Chapter XV: Part 15

“You are in the presence of the Law; be careful,” said Monsieur Camusot severely.

Madame Poiret was silent.

“Try to remember,” Camusot went on. “Do you recollect the man? Would you know him again?”

“I think so.”

“Is this the man?”

Madame Poiret put on her “eye-preservers,” and looked at the Abbe Carlos Herrera.

“It is his build, his height; and yet--no--if--Monsieur le Juge,” she said, “if I could see his chest I should recognize him at once.”

The magistrate and his clerk could not help laughing, notwithstanding the gravity of their office; Jacques Collin joined in their hilarity, but discreetly. The prisoner had not put on his coat after Bibi-Lupin had removed it, and at a sign from the judge he obligingly opened his shirt.

“Yes, that is his fur trimming, sure enough!--But it has worn gray, Monsieur Vautrin,” cried Madame Poiret.

“What have you to say to that?” asked the judge of the prisoner.

“That she is mad,” replied Jacques Collin.

“Bless me! If I had a doubt--for his face is altered--that voice would be enough. He is the man who threatened me. Ah! and those are his eyes!”

“The police agent and this woman,” said Camusot, speaking to Jacques Collin, “cannot possibly have conspired to say the same thing, for neither of them had seen you till now. How do you account for that?”

“Justice has blundered more conspicuously even than it does now in accepting the evidence of a woman who recognizes a man by the hair on his chest and the suspicions of a police agent,” replied Jacques Collin. “I am said to resemble a great criminal in voice, eyes, and build; that seems a little vague. As to the memory which would prove certain relations between Madame and my Sosie--which she does not blush to own--you yourself laughed at. Allow me, monsieur, in the interests of truth, which I am far more anxious to establish for my own sake than you can be for the sake of justice, to ask this lady--Madame Foiret----”

“Poiret.”

“Poret--excuse me, I am a Spaniard--whether she remembers the other persons who lived in this--what did you call the house?”

“A boarding-house,” said Madame Poiret.

“I do not know what that is.”

“A house where you can dine and breakfast by subscription.”

“You are right,” said Camusot, with a favorable nod to Jacques Collin, whose apparent good faith in suggesting means to arrive at some conclusion struck him greatly. “Try to remember the boarders who were in the house when Jacques Collin was apprehended.”

“There were Monsieur de Rastignac, Doctor Bianchon, Pere Goriot, Mademoiselle Taillefer----”

“That will do,” said Camusot, steadily watching Jacques Collin, whose expression did not change. “Well, about this Pere Goriot?”

“He is dead,” said Madame Poiret.

“Monsieur,” said Jacques Collin, “I have several times met Monsieur de Rastignac, a friend, I believe, of Madame de Nucingen’s; and if it is the same, he certainly never supposed me to be the convict with whom these persons try to identify me.”

“Monsieur de Rastignac and Doctor Bianchon,” said the magistrate, “both hold such a social position that their evidence, if it is in your favor, will be enough to procure your release.--Coquart, fill up a summons for each of them.”

The formalities attending Madame Poiret’s examination were over in a few minutes; Coquart read aloud to her the notes he had made of the little scene, and she signed the paper; but the prisoner refused to sign, alleging his ignorance of the forms of French law.

“That is enough for to-day,” said Monsieur Camusot. “You must be wanting food. I will have you taken back to the Conciergerie.”

“Alas! I am suffering too much to be able to eat,” said Jacques Collin.

Camusot was anxious to time Jacques Collin’s return to coincide with the prisoners’ hour of exercise in the prison yard; but he needed a reply from the Governor of the Conciergerie to the order he had given him in the morning, and he rang for the usher. The usher appeared, and told him that the porter’s wife, from the house on the Quai Malaquais, had an important document to communicate with reference to Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre. This was so serious a matter that it put Camusot’s intentions out of his head.

“Show her in,” said he.

“Beg your pardon; pray excuse me, gentlemen all,” said the woman, courtesying to the judge and the Abbe Carlos by turns. “We were so worried by the Law--my husband and me--the twice when it has marched into our house, that we had forgotten a letter that was lying, for Monsieur Lucien, in our chest of drawers, which we paid ten sous for it, though it was posted in Paris, for it is very heavy, sir. Would you please to pay me back the postage? For God knows when we shall see our lodgers again!”

“Was this letter handed to you by the postman?” asked Camusot, after carefully examining the envelope.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Coquart, write full notes of this deposition.--Go on, my good woman; tell us your name and your business.” Camusot made the woman take the oath, and then he dictated the document.

While these formalities were being carried out, he was scrutinizing the postmark, which showed the hours of posting and delivery, as well at the date of the day. And this letter, left for Lucien the day after Esther’s death, had beyond a doubt been written and posted on the day of the catastrophe. Monsieur Camusot’s amazement may therefore be imagined when he read this letter written and signed by her whom the law believed to have been the victim of a crime:--

“_Esther to Lucien_.

“MONDAY, May 13th, 1830.

“My last day; ten in the morning.

“MY LUCIEN,--I have not an hour to live. At eleven o’clock I shall
be dead, and I shall die without a pang. I have paid fifty
thousand francs for a neat little black currant, containing a
poison that will kill me with the swiftness of lightning. And so,
my darling, you may tell yourself, ‘My little Esther had no
suffering.’--and yet I shall suffer in writing these pages.

