Chapter XVI: Part 16

This noble magistrate knew all the fascination and the miseries of an illicit attachment. Esther and Lucien, as we have seen, had taken the rooms where the Comte de Granville had lived secretly on connubial terms with Mademoiselle de Bellefeuille, and whence she had fled one day, lured away by a villain. (See _A Double Marriage_.)

At the very moment when the public prosecutor was saying to himself, “Camusot is sure to have done something silly,” the examining magistrate knocked twice at the door of his room.

“Well, my dear Camusot, how is that case going on that I spoke of this morning?”

“Badly, Monsieur le Comte; read and judge for yourself.”

He held out the minutes of the two examinations to Monsieur de Granville, who took up his eyeglass and went to the window to read them. He had soon run through them.

“You have done your duty,” said the Count in an agitated voice. “It is all over. The law must take its course. You have shown so much skill, that you need never fear being deprived of your appointment as examining judge---”

If Monsieur de Granville had said to Camusot, “You will remain an examining judge to your dying day,” he could not have been more explicit than in making this polite speech. Camusot was cold in the very marrow.

“Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, to whom I owe much, had desired me...”

“Oh yes, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse is Madame de Serizy’s friend,” said Granville, interrupting him. “To be sure.--You have allowed nothing to influence you, I perceive. And you did well, sir; you will be a great magistrate.”

At this instant the Comte Octave de Bauvan opened the door without knocking, and said to the Comte de Granville:

“I have brought you a fair lady, my dear fellow, who did not know which way to turn; she was on the point of losing herself in our labyrinth----”

And Comte Octave led in by the hand the Comtesse de Serizy, who had been wandering about the place for the last quarter of an hour.

“What, you here, madame!” exclaimed the public prosecutor, pushing forward his own armchair, “and at this moment! This, madame, is Monsieur Camusot,” he added, introducing the judge.--“Bauvan,” said he to the distinguished ministerial orator of the Restoration, “wait for me in the president’s chambers; he is still there, and I will join you.”

Comte Octave de Bauvan understood that not merely was he in the way, but that Monsieur de Granville wanted an excuse for leaving his room.

Madame de Serizy had not made the mistake of coming to the Palais de Justice in her handsome carriage with a blue hammer-cloth and coats-of-arms, her coachman in gold lace, and two footmen in breeches and silk stockings. Just as they were starting Asie impressed on the two great ladies the need for taking the hackney coach in which she and the Duchess had arrived, and she had likewise insisted on Lucien’s mistress adopting the costume which is to women what a gray cloak was of yore to men. The Countess wore a plain brown dress, an old black shawl, and a velvet bonnet from which the flowers had been removed, and the whole covered up under a thick lace veil.

“You received our note?” said she to Camusot, whose dismay she mistook for respectful admiration.

“Alas! but too late, Madame la Comtesse,” replied the lawyer, whose tact and wit failed him excepting in his chambers and in presence of a prisoner.

“Too late! How?”

She looked at Monsieur de Granville, and saw consternation written in his face. “It cannot be, it must not be too late!” she added, in the tone of a despot.

Women, pretty women, in the position of Madame de Serizy, are the spoiled children of French civilization. If the women of other countries knew what a woman of fashion is in Paris, a woman of wealth and rank, they would all want to come and enjoy that splendid royalty. The women who recognize no bonds but those of propriety, no law but the petty charter which has been more than once alluded to in this _Comedie Humaine_ as the ladies’ Code, laugh at the statutes framed by men. They say everything, they do not shrink from any blunder or hesitate at any folly, for they all accept the fact that they are irresponsible beings, answerable for nothing on earth but their good repute and their children. They say the most preposterous things with a laugh, and are ready on every occasion to repeat the speech made in the early days of her married life by pretty Madame de Bauvan to her husband, whom she came to fetch away from the Palais: “Make haste and pass sentence, and come away.”

“Madame,” said the public prosecutor, “Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre is not guilty either of robbery or of poisoning; but Monsieur Camusot has led him to confess a still greater crime.”

“What is that?” she asked.

“He acknowledged,” said Monsieur Camusot in her ear, “that he is the friend and pupil of an escaped convict. The Abbe Carlos Herrera, the Spaniard with whom he has been living for the last seven years, is the notorious Jacques Collin.”

Madame de Serizy felt as if it were a blow from an iron rod at each word spoken by the judge, but this name was the finishing stroke.

“And the upshot of all this?” she said, in a voice that was no more than a breath.

“Is,” Monsieur de Granville went on, finishing the Countess’ sentence in an undertone, “that the convict will be committed for trial, and that if Lucien is not committed with him as having profited as an accessory to the man’s crimes, he must appear as a witness very seriously compromised.”

“Oh! never, never!” she cried aloud, with amazing firmness. “For my part, I should not hesitate between death and the disaster of seeing a man whom the world has known to be my dearest friend declared by the bench to be the accomplice of a convict.--The King has a great regard for my husband----”

“Madame,” said the public prosecutor, also aloud, and with a smile, “the King has not the smallest power over the humblest examining judge in his kingdom, nor over the proceedings in any court of justice. That is the grand feature of our new code of laws. I myself have just congratulated M. Camusot on his skill----”

“On his clumsiness,” said the Countess sharply, though Lucien’s intimacy with a scoundrel really disturbed her far less than his attachment to Esther.

