Kitabı oku: «Scenes from a Courtesan's Life», sayfa 25

“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.”

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.