“The monster who has paid so dear for me, knowing that the day
when I should know myself to be his would have no morrow--Nucingen
has just left me, as drunk as a bear with his skin full of wind.
For the first and last time in my life I have had the opportunity
of comparing my old trade as a street hussy with the life of true
love, of placing the tenderness which unfolds in the infinite
above the horrors of a duty which longs to destroy itself and
leave no room even for a kiss. Only such loathing could make death
delightful.

“I have taken a bath; I should have liked to send for the father
confessor of the convent where I was baptized, to have confessed
and washed my soul. But I have had enough of prostitution; it
would be profaning a sacrament; and besides, I feel myself
cleansed in the waters of sincere repentance. God must do what He
will with me.

“But enough of all this maudlin; for you I want to be your Esther
to the last moment, not to bore you with my death, or the future,
or God, who is good, and who would not be good if He were to
torture me in the next world when I have endured so much misery in
this.

“I have before me your beautiful portrait, painted by Madame de
Mirbel. That sheet of ivory used to comfort me in your absence, I
look at it with rapture as I write you my last thoughts, and tell
you of the last throbbing of my heart. I shall enclose the
miniature in this letter, for I cannot bear that it should be
stolen or sold. The mere thought that what has been my great joy
may lie behind a shop window, mixed up with the ladies and
officers of the Empire, or a parcel of Chinese absurdities, is a
small death to me. Destroy that picture, my sweetheart, wipe it
out, never give it to any one--unless, indeed, the gift might win
back the heart of that walking, well-dressed maypole, that
Clotilde de Grandlieu, who will make you black and blue in her
sleep, her bones are so sharp.--Yes, to that I consent, and then I
shall still be of some use to you, as when I was alive. Oh! to
give you pleasure, or only to make you laugh, I would have stood
over a brazier with an apple in my mouth to cook it for you.--So
my death even will be of service to you.--I should have marred
your home.

“Oh! that Clotilde! I cannot understand her.--She might have been
your wife, have borne your name, have never left you day or night,
have belonged to you--and she could make difficulties! Only the
Faubourg Saint-Germain can do that! and yet she has not ten pounds
of flesh on her bones!

“Poor Lucien! Dear ambitious failure! I am thinking of your future
life. Well, well! you will more than once regret your poor
faithful dog, the good girl who would fly to serve you, who would
have been dragged into a police court to secure your happiness,
whose only occupation was to think of your pleasures and invent
new ones, who was so full of love for you--in her hair, her feet,
her ears--your ballerina, in short, whose every look was a
benediction; who for six years has thought of nothing but you, who
was so entirely your chattel that I have never been anything but
an effluence of your soul, as light is that of the sun. However,
for lack of money and of honor, I can never be your wife. I have
at any rate provided for your future by giving you all I have.

“Come as soon as you get this letter and take what you find under
my pillow, for I do not trust the people about me. Understand that
I mean to look beautiful when I am dead. I shall go to bed, and
lay myself flat in an attitude--why not? Then I shall break the
little pill against the roof of my mouth, and shall not be
disfigured by any convulsion or by a ridiculous position.

“Madame de Serizy has quarreled with you, I know, because of me;
but when she hears that I am dead, you see, dear pet, she will
forgive. Make it up with her, and she will find you a suitable
wife if the Grandlieus persist in their refusal.

“My dear, I do not want you to grieve too much when you hear of my
death. To begin with, I must tell you that the hour of eleven on
Monday morning, the thirteenth of May, is only the end of a long
illness, which began on the day when, on the Terrace of
Saint-Germain, you threw me back on my former line of life. The soul
may be sick, as the body is. But the soul cannot submit stupidly to
suffering like the body; the body does not uphold the soul as the
soul upholds the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the
reflection which leads to the needlewoman’s resource--the bushel
of charcoal. You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday,
when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would marry
me. It would have been a great misfortune for us both; I should
have been still more dead, so to speak--for there are more and
less bitter deaths. The world would never have recognized us.

“For two months past I have been thinking of many things, I can
tell you. A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I went into
the convent; men think her handsome, they make her serve their
pleasure without thinking any consideration necessary; they pack
her off on foot after fetching her in a carriage; if they do not
spit in her face, it is only because her beauty preserves her from
such indignity; but, morally speaking they do worse. Well, and if
this despised creature were to inherit five or six millions of
francs, she would be courted by princes, bowed to with respect as
she went past in her carriage, and might choose among the oldest
names in France and Navarre. That world which would have cried
Raca to us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy,
always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her ‘romances in
real life,’ because she had two hundred thousand francs a year.
The world, which grovels before money or glory, will not bow down
before happiness or virtue--for I could have done good. Oh! how
many tears I would have dried--as many as I have shed--I believe!
Yes, I would have lived only for you and for charity.

“These are the thoughts that make death beautiful. So do not
lament, my dear. Say often to yourself, ‘There were two good
creatures, two beautiful creatures, who both died for me
ungrudgingly, and who adored me.’ Keep a memory in your heart of
Coralie and Esther, and go your way and prosper. Do you recollect
the day when you pointed out to me a shriveled old woman, in a
melon-green bonnet and a puce wrapper, all over black
grease-spots, the mistress of a poet before the Revolution, hardly
thawed by the sun though she was sitting against the wall of the
Tuileries and fussing over a pug--the vilest of pugs? She had had
footmen and carriages, you know, and a fine house! And I said to
you then, ‘How much better to be dead at thirty!’--Well, you
thought I was melancholy, and you played all sorts of pranks to
amuse me, and between two kisses I said, ‘Every day some pretty
woman leaves the play before it is over!’--And I do not want to
see the last piece; that is all.