“If you will read the minutes of the examination of the two prisoners by Monsieur Camusot, you will see that everything is in his hands----”

After this speech, the only thing the public prosecutor could venture to say, and a flash of feminine--or, if you will, lawyer-like--cunning, he went to the door; then, turning round on the threshold, he added:

“Excuse me, madame; I have two words to say to Bauvan.” Which, translated by the worldly wise, conveyed to the Countess: “I do not want to witness the scene between you and Camusot.”

“What is this examination business?” said Leontine very blandly to Camusot, who stood downcast in the presence of the wife of one of the most important personages in the realm.

“Madame,” said Camusot, “a clerk writes down all the magistrate’s questions and the prisoner’s replies. This document is signed by the clerk, by the judge, and by the prisoner. This evidence is the raw material of the subsequent proceedings; on it the accused are committed for trial, and remanded to appear before the Criminal Court.”

“Well, then,” said she, “if the evidence were suppressed----?”

“Oh, madame, that is a crime which no magistrate could possibly commit--a crime against society.”

“It is a far worse crime against me to have ever allowed it to be recorded; still, at this moment it is the only evidence against Lucien. Come, read me the minutes of his examination that I may see if there is still a way of salvation for us all, monsieur. I do not speak for myself alone--I should quite calmly kill myself--but Monsieur de Serizy’s happiness is also at stake.”

“Pray, madame, do not suppose that I have forgotten the respect due you,” said Camusot. “If Monsieur Popinot, for instance, had undertaken this case, you would have had worse luck than you have found with me; for he would not have come to consult Monsieur de Granville; no one would have heard anything about it. I tell you, madame, everything has been seized in Monsieur Lucien’s lodging, even your letters----”

“What! my letters!”

“Here they are, madame, in a sealed packet.”

The Countess in her agitation rang as if she had been at home, and the office-boy came in.

“A light,” said she.

The boy lighted a taper and placed it on the chimney-piece, while the Countess looked through the letters, counted them, crushed them in her hand, and flung them on the hearth. In a few minutes she set the whole mass in a blaze, twisting up the last note to serve as a torch.

Camusot stood, looking rather foolish as he watched the papers burn, holding the legal documents in his hand. The Countess, who seemed absorbed in the work of destroying the proofs of her passion, studied him out of the corner of her eye. She took her time, she calculated her distance; with the spring of a cat she seized the two documents and threw them on the flames. But Camusot saved them; the Countess rushed on him and snatched back the burning papers. A struggle ensued, Camusot calling out: “Madame, but madame! This is contempt--madame!”

A man hurried into the room, and the Countess could not repress a scream as she beheld the Comte de Serizy, followed by Monsieur de Granville and the Comte de Bauvan. Leontine, however, determined to save Lucien at any cost, would not let go of the terrible stamped documents, which she clutched with the tenacity of a vise, though the flame had already burnt her delicate skin like a moxa.

At last Camusot, whose fingers also were smarting from the fire, seemed to be ashamed of the position; he let the papers go; there was nothing left of them but the portions so tightly held by the antagonists that the flame could not touch them. The whole scene had taken less time than is needed to read this account of it.

“What discussion can have arisen between you and Madame de Serizy?” the husband asked of Camusot.

Before the lawyer could reply, the Countess held the fragments in the candle and threw them on the remains of her letters, which were not entirely consumed.

“I shall be compelled,” said Camusot, “to lay a complaint against Madame la Comtesse----”

“Heh! What has she done?” asked the public prosecutor, looking alternately at the lady and the magistrate.

“I have burned the record of the examinations,” said the lady of fashion with a laugh, so pleased at her high-handed conduct that she did not yet feel the pain of the burns, “If that is a crime--well, monsieur must get his odious scrawl written out again.”

“Very true,” said Camusot, trying to recover his dignity.

“Well, well, ‘All’s well that ends well,’” said Monsieur de Granville. “But, my dear Countess, you must not often take such liberties with the Law; it might fail to discern who and what you are.”

“Monsieur Camusot valiantly resisted a woman whom none can resist; the Honor of the Robe is safe!” said the Comte de Bauvan, laughing.

“Indeed! Monsieur Camusot was resisting?” said the public prosecutor, laughing too. “He is a brave man indeed; I should not dare resist the Countess.”

And thus for the moment this serious affair was no more than a pretty woman’s jest, at which Camusot himself must laugh.

But Monsieur de Granville saw one man who was not amused. Not a little alarmed by the Comte de Serizy’s attitude and expression, his friend led him aside.

“My dear fellow,” said he in a whisper, “your distress persuades me for the first and only time in my life to compromise with my duty.”

The public prosecutor rang, and the office-boy appeared.

“Desire Monsieur de Chargeboeuf to come here.”

Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, a sucking barrister, was his private secretary.

“My good friend,” said the Comte de Granville to Camusot, whom he took to the window, “go back to your chambers, get your clerk to reconstruct the report of the Abbe Carlos Herrera’s depositions; as he had not signed the first copy, there will be no difficulty about that. To-morrow you must confront your Spanish diplomate with Rastignac and Bianchon, who will not recognize him as Jacques Collin. Then, being sure of his release, the man will sign the document.

