed the

benefit of _extenuating circumstances_.] And what would happen if here

in Paris, in our home district, an innocent man should be executed!”

“He is an escaped convict,” said Monsieur Camusot, diffidently.

“The Opposition and the Press would make him a paschal lamb!” cried

Monsieur de Granville; “and the Opposition would enjoy white-washing

him, for he is a fanatical Corsican, full of his native notions, and his

murders were a _Vendetta_. In that island you may kill your enemy, and

think yourself, and be thought, a very good man.

“A thorough-paced magistrate, I tell you, is an unhappy man. They ought

to live apart from all society, like the pontiffs of old. The world

should never see them but at fixed hours, leaving their cells, grave,

and old, and venerable, passing sentence like the high priests of

antiquity, who combined in their person the functions of judicial and

sacerdotal authority. We should be accessible only in our high seat.--As

it is, we are to be seen every day, amused or unhappy, like other men.

We are to be found in drawing-rooms and at home, as ordinary citizens,

moved by our passions; and we seem, perhaps, more grotesque than

terrible.”

This bitter cry, broken by pauses and interjections, and emphasized by

gestures which gave it an eloquence impossible to reduce to writing,

made Camusot’s blood run chill.

“And I, monsieur,” said he, “began yesterday my apprenticeship to the

sufferings of our calling.--I could have died of that young fellow’s

death. He misunderstood my wish to be lenient, and the poor wretch

committed himself.”

“Ah, you ought never to have examined him!” cried Monsieur de Granville;

“it is so easy to oblige by doing nothing.”

“And the law, monsieur?” replied Camusot. “He had been in custody two

days.”

“The mischief is done,” said the public prosecutor. “I have done my

best to remedy what is indeed irremediable. My carriage and servants are

following the poor weak poet to the grave. Serizy has sent his too; nay,

more, he accepts the duty imposed on him by the unfortunate boy, and

will act as his executor. By promising this to his wife he won from her

a gleam of returning sanity. And Count Octave is attending the funeral

in person.”

“Well, then, Monsieur le Comte,” said Camusot, “let us complete

our work. We have a very dangerous man on our hands. He is Jacques

Collin--and you know it as well as I do. The ruffian will be

recognized----”

“Then we are lost!” cried Monsieur de Granville.

“He is at this moment shut up with your condemned murderer, who, on the

hulks, was to him what Lucien has been in Paris--a favorite protege.

Bibi-Lupin, disguised as a gendarme, is watching the interview.”

“What business has the superior police to interfere?” said the public

prosecutor. “He has no business to act without my orders!”

“All the Conciergerie must know that we have caught Jacques

Collin.--Well, I have come on purpose to tell you that this daring

felon has in his possession the most compromising letters of Lucien’s

correspondence with Madame de Serizy, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and

Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu.”

“Are you sure of that?” asked Monsieur de Granville, his face full of

pained surprise.

“You shall hear, Monsieur le Comte, what reason I have to fear such a

misfortune. When I untied the papers found in the young man’s rooms,

Jacques Collin gave a keen look at the parcel, and smiled with

satisfaction in a way that no examining judge could misunderstand.

So deep a villain as Jacques Collin takes good care not to let such a

weapon slip through his fingers. What is to be said if these documents

should be placed in the hands of counsel chosen by that rascal from

among the foes of the government and the aristocracy!--My wife, to whom

the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse has shown so much kindness, is gone to warn

her, and by this time they must be with the Grandlieus holding council.”

“But we cannot possibly try the man!” cried the public prosecutor,

rising and striding up and down the room. “He must have put the papers

in some safe place----”

“I know where,” said Camusot.

These words finally effaced every prejudice the public prosecutor had

felt against him.

“Well, then----” said Monsieur de Granville, sitting down again.

“On my way here this morning I reflected deeply on this miserable

business. Jacques Collin has an aunt--an aunt by nature, not putative--a

woman concerning whom the superior police have communicated a report to

the Prefecture. He is this woman’s pupil and idol; she is his father’s

sister, her name is Jacqueline Collin. This wretched woman carries on a

trade as a wardrobe purchaser, and by the connection this business has

secured her she gets hold of many family secrets. If Jacques Collin

has intrusted those papers, which would be his salvation, to any one’s

keeping, it is to that of this creature. Have her arrested.”

The public prosecutor gave Camusot a keen look, as much as to say, “This

man is not such a fool as I thought him; he is still young, and does not

yet know how to handle the reins of justice.”

“But,” Camusot went on, “in order to succeed, we must give up all

the plans we laid yesterday, and I came to take your advice--your

orders----”

The public prosecutor took up his paper-knife and tapped it against

the edge of the table with one of the tricky movements familiar to

thoughtful men when they give themselves up to meditation.