“You must think me a great chatterbox; but this is my last
effusion. I write as if I were talking to you, and I like to talk
cheerfully. I have always had a horror of a dressmaker pitying
herself. You know I knew how to die decently once before, on my
return from that fatal opera-ball where the men said I had been a
prostitute.

“No, no, my dear love, never give this portrait to any one! If you
could know with what a gush of love I have sat losing myself in
your eyes, looking at them with rapture during a pause I allowed
myself, you would feel as you gathered up the affection with which
I have tried to overlay the ivory, that the soul of your little
pet is indeed there.

“A dead woman craving alms! That is a funny idea.--Come, I must
learn to lie quiet in my grave.

“You have no idea how heroic my death would seem to some fools if
they could know Nucingen last night offered me two millions of
francs if I would love him as I love you. He will be handsomely
robbed when he hears that I have kept my word and died of him. I
tried all I could still to breathe the air you breathe. I said to
the fat scoundrel, ‘Do you want me to love you as you wish? To
promise even that I will never see Lucien again?’--‘What must I
do?’ he asked.--‘Give me the two millions for him.’--You should
have seen his face! I could have laughed, if it had not been so
tragical for me.

“‘Spare yourself the trouble of refusing,’ said I; ‘I see you
care more for your two millions than for me. A woman is always
glad to know at what she is valued!’ and I turned my back on him.

“In a few hours the old rascal will know that I was not in jest.

“Who will part your hair as nicely as I do? Pooh!--I will think no
more of anything in life; I have but five minutes, I give them to
God. Do not be jealous of Him, dear heart; I shall speak to Him of
you, beseeching Him for your happiness as the price of my death,
and my punishment in the next world. I am vexed enough at having
to go to hell. I should have liked to see the angels, to know if
they are like you.

“Good-bye, my darling, good-bye! I give you all the blessing of my
woes. Even in the grave I am your Esther.

“It is striking eleven. I have said my last prayers. I am going to
bed to die. Once more, farewell! I wish that the warmth of my hand
could leave my soul there where I press a last kiss--and once more
I must call you my dearest love, though you are the cause of the
death of your Esther.”

A vague feeling of jealousy tightened on the magistrate’s heart as he read this letter, the only letter from a suicide he had ever found written with such lightness, though it was a feverish lightness, and the last effort of a blind affection.

“What is there in the man that he should be loved so well?” thought he, saying what every man says who has not the gift of attracting women.

“If you can prove not merely that you are not Jacques Collin and an escaped convict, but that you are in fact Don Carlos Herrera, canon of Toledo, and secret envoy of this Majesty Ferdinand VII.,” said he, addressing the prisoner “you will be released; for the impartiality demanded by my office requires me to tell you that I have this moment received a letter, written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, in which she declares her intention of killing herself, and expresses suspicions as to her servants, which would seem to point to them as the thieves who have made off with the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs.”

As he spoke Monsieur Camusot was comparing the writing of the letter with that of the will; and it seemed to him self-evident that the same person had written both.

“Monsieur, you were in too great a hurry to believe in a murder; do not be too hasty in believing in a theft.”

“Heh!” said Camusot, scrutinizing the prisoner with a piercing eye.

“Do not suppose that I am compromising myself by telling you that the sum may possibly be recovered,” said Jacques Collin, making the judge understand that he saw his suspicions. “That poor girl was much loved by those about her; and if I were free, I would undertake to search for this money, which no doubt belongs to the being I love best in the world--to Lucien!--Will you allow me to read that letter; it will not take long? It is evidence of my dear boy’s innocence--you cannot fear that I shall destroy it--nor that I shall talk about it; I am in solitary confinement.”

“In confinement! You will be so no longer,” cried the magistrate. “It is I who must beg you to get well as soon as possible. Refer to your ambassador if you choose----”

And he handed the letter to Jacques Collin. Camusot was glad to be out of a difficulty, to be able to satisfy the public prosecutor, Mesdames de Maufrigneuse and de Serizy. Nevertheless, he studied his prisoner’s face with cold curiosity while Collin read Esther’s letter; in spite of the apparent genuineness of the feelings it expressed, he said to himself:

“But it is a face worthy of the hulks, all the same!”

“That is the way to love!” said Jacques Collin, returning the letter. And he showed Camusot a face bathed in tears.

“If only you knew him,” he went on, “so youthful, so innocent a soul, so splendidly handsome, a child, a poet!--The impulse to sacrifice oneself to him is irresistible, to satisfy his lightest wish. That dear boy is so fascinating when he chooses----”

“And so,” said the magistrate, making a final effort to discover the truth, “you cannot possibly be Jacques Collin----”

“No, monsieur,” replied the convict.