“As to Lucien de Rubempre, set him free this evening; he is not likely to talk about an examination of which the evidence is destroyed, especially after such a lecture as I shall give him.

“Now you will see how little justice suffers by these proceedings. If the Spaniard really is the convict, we have fifty ways of recapturing him and committing him for trial--for we will have his conduct in Spain thoroughly investigated. Corentin, the police agent, will take care of him for us, and we ourselves will keep an eye on him. So treat him decently; do not send him down to the cells again.

“Can we be the death of the Comte and Comtesse de Serizy, as well as of Lucien, for the theft of seven hundred and fifty thousand francs as yet unproven, and to Lucien’s personal loss? Will it not be better for him to lose the money than to lose his character? Above all, if he is to drag with him in his fall a Minister of State, and his wife, and the Duchesse du Maufrigneuse.

“This young man is a speckled orange; do not leave it to rot.

“All this will take you about half an hour; go and get it done; we will wait for you. It is half-past three; you will find some judges about. Let me know if you can get a rule of insufficient evidence--or Lucien must wait till to-morrow morning.”

Camusot bowed to the company and went; but Madame de Serizy, who was suffering a good deal from her burns, did not return his bow.

Monsieur de Serizy, who had suddenly rushed away while the public prosecutor and the magistrate were talking together, presently returned, having fetched a small jar of virgin wax. With this he dressed his wife’s fingers, saying in an undertone:

“Leontine, why did you come here without letting me know?”

“My dear,” replied she in a whisper, “forgive me. I seem mad, but indeed your interests were as much involved as mine.”

“Love this young fellow if fatality requires it, but do not display your passion to all the world,” said the luckless husband.

“Well, my dear Countess,” said Monsieur de Granville, who had been engaged in conversation with Comte Octave, “I hope you may take Monsieur de Rubempre home to dine with you this evening.”

This half promise produced a reaction; Madame de Serizy melted into tears.

“I thought I had no tears left,” said she with a smile. “But could you not bring Monsieur de Rubempre to wait here?”

“I will try if I can find the ushers to fetch him, so that he may not be seen under the escort of the gendarmes,” said Monsieur de Granville.

“You are as good as God!” cried she, with a gush of feeling that made her voice sound like heavenly music.

“These are the women,” said Comte Octave, “who are fascinating, irresistible!”

And he became melancholy as he thought of his own wife. (See _Honorine_.)

As he left the room, Monsieur de Granville was stopped by young Chargeboeuf, to whom he spoke to give him instructions as to what he was to say to Massol, one of the editors of the _Gazette des Tribunaux_.

While beauties, ministers, and magistrates were conspiring to save Lucien, this was what he was doing at the Conciergerie. As he passed the gate the poet told the keeper that Monsieur Camusot had granted him leave to write, and he begged to have pens, ink, and paper. At a whispered word to the Governor from Camusot’s usher a warder was instructed to take them to him at once. During the short time that it took for the warder to fetch these things and carry them up to Lucien, the hapless young man, to whom the idea of facing Jacques Collin had become intolerable, sank into one of those fatal moods in which the idea of suicide--to which he had yielded before now, but without succeeding in carrying it out--rises to the pitch of mania. According to certain mad-doctors, suicide is in some temperaments the closing phase of mental aberration; and since his arrest Lucien had been possessed by that single idea. Esther’s letter, read and reread many times, increased the vehemence of his desire to die by reminding him of the catastrophe of Romeo dying to be with Juliet.

This is what he wrote:--

“_This is my Last Will and Testament_.

“AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830.

“I, the undersigned, give and bequeath to the children of my
sister, Madame Eve Chardon, wife of David Sechard, formerly a
printer at Angouleme, and of Monsieur David Sechard, all the
property, real and personal, of which I may be possessed at the
time of my decease, due deduction being made for the payments and
legacies, which I desire my executor to provide for.

“And I earnestly beg Monsieur de Serizy to undertake the charge of
being the executor of this my will.

“First, to Monsieur l’Abbe Carlos Herrera I direct the payment of
the sum of three hundred thousand francs. Secondly, to Monsieur le
Baron de Nucingen the sum of fourteen hundred thousand francs,
less seven hundred and fifty thousand if the sum stolen from
Mademoiselle Esther should be recovered.

“As universal legatee to Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, I give and
bequeath the sum of seven hundred and sixty thousand francs to the
Board of Asylums of Paris for the foundation of a refuge
especially dedicated to the use of public prostitutes who may wish
to forsake their life of vice and ruin.

“I also bequeath to the Asylums of Paris the sum of money
necessary for the purchase of a certificate for dividends to the
amount of thirty thousand francs per annum in five per cents, the
annual income to be devoted every six months to the release of
prisoners for debts not exceeding two thousand francs. The Board
of Asylums to select the most respectable of such persons
imprisoned for debt.

“I beg Monsieur de Serizy to devote the sum of forty thousand
francs to erecting a monument to Mademoiselle Esther in the
Eastern cemetery, and I desire to be buried by her side. The tomb
is to be like an antique tomb--square, our two effigies lying
thereon, in white marble, the heads on pillows, the hands folded
and raised to heaven. There is to be no inscription whatever.

“I beg Monsieur de Serizy to give to Monsieur de Rastignac a gold
toilet-set that is in my room as a remembrance.

