Vautrin's Last Avatar - Part 5

________________________________________________
_ 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. _

Read next: Vautrin's Last Avatar: Part 6

Read previous: Vautrin's Last Avatar: Part 4

Table of content of Scenes From a Courtesan's Life


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book