And Jacques Collin was more entirely Don Carlos Herrera than ever. In his anxiety to complete his work he went up to the judge, led him to the window, and gave himself the airs of a prince of the Church, assuming a confidential tone:

“I am so fond of that boy, monsieur, that if it were needful, to spare that idol of my heart a mere discomfort even, that I should be the criminal you take me for, I would surrender,” said he in an undertone. “I would follow the example of the poor girl who has killed herself for his benefit. And I beg you, monsieur, to grant me a favor--namely, to set Lucien at liberty forthwith.”

“My duty forbids it,” said Camusot very good-naturedly; “but if a sinner may make a compromise with heaven, justice too has its softer side, and if you can give me sufficient reasons--speak; your words will not be taken down.”

“Well, then,” Jacques Collin went on, taken in by Camusot’s apparent goodwill, “I know what that poor boy is suffering at this moment; he is capable of trying to kill himself when he finds himself a prisoner----”

“Oh! as to that!” said Camusot with a shrug.

“You do not know whom you will oblige by obliging me,” added Jacques Collin, trying to harp on another string. “You will be doing a service to others more powerful than any Comtesse de Serizy or Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who will never forgive you for having had their letters in your chambers----” and he pointed to two packets of perfumed papers. “My Order has a good memory.”

“Monsieur,” said Camusot, “that is enough. You must find better reasons to give me. I am as much interested in the prisoner as in public vengeance.”

“Believe me, then, I know Lucien; he has a soul of a woman, of a poet, and a southerner, without persistency or will,” said Jacques Collin, who fancied that he saw that he had won the judge over. “You are convinced of the young man’s innocence, do not torture him, do not question him. Give him that letter, tell him that he is Esther’s heir, and restore him to freedom. If you act otherwise, you will bring despair on yourself; whereas, if you simply release him, I will explain to you--keep me still in solitary confinement--to-morrow or this evening, everything that may strike you as mysterious in the case, and the reasons for the persecution of which I am the object. But it will be at the risk of my life, a price has been set on my head these six years past.... Lucien free, rich, and married to Clotilde de Grandlieu, and my task on earth will be done; I shall no longer try to save my skin.--My persecutor was a spy under your late King.”

“What, Corentin?”

“Ah! Is his name Corentin? Thank you, monsieur. Well, will you promise to do as I ask you?”

“A magistrate can make no promises.--Coquart, tell the usher and the gendarmes to take the prisoner back to the Conciergerie.--I will give orders that you are to have a private room,” he added pleasantly, with a slight nod to the convict.

Struck by Jacques Collin’s request, and remembering how he had insisted that he wished to be examined first as a privilege to his state of health, Camusot’s suspicions were aroused once more. Allowing his vague doubts to make themselves heard, he noticed that the self-styled dying man was walking off with the strength of a Hercules, having abandoned all the tricks he had aped so well on appearing before the magistrate.

“Monsieur!”

Jacques Collin turned round.

“Notwithstanding your refusal to sign the document, my clerk will read you the minutes of your examination.”

The prisoner was evidently in excellent health; the readiness with which he came back, and sat down by the clerk, was a fresh light to the magistrate’s mind.

“You have got well very suddenly!” said Camusot.

“Caught!” thought Jacques Collin; and he replied:

“Joy, monsieur, is the only panacea.--That letter, the proof of innocence of which I had no doubt--these are the grand remedy.”

The judge kept a meditative eye on the prisoner when the usher and the gendarmes again took him in charge. Then, with a start like a waking man, he tossed Esther’s letter across to the table where his clerk sat, saying:

“Coquart, copy that letter.”

If it is natural to man to be suspicious as to some favor required of him when it is antagonistic to his interests or his duty, and sometimes even when it is a matter of indifference, this feeling is law to an examining magistrate. The more this prisoner--whose identity was not yet ascertained--pointed to clouds on the horizon in the event of Lucien’s being examined, the more necessary did the interrogatory seem to Camusot. Even if this formality had not been required by the Code and by common practice, it was indispensable as bearing on the identification of the Abbe Carlos. There is in every walk of life the business conscience. In default of curiosity Camusot would have examined Lucien as he had examined Jacques Collin, with all the cunning which the most honest magistrate allows himself to use in such cases. The services he might render and his own promotion were secondary in Camusot’s mind to his anxiety to know or guess the truth, even if he should never tell it.

He stood drumming on the window-pane while following the river-like current of his conjectures, for in these moods thought is like a stream flowing through many countries. Magistrates, in love with truth, are like jealous women; they give way to a thousand hypotheses, and probe them with the dagger-point of suspicion, as the sacrificing priest of old eviscerated his victims; thus they arrive, not perhaps at truth, but at probability, and at last see the truth beyond. A woman cross-questions the man she loves as the judge cross-questions a criminal. In such a frame of mind, a glance, a word, a tone of voice, the slightest hesitation is enough to certify the hidden fact--treason or crime.

“The style in which he depicted his devotion to his son--if he is his son--is enough to make me think that he was in the girl’s house to keep an eye on the plunder; and never suspecting that the dead woman’s pillow covered a will, he no doubt annexed, for his son, the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs as a precaution. That is why he can promise to recover the money.

“M. de Rubempre owes it to himself and to justice to account for his father’s position in the world----

“And he offers me the protection of his Order--His Order!--if I do not examine Lucien----”

As has been seen, a magistrate conducts an examination exactly as he thinks proper. He is at liberty to display his acumen or be absolutely blunt. An examination may be everything or nothing. Therein lies the favor.