“And as a remembrance, I beg my executor to accept my library of
books as a gift from me.

“LUCIEN CHARDON DE RUBEMPRE.”

This Will was enclosed in a letter addressed to Monsieur le Comte de Granville, Public Prosecutor in the Supreme Court at Paris, as follows:

“MONSIEUR LE COMTE,--

“I place my Will in your hands. When you open this letter I shall
be no more. In my desire to be free, I made such cowardly replies
to Monsieur Camusot’s insidious questions, that, in spite of my
innocence, I may find myself entangled in a disgraceful trial.
Even if I were acquitted, a blameless life would henceforth be
impossible to me in view of the opinions of the world.

“I beg you to transmit the enclosed letter to the Abbe Carlos
Herrera without opening it, and deliver to Monsieur Camusot the
formal retraction I also enclose.

“I suppose no one will dare to break the seal of a packet
addressed to you. In this belief I bid you adieu, offering you my
best respects for the last time, and begging you to believe that
in writing to you I am giving you a token of my gratitude for all
the kindness you have shown to your deceased humble servant,

“LUCIEN DE R.”

“_To the Abbe Carlos Herrera_.

“MY DEAR ABBE,--I have had only benefits from you, and I have
betrayed you. This involuntary ingratitude is killing me, and when
you read these lines I shall have ceased to exist. You are not
here now to save me.

“You had given me full liberty, if I should find it advantageous,
to destroy you by flinging you on the ground like a cigar-end; but
I have ruined you by a blunder. To escape from a difficulty,
deluded by a clever question from the examining judge, your son by
adoption and grace went over to the side of those who aim at
killing you at any cost, and insist on proving an identity, which
I know to be impossible, between you and a French villain. All is
said.

“Between a man of your calibre and me--me of whom you tried to
make a greater man than I am capable of being--no foolish
sentiment can come at the moment of final parting. You hoped to
make me powerful and famous, and you have thrown me into the gulf
of suicide, that is all. I have long heard the broad pinions of
that vertigo beating over my head.

“As you have sometimes said, there is the posterity of Cain and
the posterity of Abel. In the great human drama Cain is in
opposition. You are descended from Adam through that line, in
which the devil still fans the fire of which the first spark was
flung on Eve. Among the demons of that pedigree, from time to time
we see one of stupendous power, summing up every form of human
energy, and resembling the fevered beasts of the desert, whose
vitality demands the vast spaces they find there. Such men are as
dangerous as lions would be in the heart of Normandy; they must
have their prey, and they devour common men and crop the money of
fools. Their sport is so dangerous that at last they kill the
humble dog whom they have taken for a companion and made an idol
of.

“When it is God’s will, these mysterious beings may be a Moses, an
Attila, Charlemagne, Mahomet, or Napoleon; but when He leaves a
generation of these stupendous tools to rust at the bottom of the
ocean, they are no more than a Pugatschef, a Fouche, a Louvel, or
the Abbe Carlos Herrera. Gifted with immense power over tenderer
souls, they entrap them and mangle them. It is grand, it is fine
--in its way. It is the poisonous plant with gorgeous coloring that
fascinates children in the woods. It is the poetry of evil. Men
like you ought to dwell in caves and never come out of them. You
have made me live that vast life, and I have had all my share of
existence; so I may very well take my head out of the Gordian knot
of your policy and slip it into the running knot of my cravat.

“To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to the public
prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You will know how to
take advantage of this document.

“In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made,
Monsieur l’Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you
so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal
affection for me.

“And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
Corruption; farewell--to you who, if started on the right road,
might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You
have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on
the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the
enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the
waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy;
but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.

“Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as my
admiration.

“LUCIEN.”

“_Recantation_.

“I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I retract, without
reservation, all that I deposed at my examination to-day before
Monsieur Camusot.

“The Abbe Carlos Herrera always called himself my spiritual
father, and I was misled by the word father used in another sense
by the judge, no doubt under a misapprehension.

“I am aware that, for political ends, and to quash certain secrets
concerning the Cabinets of Spain and of the Tuileries, some
obscure diplomatic agents tried to show that the Abbe Carlos
Herrera was a forger named Jacques Collin; but the Abbe Carlos
Herrera never told me anything about the matter excepting that he
was doing his best to obtain evidence of the death or of the
continued existence of Jacques Collin.

“LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE.

“AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830.”

The fever for suicide had given Lucien immense clearness of mind, and the swiftness of hand familiar to authors in the fever of composition. The impetus was so strong within him that these four documents were all written within half an hour; he folded them in a wrapper, fastened with wafers, on which he impressed with the strength of delirium the coat-of-arms engraved on a seal-ring he wore, and he then laid the packet very conspicuously in the middle of the floor.

Certainly it would have been impossible to conduct himself with greater dignity, in the false position to which all this infamy had led him; he was rescuing his memory from opprobrium, and repairing the injury done to his accomplice, so far as the wit of a man of the world could nullify the result of the poet’s trustfulness.

If Lucien had been taken back to one of the lower cells, he would have been wrecked on the impossibility of carrying out his intentions, for those boxes of masonry have no furniture but a sort of camp-bed and a pail for necessary uses. There is not a nail, not a chair, not even a stool. The camp-bed is so firmly fixed that it is impossible to move it without an amount of labor that the warder would not fail to detect, for the iron-barred peephole is always open. Indeed, if a prisoner under suspicion gives reason for uneasiness, he is watched by a gendarme or a constable.

