At the same hour that Mme. Nina Gypsy was seeking refuge at the
Archangel, so highly recommended by Fanferlot the Squirrel, Prosper
Bertomy was being entered on the jailer’s book at the police office.
Since the moment when he had resumed his habitual composure, he had not
faltered.
Vainly did the people around him watch for a suspicious expression, or
any sign of giving way under the danger of his situation.
His face was like marble.
One would have supposed him insensible to the horrors of his condition,
had not his heavy breathing, and the beads of perspiration standing on
his brow, betrayed the intense agony he was suffering.
At the police office, where he had to wait two hours while the
commissary went to receive orders from higher authorities, he entered
into conversation with the two bailiffs who had charge of him.
At twelve o’clock he said he was hungry, and sent to a restaurant near
by for his breakfast, which he ate with a good appetite; he also drank
nearly a bottle of wine.
While he was thus occupied, several clerks from the prefecture, who
have to transact business daily with the commissary of police, curiously
watched him. They all formed the same opinion, and admiringly said to
each other:
“Well, he is made of strong material, he is!”
“Yes, my dandy looks too lamb-like to be left to his own devices. He
ought to have a strong escort.”
When he was told that a coach was waiting for him at the door, he at
once got up; but, before going out, he requested permission to light a
cigar, which was granted.
A flower-girl stood just by the door, with her stand filled with all
varieties of flowers. He stopped and bought a bunch of violets. The
girl, seeing that he was arrested, said, by way of thanks:
“Good luck to you, my poor gentleman!”
He appeared touched by this mark of interest, and replied:
“Thanks, my good woman, but ‘tis a long time since I have had any.”
It was magnificent weather, a bright spring morning. As the coach went
along Rue Montmartre, Prosper kept his head out of the window, at the
same time smilingly complaining at being imprisoned on such a lovely
day, when everything outside was so sunny and pleasant.
“It is singular,” he said, “I never felt so great a desire to take a
walk.”
One of the bailiffs, a large, jovial, red-faced man, received this
remark with a hearty burst of laughter, and said:
“I understand.”
To the court clerk, while he was going through the formalities of the
commitment, Prosper replied with haughty brevity to the indispensable
questions asked him.
But when he was ordered to empty his pockets on the table, and they
began to search him, his eyes flashed with indignation, and a single
tear dropped upon his flushed cheek. In an instant he had recovered his
stony calmness, and stood up motionless, with his arms raised in the air
so that the rough creatures about him could more conveniently ransack
him from head to foot, to assure themselves that he had no suspicious
object hid under his clothes.
The search would have, perhaps, been carried to the most ignominious
lengths, but for the intervention of a middle-aged man of rather
distinguished appearance, who wore a white cravat and gold spectacles,
and was sitting quite at home by the fire.
He started with surprise, and seemed much agitated, when he saw Prosper
brought in by the bailiffs; he stepped forward, and seemed about to
speak to him, then suddenly changed his mind, and sat down again.
In spite of his own troubles, Prosper could not help seeing that this
man kept his eyes fastened upon him. Did he know him? Vainly did he try
to recollect having met him before.
This man, treated with all the deference due to a chief, was no less a
personage than M. Lecoq, a celebrated member of the detective corps.
When the men who were searching Prosper were about to take off his
boots, saying that a knife might be concealed in them. M. Lecoq waved
them aside with an air of authority, and said:
“You have done enough.”
He was obeyed. All the formalities being ended, the unfortunate cashier
was taken to a narrow cell; the heavily barred door was swung to and
locked upon him; he breathed freely; at last he was alone.
Yes, he believed himself to be alone. He was ignorant that a prison is
made of glass, that the accused is like a miserable insect under the
microscope of an entomologist. He knew not that the walls have stretched
ears and watchful eyes.
He was so sure of being alone that he at once gave vent to his
suppressed feelings, and, dropping his mask of impassibility, burst
into a flood of tears. His long-restrained anger now flashed out like a
smouldering fire.
In a paroxysm of rage he uttered imprecations and curses. He dashed
himself against the prison-walls like a wild beast in a cage.
Prosper Bertomy was not the man he appeared to be.
This haughty, correct gentleman had ardent passions and a fiery
temperament.
One day, when he was about twenty-four years of age, he had become
suddenly fired by ambition. While all of his desires were repressed,
imprisoned in his low estate, like an athlete in a strait-jacket, seeing
around him all these rich people with whom money assumed the place of
the wand in the fairy-tale, he envied their lot.
He studied the beginnings of these financial princes, and found that at
the starting-point they possessed far less than himself.
How, then, had they succeeded? By force of energy, industry, and
assurance.
He determined to imitate and excel them.
From this day, with a force of will much less rare than we think, he
imposed silence upon his instincts. He reformed not his morals, but his
manners; and so strictly did he conform to the rules of decorum, that
he was regarded as a model of propriety by those who knew him, and had
faith in his character; and his capabilities and ambition inspired the
prophecy that he would be successful in attaining eminence and wealth.
And the end of all was this: imprisoned for robbery; that is, ruined!
For he did not attempt to deceive himself. He knew that, guilty or
innocent, a man once suspected is as ineffaceably branded as the
shoulder of a galley-slave.