Camusot rang. The usher had returned. He was sent to fetch Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre with an injunction to prohibit his speaking to anybody on his way up. It was by this time two in the afternoon.

“There is some secret,” said the judge to himself, “and that secret must be very important. My amphibious friend--since he is neither priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor Spaniard, though he wants to hinder his protege from letting out something dreadful--argues thus: ‘The poet is weak and effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in diplomacy, and you will easily wring our secret from him.’--Well, we will get everything out of this innocent.”

And he sat tapping the edge of his table with the ivory paper-knife, while Coquart copied Esther’s letter.

How whimsical is the action of our faculties! Camusot conceived of every crime as possible, and overlooked the only one that the prisoner had now committed--the forgery of the will for Lucien’s advantage. Let those whose envy vents itself on magistrates think for a moment of their life spent in perpetual suspicion, of the torments these men must inflict on their minds, for civil cases are not less tortuous than criminal examinations, and it will occur to them perhaps that the priest and the lawyer wear an equally heavy coat of mail, equally furnished with spikes in the lining. However, every profession has its hair shirt and its Chinese puzzles.

It was about two o’clock when Monsieur Camusot saw Lucien de Rubempre come in, pale, worn, his eyes red and swollen, in short, in a state of dejection which enabled the magistrate to compare nature with art, the really dying man with the stage performance. His walk from the Conciergerie to the judge’s chambers, between two gendarmes, and preceded by the usher, had put the crowning touch to Lucien’s despair. It is the poet’s nature to prefer execution to condemnation.

As he saw this being, so completely bereft of the moral courage which is the essence of a judge, and which the last prisoner had so strongly manifested, Monsieur Camusot disdained the easy victory; and this scorn enabled him to strike a decisive blow, since it left him, on the ground, that horrible clearness of mind which the marksman feels when he is firing at a puppet.

“Collect yourself, Monsieur de Rubempre; you are in the presence of a magistrate who is eager to repair the mischief done involuntarily by the law when a man is taken into custody on suspicion that has no foundation. I believe you to be innocent, and you will soon be at liberty.--Here is the evidence of your innocence; it is a letter kept for you during your absence by your porter’s wife; she has just brought it here. In the commotion caused by the visitation of justice and the news of your arrest at Fontainebleau, the woman forgot the letter which was written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck.--Read it!”

Lucien took the letter, read it, and melted into tears. He sobbed, and could not say a single word. At the end of a quarter of an hour, during which Lucien with great difficulty recovered his self-command, the clerk laid before him the copy of the letter and begged him to sign a footnote certifying that the copy was faithful to the original, and might be used in its stead “on all occasions in the course of this preliminary inquiry,” giving him the option of comparing the two; but Lucien, of course, took Coquart’s word for its accuracy.

“Monsieur,” said the lawyer, with friendly good nature, “it is nevertheless impossible that I should release you without carrying out the legal formalities, and asking you some questions.--It is almost as a witness that I require you to answer. To such a man as you I think it is almost unnecessary to point out that the oath to tell the whole truth is not in this case a mere appeal to your conscience, but a necessity for your own sake, your position having been for a time somewhat ambiguous. The truth can do you no harm, be it what it may; falsehood will send you to trial, and compel me to send you back to the Conciergerie; whereas if you answer fully to my questions, you will sleep to-night in your own house, and be rehabilitated by this paragraph in the papers: ‘Monsieur de Rubempre, who was arrested yesterday at Fontainebleau, was set at liberty after a very brief examination.’”

This speech made a deep impression on Lucien; and the judge, seeing the temper of his prisoner, added:

“I may repeat to you that you were suspected of being accessory to the murder by poison of this Demoiselle Esther. Her suicide is clearly proved, and there is an end of that; but a sum of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs has been stolen, which she had disposed of by will, and you are the legatee. This is a felony. The crime was perpetrated before the discovery of the will.

“Now there is reason to suppose that a person who loves you as much as you loved Mademoiselle Esther committed the theft for your benefit.--Do not interrupt me,” Camusot went on, seeing that Lucien was about to speak, and commanding silence by a gesture; “I am asking you nothing so far. I am anxious to make you understand how deeply your honor is concerned in this question. Give up the false and contemptible notion of the honor binding two accomplices, and tell the whole truth.”

The reader must already have observed the extreme disproportion of the weapons in this conflict between the prisoner under suspicion and the examining judge. Absolute denial when skilfully used has in its favor its positive simplicity, and sufficiently defends the criminal; but it is, in a way, a coat of mail which becomes crushing as soon as the stiletto of cross-examination finds a joint to it. As soon as mere denial is ineffectual in face of certain proven facts, the examinee is entirely at the judge’s mercy.

Now, supposing that a sort of half-criminal, like Lucien, might, if he were saved from the first shipwreck of his honesty, amend his ways, and become a useful member of society, he will be lost in the pitfalls of his examination.

The judge has the driest possible record drawn up of the proceedings, a faithful analysis of the questions and answers; but no trace remains of his insidiously paternal addresses or his captious remonstrances, such as this speech. The judges of the superior courts see the results, but see nothing of the means. Hence, as some experienced persons have thought, it would be a good plan that, as in England, a jury should hear the examination. For a short while France enjoyed the benefit of this system. Under the Code of Brumaire of the year IV., this body was known as the examining jury, as distinguished from the trying jury. As to the final trial, if we should restore the examining jury, it would have to be the function of the superior courts without the aid of a jury.