In the private rooms for which prisoners pay, and in that whither Lucien had been conveyed by the judge’s courtesy to a young man belonging to the upper ranks of society, the movable bed, table, and chair might serve to carry out his purpose of suicide, though they hardly made it easy. Lucien wore a long blue silk necktie, and on his way back from examination he was already meditating on the means by which Pichegru, more or less voluntarily, ended his days. Still, to hang himself, a man must find a purchase, and have a sufficient space between it and the ground for his feet to find no support. Now the window of his room, looking out on the prison-yard, had no handle to the fastening; and the bars, being fixed outside, were divided from his reach by the thickness of the wall, and could not be used for a support.

This, then, was the plan hit upon by Lucien to put himself out of the world. The boarding of the lower part of the opening, which prevented his seeing out into the yard, also hindered the warders outside from seeing what was done in the room; but while the lower portion of the window was replaced by two thick planks, the upper part of both halves still was filled with small panes, held in place by the cross pieces in which they were set. By standing on his table Lucien could reach the glazed part of the window, and take or break out two panes, so as to have a firm point of attachment in the angle of the lower bar. Round this he would tie his cravat, turn round once to tighten it round his neck after securing it firmly, and kick the table from under his feet.

He drew the table up under the window without making any noise, took off his coat and waistcoat, and got on the table unhesitatingly to break a pane above and one below the iron cross-bar. Standing on the table, he could look out across the yard on a magical view, which he then beheld for the first time. The Governor of the prison, in deference to Monsieur Camusot’s request that he should deal as leniently as possible with Lucien, had led him, as we have seen, through the dark passages of the Conciergerie, entered from the dark vault opposite the Tour d’Argent, thus avoiding the exhibition of a young man of fashion to the crowd of prisoners airing themselves in the yard. It will be for the reader to judge whether the aspect of the promenade was not such as to appeal deeply to a poet’s soul.

The yard of the Conciergerie ends at the quai between the Tour d’Argent and the Tour Bonbec; thus the distance between them exactly shows from the outside the width of the plot of ground. The corridor called the Galerie de Saint-Louis, which extends from the Galerie Marchande to the Courts of Appeals and the Tour Bonbec--in which, it is said, Saint-Louis’ room still exists--may enable the curious to estimate the depths of the yard, as it is of the same length. Thus the dark cells and the private rooms are under the Galerie Marchande. And Queen Marie Antoinette, whose dungeon was under the present cells, was conducted to the presence of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which held its sittings in the place where the Court of Appeals now performs its solemn functions, up a horrible flight of steps, now never used, in the very thickness of the wall on which the Galerie Marchande is built.

One side of the prison-yard--that on which the Hall of Saint-Louis forms the first floor--displays a long row of Gothic columns, between which the architects of I know not what period have built up two floors of cells to accommodate as many prisoners as possible, by choking the capitals, the arches, and the vaults of this magnificent cloister with plaster, barred loopholes, and partitions. Under the room known as the Cabinet de Saint-Louis, in the Tour Bonbec, there is a spiral stair leading to these dens. This degradation of one of the immemorial buildings of France is hideous to behold.

From the height at which Lucien was standing he saw this cloister, and the details of the building that joins the two towers, in sharp perspective; before him were the pointed caps of the towers. He stood amazed; his suicide was postponed to his admiration. The phenomena of hallucination are in these days so fully recognized by the medical faculty that this mirage of the senses, this strange illusion of the mind is beyond dispute. A man under the stress of a feeling which by its intensity has become a monomania, often finds himself in the frame of mind to which opium, hasheesh, or the protoxyde of azote might have brought him. Spectres appear, phantoms and dreams take shape, things of the past live again as they once were. What was but an image of the brain becomes a moving or a living object. Science is now beginning to believe that under the action of a paroxysm of passion the blood rushes to the brain, and that such congestion has the terrible effects of a dream in a waking state, so averse are we to regard thought as a physical and generative force. (See _Louis Lambert_.)

Lucien saw the building in all its pristine beauty; the columns were new, slender and bright; Saint-Louis’ Palace rose before him as it had once appeared; he admired its Babylonian proportions and Oriental fancy. He took this exquisite vision as a poetic farewell from civilized creation. While making his arrangements to die, he wondered how this marvel of architecture could exist in Paris so utterly unknown. He was two Luciens--one Lucien the poet, wandering through the Middle Ages under the vaults and the turrets of Saint-Louis, the other Lucien ready for suicide.

Just as Monsieur de Granville had ended giving his instructions to the young secretary, the Governor of the Conciergerie came in, and the expression of his face was such as to give the public prosecutor a presentiment of disaster.

“Have you met Monsieur Camusot?” he asked.

“No, monsieur,” said the Governor; “his clerk Coquart instructed me to give the Abbe Carlos a private room and to liberate Monsieur de Rubempre--but it is too late.”

“Good God! what has happened?”

“Here, monsieur, is a letter for you which will explain the catastrophe. The warder on duty in the prison-yard heard a noise of breaking glass in the upper room, and Monsieur Lucien’s next neighbor shrieking wildly, for he heard the young man’s dying struggles. The warder came to me pale from the sight that met his eyes. He found the prisoner hanged from the window bar by his necktie.”