Therefore what was the use of struggling? What benefit was a triumph
which could not wash out the stain?
When the jailer brought him his supper, he found him lying on his
pallet, with his face buried in the pillow, weeping bitterly.
Ah, he was not hungry now! Now that he was alone, he fed upon his own
bitter thoughts. He sank from a state of frenzy into one of stupefying
despair, and vainly did he endeavor to clear his confused mind, and
account for the dark cloud gathering about him; no loop-hole for escape
did he discover.
The night was long and terrible, and for the first time he had nothing
to count the hours by, as they slowly dragged on, but the measured tread
of the patrol who came to relieve the sentinels. He was wretched.
At dawn he dropped into a sleep, a heavy, oppressive sleep, which was
more wearisome than refreshing; from which he was startled by the rough
voice of the jailer.
“Come, monsieur,” he said, “it is time for you to appear before the
judge of instruction.”
He jumped up at once, and, without stopping to repair his disordered
toilet, said:
“Come on, quick!”
The constable remarked, as they walked along:
“You are very fortunate in having your case brought before an honest
man.”
He was right.
Endowed with remarkable penetration, firm, unbiased, equally free from
false pity and excessive severity, M. Patrigent possessed in an eminent
degree all the qualities necessary for the delicate and difficult office
of judge of instruction.
Perhaps he was wanting in the feverish activity which is sometimes
necessary for coming to a quick and just decision; but he possessed
unwearying patience, which nothing could discourage. He would cheerfully
devote years to the examination of a case; he was even now engaged on a
case of Belgian bank-notes, of which he did not collect all the threads,
and solve the mystery, until after four years’ investigation.
Thus it was always to his office that they brought the endless lawsuits,
half-finished inquests, and tangled cases.
This was the man before whom they were taking Prosper; and they were
taking him by a difficult road.
He was escorted along a corridor, through a room full of policemen, down
a narrow flight of steps, across a kind of cellar, and then up a steep
staircase which seemed to have no terminus.
Finally he reached a long narrow galley, upon which opened many doors,
bearing different numbers.
The custodian of the unhappy cashier stopped before one of these doors,
and said:
“Here we are; here your fate will be decided.”
At this remark, uttered in a tone of deep commiseration, Prosper could
not refrain from shuddering.
It was only too true, that on the other side of this door was a man upon
whose decision his freedom depended.
Summoning all his courage, he turned the door-knob, and was about to
enter when the constable stopped him.
“Don’t be in such haste,” he said; “you must sit down here, and wait
till your turn comes; then you will be called.”
The wretched man obeyed, and his keeper took a seat beside him.
Nothing is more terrible and lugubrious than this gallery of the judges
of instruction.
Stretching the whole length of the wall is a wooden bench blackened by
constant use. This bench has for the last ten years been daily occupied
by all the murderers, thieves, and suspicious characters of the
Department of the Seine.
Sooner or later, fatally, as filth rushes to a sewer, does crime
reach this gallery, this dreadful gallery with one door opening on the
galleys, the other on the scaffold. This place was vulgarly and pithily
denominated by a certain magistrate as the great public wash-house of
all the dirty linen in Paris.
When Prosper reached the gallery it was full of people. The bench was
almost entirely occupied. Beside him, so close as to touch his shoulder,
sat a man with a sinister countenance, dressed in rags.
Before each door, which belonged to a judge of instruction, stood groups
of witnesses talking in an undertone.
Policemen were constantly coming and going with prisoners. Sometimes,
above the noise of their heavy boots, tramping along the flagstones,
could be heard a woman’s stifled sobs, and looking around you would
see some poor mother or wife with her face buried in her handkerchief,
weeping bitterly.
At short intervals a door would open and shut, and a bailiff call out a
name or number.
This stifling atmosphere, and the sight of so much misery, made the
cashier ill and faint; he was feeling as if another five minutes’ stay
among these wretched creatures would make him deathly sick, when a
little old man dressed in black, wearing the insignia of his office, a
steel chain, cried out:
“Prosper Bertomy!”
The unhappy man arose, and, without knowing how, found himself in the
office of the judge of instruction.
For a moment he was blinded. He had come out of a dark room; and the one
in which he now found himself had a window directly opposite the door,
so that a flood of light fell suddenly upon him.
This office, like all those on the gallery, was of a very ordinary
appearance, small and dingy.
The wall was covered with cheap dark green paper, and on the floor was a
hideous brown carpet, very much worn.
Opposite the door was a large desk, filled with bundles of law-papers,
behind which was seated the judge, facing those who entered, so that his
face remained in the shade, while that of the prisoner or witness whom
he questioned was in a glare of light.
At the right, before a little table, sat a clerk writing, the
indispensable auxiliary of the judge.
But Prosper observed none of these details: his whole attention was
concentrated upon the arbiter of his fate, and as he closely examined
his face he was convinced that the jailer was right in calling him an
honorable man.
M. Patrigent’s homely face, with its irregular outline and short red
whiskers, lit up by a pair of bright, intelligent eyes, and a kindly
expression, was calculated to impress one favorably at first sight.
“Take a seat,” he said to Prosper.
This little attention was gratefully welcomed by the prisoner, for he
had expected to be treated with harsh contempt. He looked upon it as a
good sign, and his mind felt a slight relief.