“And now,” said Camusot, after a pause, “what is your name?--Attention, Monsieur Coquart!” said he to the clerk.

“Lucien Chardon de Rubempre.”

“And you were born----?”

“At Angouleme.” And Lucien named the day, month, and year.

“You inherited no fortune?”

“None whatever.”

“And yet, during your first residence in Paris, you spent a great deal, as compared with your small income?”

“Yes, monsieur; but at that time I had a most devoted friend in Mademoiselle Coralie, and I was so unhappy as to lose her. It was my grief at her death that made me return to my country home.”

“That is right, monsieur,” said Camusot; “I commend your frankness; it will be thoroughly appreciated.”

Lucien, it will be seen, was prepared to make a clean breast of it.

“On your return to Paris you lived even more expensively than before,” Camusot went on. “You lived like a man who might have about sixty thousand francs a year.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Who supplied you with the money?”

“My protector, the Abbe Carlos Herrera.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“We met when traveling, just as I was about to be quit of life by committing suicide.”

“You never heard him spoken of by your family--by your mother?”

“Never.”

“Can you remember the year and the month when you first became connected with Mademoiselle Esther?”

“Towards the end of 1823, at a small theatre on the Boulevard.”

“At first she was an expense to you?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Lately, in the hope of marrying Mademoiselle de Grandlieu, you purchased the ruins of the Chateau de Rubempre, you added land to the value of a million francs, and you told the family of Grandlieu that your sister and your brother-in-law had just come into a considerable fortune, and that their liberality had supplied you with the money.--Did you tell the Grandlieus this, monsieur?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“You do not know the reason why the marriage was broken off?”

“Not in the least, monsieur.”

“Well, the Grandlieus sent one of the most respectable attorneys in Paris to see your brother-in-law and inquire into the facts. At Angouleme this lawyer, from the statements of your sister and brother-in-law, learned that they not only had hardly lent you any money, but also that their inheritance consisted of land, of some extent no doubt, but that the whole amount of invested capital was not more than about two hundred thousand francs.--Now you cannot wonder that such people as the Grandlieus should reject a fortune of which the source is more than doubtful. This, monsieur, is what a lie has led to----”

Lucien was petrified by this revelation, and the little presence of mind he had preserved deserted him.

“Remember,” said Camusot, “that the police and the law know all they want to know.--And now,” he went on, recollecting Jacques Collin’s assumed paternity, “do you know who this pretended Carlos Herrera is?”

“Yes, monsieur; but I knew it too late.”

“Too late! How? Explain yourself.”

“He is not a priest, not a Spaniard, he is----”

“An escaped convict?” said the judge eagerly.

“Yes,” replied Lucien, “when he told me the fatal secret, I was already under obligations to him; I had fancied I was befriended by a respectable priest.”

“Jacques Collin----” said Monsieur Camusot, beginning a sentence.

“Yes,” said Lucien, “his name is Jacques Collin.”

“Very good. Jacques Collin has just now been identified by another person, and though he denies it, he does so, I believe, in your interest. But I asked whether you knew who the man is in order to prove another of Jacques Collin’s impostures.”

Lucien felt as though he had hot iron in his inside as he heard this alarming statement.

“Do you not know,” Camusot went on, “that in order to give color to the extraordinary affection he has for you, he declares that he is your father?”

“He! My father?--Oh, monsieur, did he tell you that?”

“Have you any suspicion of where the money came from that he used to give you? For, if I am to believe the evidence of the letter you have in your hand, that poor girl, Mademoiselle Esther, must have done you lately the same services as Coralie formerly rendered you. Still, for some years, as you have just admitted, you lived very handsomely without receiving anything from her.”

“It is I who should ask you, monsieur, whence convicts get their money! Jacques Collin my father!--Oh, my poor mother!” and Lucien burst into tears.

“Coquart, read out to the prisoner that part of Carlos Herrera’s examination in which he said that Lucien de Rubempre was his son.”

The poet listened in silence, and with a look that was terrible to behold.

“I am done for!” he cried.

“A man is not done for who is faithful to the path of honor and truth,” said the judge.

“But you will commit Jacques Collin for trial?” said Lucien.

“Undoubtedly,” said Camusot, who aimed at making Lucien talk. “Speak out.”

But in spite of all his persuasion and remonstrances, Lucien would say no more. Reflection had come too late, as it does to all men who are the slaves of impulse. There lies the difference between the poet and the man of action; one gives way to feeling to reproduce it in living images, his judgement comes in after; the other feels and judges both at once.

Lucien remained pale and gloomy; he saw himself at the bottom of the precipice, down which the examining judge had rolled him by the apparent candor which had entrapped his poet’s soul. He had betrayed, not his benefactor, but an accomplice who had defended their position with the courage of a lion, and a skill that showed no flaw. Where Jacques Collin had saved everything by his daring, Lucien, the man of brains, had lost all by his lack of intelligence and reflection. This infamous lie against which he revolted had screened a yet more infamous truth.

Utterly confounded by the judge’s skill, overpowered by his cruel dexterity, by the swiftness of the blows he had dealt him while making use of the errors of a life laid bare as probes to search his conscience, Lucien sat like an animal which the butcher’s pole-axe had failed to kill. Free and innocent when he came before the judge, in a moment his own avowal had made him feel criminal.