Though the Governor spoke in a low voice, a fearful scream from Madame de Serizy showed that under stress of feeling our faculties are incalculably keen. The Countess heard, or guessed. Before Monsieur de Granville could turn round, or Monsieur de Bauvan or her husband could stop her, she fled like a flash out of the door, and reached the Galerie Marchande, where she ran on to the stairs leading out to the Rue de la Barillerie.

A pleader was taking off his gown at the door of one of the shops which from time immemorial have choked up this arcade, where shoes are sold, and gowns and caps kept for hire.

The Countess asked the way to the Conciergerie.

“Go down the steps and turn to the left. The entrance is from the Quai de l’Horloge, the first archway.”

“That woman is crazy,” said the shop-woman; “some one ought to follow her.”

But no one could have kept up with Leontine; she flew.

A physician may explain how it is that these ladies of fashion, whose strength never finds employment, reveal such powers in the critical moments of life.

The Countess rushed so swiftly through the archway to the wicket-gate that the gendarme on sentry did not see her pass. She flew at the barred gate like a feather driven by the wind, and shook the iron bars with such fury that she broke the one she grasped. The bent ends were thrust into her breast, making the blood flow, and she dropped on the ground, shrieking, “Open it, open it!” in a tone that struck terror into the warders.

The gatekeepers hurried out.

“Open the gate--the public prosecutor sent me--to save the dead man!----”

While the Countess was going round by the Rue de la Barillerie and the Quai de l’Horloge, Monsieur de Granville and Monsieur de Serizy went down to the Conciergerie through the inner passages, suspecting Leontine’s purpose; but notwithstanding their haste, they only arrived in time to see her fall fainting at the outer gate, where she was picked up by two gendarmes who had come down from the guardroom.

On seeing the Governor of the prison, the gate was opened, and the Countess was carried into the office, but she stood up and fell on her knees, clasping her hands.

“Only to see him--to see him! Oh! I will do no wrong! But if you do not want to see me die on the spot, let me look at Lucien dead or living.--Ah, my dear, are you here? Choose between my death and----”

She sank in a heap.

“You are kind,” she said; “I will always love you----”

“Carry her away,” said Monsieur de Bauvan.

“No, we will go to Lucien’s cell,” said Monsieur de Granville, reading a purpose in Monsieur de Serizy’s wild looks.

And he lifted up the Countess, and took her under one arm, while Monsieur de Bauvan supported her on the other side.

“Monsieur,” said the Comte de Serizy to the Governor, “silence as of the grave about all this.”

“Be easy,” replied the Governor; “you have done the wisest thing.--If this lady----”

“She is my wife.”

“Oh! I beg your pardon. Well, she will certainly faint away when she sees the poor man, and while she is unconscious she can be taken home in a carriage.

“That is what I thought,” replied the Count. “Pray send one of your men to tell my servants in the Cour de Harlay to come round to the gate. Mine is the only carriage there.”

“We can save him yet,” said the Countess, walking on with a degree of strength and spirit that surprised her friends. “There are ways of restoring life----”

And she dragged the gentlemen along, crying to the warder:

“Come on, come faster--one second may cost three lives!”

When the cell door was opened, and the Countess saw Lucien hanging as though his clothes had been hung on a peg, she made a spring towards him as if to embrace him and cling to him; but she fell on her face on the floor with smothered shrieks and a sort of rattle in her throat.

Five minutes later she was being taken home stretched on the seat in the Count’s carriage, her husband kneeling by her side. Monsieur de Bauvan went off to fetch a doctor to give her the care she needed.

The Governor of the Conciergerie meanwhile was examining the outer gate, and saying to his clerk:

“No expense was spared; the bars are of wrought iron, they were properly tested, and cost a large sum; and yet there was a flaw in that bar.”

Monsieur de Granville on returning to his room had other instructions to give to his private secretary. Massol, happily had not yet arrived.

Soon after Monsieur de Granville had left, anxious to go to see Monsieur de Serizy, Massol came and found his ally Chargeboeuf in the public prosecutor’s Court.

“My dear fellow,” said the young secretary, “if you will do me a great favor, you will put what I dictate to you in your _Gazette_ to-morrow under the heading of Law Reports; you can compose the heading. Write now.”

And he dictated as follows:--

“It has been ascertained that the Demoiselle Esther Gobseck killed
herself of her own free will.

“Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre satisfactorily proved an alibi, and
his innocence leaves his arrest to be regretted, all the more
because just as the examining judge had given the order for his
release the young gentleman died suddenly.”

“I need not point out to you,” said the young lawyer to Massol, “how necessary it is to preserve absolute silence as to the little service requested of you.”

“Since it is you who do me the honor of so much confidence,” replied Massol, “allow me to make one observation. This paragraph will give rise to odious comments on the course of justice----”

“Justice is strong enough to bear them,” said the young attache to the Courts, with the pride of a coming magistrate trained by Monsieur de Granville.

“Allow me, my dear sir; with two sentences this difficulty may be avoided.”