To crown all, as a final grave irony, Camusot, cold and calm, pointed out to Lucien that his self-betrayal was the result of a misapprehension. Camusot was thinking of Jacques Collin’s announcing himself as Lucien’s father; while Lucien, wholly absorbed by his fear of seeing his confederacy with an escaped convict made public, had imitated the famous inadvertency of the murderers of Ibycus.

One of Royer-Collard’s most famous achievements was proclaiming the constant triumph of natural feeling over engrafted sentiments, and defending the cause of anterior oaths by asserting that the law of hospitality, for instance, ought to be regarded as binding to the point of negativing the obligation of a judicial oath. He promulgated this theory, in the face of the world, from the French tribune; he boldly upheld conspirators, showing that it was human to be true to friendship rather than to the tyrannical laws brought out of the social arsenal to be adjusted to circumstances. And, indeed, natural rights have laws which have never been codified, but which are more effectual and better known than those laid down by society. Lucien had misapprehended, to his cost, the law of cohesion, which required him to be silent and leave Jacques Collin to protect himself; nay, more, he had accused him. In his own interests the man ought always to be, to him, Carlos Herrera.

Monsieur Camusot was rejoicing in his triumph; he had secured two criminals. He had crushed with the hand of justice one of the favorites of fashion, and he had found the undiscoverable Jacques Collin. He would be regarded as one of the cleverest of examining judges. So he left his prisoner in peace; but he was studying this speechless consternation, and he saw drops of sweat collect on the miserable face, swell and fall, mingled with two streams of tears.

“Why should you weep, Monsieur de Rubempre? You are, as I have told you, Mademoiselle Esther’s legatee, she having no heirs nor near relations, and her property amounts to nearly eight millions of francs if the lost seven hundred and fifty thousand francs are recovered.”

This was the last blow to the poor wretch. “If you do not lose your head for ten minutes,” Jacques Collin had said in his note, and Lucien by keeping cool would have gained all his desire. He might have paid his debt to Jacques Collin and have cut him adrift, have been rich, and have married Mademoiselle de Grandlieu. Nothing could more eloquently demonstrate the power with which the examining judge is armed, as a consequence of the isolation or separation of persons under suspicion, or the value of such a communication as Asie had conveyed to Jacques Collin.

“Ah, monsieur!” replied Lucien, with the satirical bitterness of a man who makes a pedestal of his utter overthrow, “how appropriate is the phrase in legal slang ‘to UNDERGO examination.’ For my part, if I had to choose between the physical torture of past ages and the moral torture of our day, I would not hesitate to prefer the sufferings inflicted of old by the executioner.--What more do you want of me?” he added haughtily.

“In this place, monsieur,” said the magistrate, answering the poet’s pride with mocking arrogance, “I alone have a right to ask questions.”

“I had the right to refuse to answer them,” muttered the hapless Lucien, whose wits had come back to him with perfect lucidity.

“Coquart, read the minutes to the prisoner.”

“I am the prisoner once more,” said Lucien to himself.

While the clerk was reading, Lucien came to a determination which compelled him to smooth down Monsieur Camusot. When Coquart’s drone ceased, the poet started like a man who has slept through a noise to which his ears are accustomed, and who is roused by its cessation.

“You have to sign the report of your examination,” said the judge.

“And am I at liberty?” asked Lucien, ironical in his turn.

“Not yet,” said Camusot; “but to-morrow, after being confronted with Jacques Collin, you will no doubt be free. Justice must now ascertain whether or no you are accessory to the crimes this man may have committed since his escape so long ago as 1820. However, you are no longer in the secret cells. I will write to the Governor to give you a better room.”

“Shall I find writing materials?”

“You can have anything supplied to you that you ask for; I will give orders to that effect by the usher who will take you back.”

Lucien mechanically signed the minutes and initialed the notes in obedience to Coquart’s indications with the meekness of a resigned victim. A single fact will show what a state he was in better than the minutest description. The announcement that he would be confronted with Jacques Collin had at once dried the drops of sweat from his brow, and his dry eyes glittered with a terrible light. In short, he became, in an instant as brief as a lightning flash, what Jacques Collin was--a man of iron.

In men whose nature is like Lucien’s, a nature which Jacques Collin had so thoroughly fathomed, these sudden transitions from a state of absolute demoralization to one that is, so to speak, metallic,--so extreme is the tension of every vital force,--are the most startling phenomena of mental vitality. The will surges up like the lost waters of a spring; it diffuses itself throughout the machinery that lies ready for the action of the unknown matter that constitutes it; and then the corpse is a man again, and the man rushes on full of energy for a supreme struggle.

Lucien laid Esther’s letter next his heart, with the miniature she had returned to him. Then he haughtily bowed to Monsieur Camusot, and went off with a firm step down the corridors, between two gendarmes.

“That is a deep scoundrel!” said the judge to his clerk, to avenge himself for the crushing scorn the poet had displayed. “He thought he might save himself by betraying his accomplice.”

“Of the two,” said Coquart timidly, “the convict is the most thorough-paced.”