And the journalist-lawyer wrote as follows:--

“The forms of the law have nothing to do with this sad event. The
post-mortem examination, which was at once made, proved that
sudden death was due to the rupture of an aneurism in its last
stage. If Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre had been upset by his
arrest, death must have ensued sooner. But we are in a position to
state that, far from being distressed at being taken into custody,
the young man, whom all must lament, only laughed at it, and told
those who escorted him from Fontainebleau to Paris that as soon as
he was brought before a magistrate his innocence would be
acknowledged.”

“That saves it, I think?” said Massol.

“You are perfectly right.”

“The public prosecutor will thank you for it to-morrow,” said Massol slyly.

Now to the great majority, as to the more choice reader, it will perhaps seem that this Study is not completed by the death of Esther and of Lucien; Jacques Collin and Asie, Europe and Paccard, in spite of their villainous lives, may have been interesting enough to make their fate a matter of curiosity.

The last act of the drama will also complete the picture of life which this Study is intended to present, and give the issue of various interests which Lucien’s career had strangely tangled by bringing some ignoble personages from the hulks into contact with those of the highest rank.

Thus, as may be seen, the greatest events of life find their expression in the more or less veracious gossip of the Paris papers. And this is the case with many things of greater importance than are here recorded.

VAUTRIN’S LAST AVATAR

“What is it, Madeleine?” asked Madame Camusot, seeing her maid come into the room with the particular air that servants assume in critical moments.

“Madame,” said Madeleine, “monsieur has just come in from Court; but he looks so upset, and is in such a state, that I think perhaps it would be well for you to go to his room.”

“Did he say anything?” asked Madame Camusot.

“No, madame; but we never have seen monsieur look like that; he looks as if he were going to be ill, his face is yellow--he seems all to pieces----”

Madame Camusot waited for no more; she rushed out of her room and flew to her husband’s study. She found the lawyer sitting in an armchair, pale and dazed, his legs stretched out, his head against the back of it, his hands hanging limp, exactly as if he were sinking into idiotcy.

“What is the matter, my dear?” said the young woman in alarm.

“Oh! my poor Amelie, the most dreadful thing has happened--I am still trembling. Imagine, the public prosecutor--no, Madame de Serizy--that is--I do not know where to begin.”

“Begin at the end,” said Madame Camusot.

“Well, just as Monsieur Popinot, in the council room of the first Court, had put the last signature to the ruling of ‘insufficient cause’ for the apprehension of Lucien de Rubempre on the ground of my report, setting him at liberty--in fact, the whole thing was done, the clerk was going off with the minute book, and I was quit of the whole business--the President of the Court came in and took up the papers. ‘You are releasing a dead man,’ said he, with chilly irony; ‘the young man is gone, as Monsieur de Bonald says, to appear before his natural Judge. He died of apoplexy----’

“I breathed again, thinking it was sudden illness.

“‘As I understand you, Monsieur le President,’ said Monsieur Popinot, ‘it is a case of apoplexy like Pichegru’s.’

“‘Gentlemen,’ said the President then, very gravely, ‘you must please to understand that for the outside world Lucien de Rubempre died of an aneurism.’

“We all looked at each other. ‘Very great people are concerned in this deplorable business,’ said the President. ‘God grant for your sake, Monsieur Camusot, though you did no less than your duty, that Madame de Serizy may not go mad from the shock she has had. She was carried away almost dead. I have just met our public prosecutor in a painful state of despair.’--‘You have made a mess of it, my dear Camusot,’ he added in my ear.--I assure you, my dear, as I came away I could hardly stand. My legs shook so that I dared not venture into the street. I went back to my room to rest. Then Coquart, who was putting away the papers of this wretched case, told me that a very handsome woman had taken the Conciergerie by storm, wanting to save Lucien, whom she was quite crazy about, and that she fainted away on seeing him hanging by his necktie to the window-bar of his room. The idea that the way in which I questioned that unhappy young fellow--who, between ourselves, was guilty in many ways--can have led to his committing suicide has haunted me ever since I left the Palais, and I feel constantly on the point of fainting----”

“What next? Are you going to think yourself a murderer because a suspected criminal hangs himself in prison just as you were about to release him?” cried Madame Camusot. “Why, an examining judge in such a case is like a general whose horse is killed under him!--That is all.”

“Such a comparison, my dear, is at best but a jest, and jesting is out of place now. In this case the dead man clutches the living. All our hopes are buried in Lucien’s coffin.”

“Indeed?” said Madame Camusot, with deep irony.

“Yes, my career is closed. I shall be no more than an examining judge all my life. Before this fatal termination Monsieur de Granville was annoyed at the turn the preliminaries had taken; his speech to our President makes me quite certain that so long as Monsieur de Granville is public prosecutor I shall get no promotion.”

Promotion! The terrible thought, which in these days makes a judge a mere functionary.

Formerly a magistrate was made at once what he was to remain. The three or four presidents’ caps satisfied the ambitions of lawyers in each Parlement. An appointment as councillor was enough for a de Brosses or a Mole, at Dijon as much as in Paris. This office, in itself a fortune, required a fortune brought to it to keep it up.

In Paris, outside the Parlement, men of the long robe could hope only for three supreme appointments: those of Controller-General, Keeper of the Seals, or Chancellor. Below the Parlement, in the lower grades, the president of a lower Court thought himself quite of sufficient importance to be content to fill his chair to the end of his days.

Compare the position of a councillor in the High Court of Justice in Paris, in 1829, who has nothing but his salary, with that of a councillor to the Parlement in 1729. How great is the difference! In these days, when money is the universal social guarantee, magistrates are not required to have--as they used to have--fine private fortunes: hence we see deputies and peers of France heaping office on office, at once magistrates and legislators, borrowing dignity from other positions than those which ought to give them all their importance.

In short, a magistrate tries to distinguish himself for promotion as men do in the army, or in a Government office.

This prevailing thought, even if it does not affect his independence, is so well known and so natural, and its effects are so evident, that the law inevitably loses some of its majesty in the eyes of the public. And, in fact, the salaries paid by the State makes priests and magistrates mere _employes_. Steps to be gained foster ambition, ambition engenders subservience to power, and modern equality places the judge and the person to be judged in the same category at the bar of society. And so the two pillars of social order, Religion and Justice, are lowered in this nineteenth century, which asserts itself as progressive in all things.

“And why should you never be promoted?” said Amelie Camusot.

She looked half-jestingly at her husband, feeling the necessity of reviving the energies of the man who embodied her ambitions, and on whom she could play as on an instrument.

“Why despair?” she went on, with a shrug that sufficiently expressed her indifference as to the prisoner’s end. “This suicide will delight Lucien’s two enemies, Madame d’Espard and her cousin, the Comtesse du Chatelet. Madame d’Espard is on the best terms with the Keeper of the Seals; through her you can get an audience of His Excellency and tell him all the secrets of this business. Then, if the head of the law is on your side, what have you to fear from the president of your Court or the public prosecutor?”

“But, Monsieur and Madame de Serizy?” cried the poor man. “Madame de Serizy is gone mad, I tell you, and her madness is my doing, they say.”

“Well, if she is out of her mind, O judge devoid of judgment,” said Madame Camusot, laughing, “she can do you no harm.--Come, tell me all the incidents of the day.”

“Bless me!” said Camusot, “just as I had cross-questioned the unhappy youth, and he had deposed that the self-styled Spanish priest is really Jacques Collin, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy sent me a note by a servant begging me not to examine him. It was all over!----”

“But you must have lost your head!” said Amelie. “What was to prevent you, being so sure as you are of your clerk’s fidelity, from calling Lucien back, reassuring him cleverly, and revising the examination?”

“Why, you are as bad as Madame de Serizy; you laugh justice to scorn,” said Camusot, who was incapable of flouting his profession. “Madame de Serizy seized the minutes and threw them into the fire.”

“That is the right sort of woman! Bravo!” cried Madame Camusot.

“Madame de Serizy declared she would sooner see the Palais blown up than leave a young man who had enjoyed the favors of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and her own to stand at the bar of a Criminal court by the side of a convict!”

“But, Camusot,” said Amelie, unable to suppress a superior smile, “your position is splendid----”

“Ah! yes, splendid!”

“You did your duty.”

“But all wrong; and in spite of the jesuitical advice of Monsieur de Granville, who met me on the Quai Malaquais.”

“This morning!”

“This morning.”

“At what hour?”

“At nine o’clock.”

“Oh, Camusot!” cried Amelie, clasping and wringing her hands, “and I am always imploring you to be constantly on the alert.--Good heavens! it is not a man, but a barrow-load of stones that I have to drag on!--Why, Camusot, your public prosecutor was waiting for you.--He must have given you some warning.”

“Yes, indeed----”

“And you failed to understand him! If you are so deaf, you will indeed be an examining judge all your life without any knowledge whatever of the question.--At any rate, have sense enough to listen to me,” she went on, silencing her husband, who was about to speak. “You think the matter is done for?” she asked.

Camusot looked at his wife as a country bumpkin looks at a conjurer.

“If the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy are compromised, you will find them both ready to patronize you,” said Amelie. “Madame de Serizy will get you admission to the Keeper of the Seals, and you will tell him the secret history of the affair; then he will amuse the King with the story, for sovereigns always wish to see the wrong side of the tapestry and to know the real meaning of the events the public stare at open-mouthed. Henceforth there will be no cause to fear either the public prosecutor or Monsieur de Serizy.”

“What a treasure such a wife is!” cried the lawyer, plucking up courage. “After all, I have unearthed Jacques Collin; I shall send him to his account at the Assize Court and unmask his crimes. Such a trial is a triumph in the career of an examining judge!”

“Camusot,” Amelie began, pleased to see her husband rally from the moral and physical prostration into which he had been thrown by Lucien’s suicide, “the President told you that you had blundered to the wrong side. Now you are blundering as much to the other--you are losing your way again, my dear.”

The magistrate stood up, looking at his wife with a stupid stare.

“The King and the Keeper of the Seals will be glad, no doubt, to know the truth of this business, and at the same time much annoyed at seeing the lawyers on the Liberal side dragging important persons to the bar of opinion and of the Assize Court by their special pleading--such people as the Maufrigneuses, the Serizys, and the Grandlieus, in short, all who are directly or indirectly mixed up with this case.”

“They are all in it; I have them all!” cried Camusot.

And Camusot walked up and down the room like Sganarelle on the stage when he is trying to get out of a scrape.

“Listen, Amelie,” said he, standing in front of his wife. “An incident recurs to my mind, a trifle in itself, but, in my position, of vital importance.