“You are free for the rest of the day, Coquart,” said the lawyer. “We have done enough. Send away any case that is waiting, to be called to-morrow.--Ah! and you must go at once to the public prosecutor’s chambers and ask if he is still there; if so, ask him if he can give me a few minutes. Yes; he will not be gone,” he added, looking at a common clock in a wooden case painted green with gilt lines. “It is but a quarter-past three.”

These examinations, which are so quickly read, being written down at full length, questions and answers alike, take up an enormous amount of time. This is one of the reasons of the slowness of these preliminaries to a trial and of these imprisonments “on suspicion.” To the poor this is ruin, to the rich it is disgrace; to them only immediate release can in any degree repair, so far as possible, the disaster of an arrest.

This is why the two scenes here related had taken up the whole of the time spent by Asie in deciphering her master’s orders, in getting a Duchess out of her boudoir, and putting some energy into Madame de Serizy.

At this moment Camusot, who was anxious to get the full benefit of his cleverness, took the two documents, read them through, and promised himself that he would show them to the public prosecutor and take his opinion on them. During this meditation, his usher came back to tell him that Madame la Comtesse de Serizy’s man-servant insisted on speaking with him. At a nod from Camusot, a servant out of livery came in, looked first at the usher, and then at the magistrate, and said, “I have the honor of speaking to Monsieur Camusot?”

“Yes,” replied the lawyer and his clerk.

Camusot took a note which the servant offered him, and read as follows:--

“For the sake of many interests which will be obvious to you, my
dear Camusot, do not examine Monsieur de Rubempre. We have brought
ample proofs of his innocence that he may be released forthwith.

“D. DE MAUFRIGNEUSE.
“L. DE SERIZY.

“_P. S._--Burn this note.”

Camusot understood at once that he had blundered preposterously in laying snares for Lucien, and he began by obeying the two fine ladies--he lighted a taper, and burned the letter written by the Duchess. The man bowed respectfully.

“Then Madame de Serizy is coming here?” asked Camusot.

“The carriage is being brought round.”

At this moment Coquart came in to tell Monsieur Camusot that the public prosecutor expected him.

Oppressed by the blunder he had committed, in view of his ambitions, though to the better ends of justice, the lawyer, in whom seven years’ experience had perfected the sharpness that comes to a man who in his practice has had to measure his wits against the grisettes of Paris, was anxious to have some shield against the resentment of two women of fashion. The taper in which he had burned the note was still alight, and he used it to seal up the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse’s notes to Lucien--about thirty in all--and Madame de Serizy’s somewhat voluminous correspondence.

Then he waited on the public prosecutor.

The Palais de Justice is a perplexing maze of buildings piled one above another, some fine and dignified, others very mean, the whole disfigured by its lack of unity. The _Salle des Pas-Perdus_ is the largest known hall, but its nakedness is hideous, and distresses the eye. This vast Cathedral of the Law crushes the Supreme Court. The Galerie Marchande ends in two drain-like passages. From this corridor there is a double staircase, a little larger than that of the Criminal Courts, and under it a large double door. The stairs lead down to one of the Assize Courts, and the doors open into another. In some years the number of crimes committed in the circuit of the Seine is great enough to necessitate the sitting of two Benches.

Close by are the public prosecutor’s offices, the attorney’s room and library, the chambers of the attorney-general, and those of the public prosecutor’s deputies. All these purlieus, to use a generic term, communicate by narrow spiral stairs and the dark passages, which are a disgrace to the architecture not of Paris only, but of all France. The interior arrangement of the sovereign court of justice outdoes our prisons in all that is most hideous. The writer describing our manners and customs would shrink from the necessity of depicting the squalid corridor of about a metre in width, in which the witnesses wait in the Superior Criminal Court. As to the stove which warms the court itself, it would disgrace a cafe on the Boulevard Mont-Parnasse.

The public prosecutor’s private room forms part of an octagon wing flanking the Galerie Marchande, built out recently in regard to the age of the structure, over the prison yard, outside the women’s quarters. All this part of the Palais is overshadowed by the lofty and noble edifice of the Sainte-Chapelle. And all is solemn and silent.

Monsieur de Granville, a worthy successor of the great magistrates of the ancient Parlement, would not leave Paris without coming to some conclusion in the matter of Lucien. He expected to hear from Camusot, and the judge’s message had plunged him into the involuntary suspense which waiting produces on even the strongest minds. He had been sitting in the window-bay of his private room; he rose, and walked up and down, for having lingered in the morning to intercept Camusot, he had found him dull of apprehension; he was vaguely uneasy and worried.

And this was why.

The dignity of his high functions forbade his attempting to fetter the perfect independence of the inferior judge, and yet this trial nearly touched the honor and good name of his best friend and warmest supporter, the Comte de Serizy, Minister of State, member of the Privy Council, Vice-President of the State Council, and prospective Chancellor of the Realm, in the event of the death of the noble old man who held that august office. It was Monsieur de Serizy’s misfortune to adore his wife “through fire and water,” and he always shielded her with his protection. Now the public prosecutor fully understood the terrible fuss that would be made in the world and at court if a crime should be proved against a man whose name had been so often and so malignantly linked with that of the Countess.

“Ah!” he sighed, folding his arms, “formerly the supreme authority could take refuge in an appeal. Nowadays our mania for equality”--he dared not say _for Legality_, as a poetic orator in the Chamber courageously admitted a short while since--“is the death of us.”