Kitabı oku: «Scenes from a Courtesan's Life», sayfa 33

“We are at the mercy of a dreadful escaped convict!” said the Duke, with a peculiar shrug. “This is what comes of opening one’s house to people one is not absolutely sure of. Before admitting an acquaintance, one ought to know all about his fortune, his relations, all his previous history – ”

This speech is the moral of my story – from the aristocratic point of view.

“That is past and over,” said the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. “Now we must think of saving that poor Madame de Serizy, Clotilde, and me – ”

“We can but wait for Henri; I have sent to him. But everything really depends on the man Gentil is gone to fetch. God grant that man may be in Paris! – Madame,” he added to Madame Camusot, “thank you so much for having thought of us – ”

This was Madame Camusot’s dismissal. The daughter of the court usher had wit enough to understand the Duke; she rose. But the Duchess de Maufrigneuse, with the enchanting grace which had won her so much friendship and discretion, took Amelie by the hand as if to show her, in a way, to the Duke and Duchess.

“On my own account,” said she, “to say nothing of her having been up before daybreak to save us all, I may ask for more than a remembrance for my little Madame Camusot. In the first place, she has already done me such a service as I cannot forget; and then she is wholly devoted to our side, she and her husband. I have promised that her Camusot shall have advancement, and I beg you above everything to help him on, for my sake.”

“You need no such recommendation,” said the Duke to Madame Camusot. “The Grandlieus always remember a service done them. The King’s adherents will ere long have a chance of distinguishing themselves; they will be called upon to prove their devotion; your husband will be placed in the front – ”

Madame Camusot withdrew, proud, happy, puffed up to suffocation. She reached home triumphant; she admired herself, she made light of the public prosecutor’s hostility. She said to herself:

“Supposing we were to send Monsieur de Granville flying – ”

It was high time for Madame Camusot to vanish. The Duc de Chaulieu, one of the King’s prime favorites, met the bourgeoise on the outer steps.

“Henri,” said the Duc de Grandlieu when he heard his friend announced, “make haste, I beg of you, to get to the Chateau, try to see the King – the business of this;” and he led the Duke into the window-recess, where he had been talking to the airy and charming Diane.

Now and then the Duc de Chaulieu glanced in the direction of the flighty Duchess, who, while talking to the pious Duchess and submitting to be lectured, answered the Duc de Chaulieu’s expressive looks.

“My dear child,” said the Duc de Grandlieu to her at last, the aside being ended, “do be good! Come, now,” and he took Diane’s hands, “observe the proprieties of life, do not compromise yourself any more, write no letters. Letters, my dear, have caused as much private woe as public mischief. What might be excusable in a girl like Clotilde, in love for the first time, had no excuse in – ”

“An old soldier who has been under fire,” said Diane with a pout.

This grimace and the Duchess’ jest brought a smile to the face of the two much-troubled Dukes, and of the pious Duchess herself.

“But for four years I have never written a billet-doux. – Are we saved?” asked Diane, who hid her curiosity under this childishness.

“Not yet,” said the Duc de Chaulieu. “You have no notion how difficult it is to do an arbitrary thing. In a constitutional king it is what infidelity is in a wife: it is adultery.”

“The fascinating sin,” said the Duc de Grandlieu.

“Forbidden fruit!” said Diane, smiling. “Oh! how I wish I were the Government, for I have none of that fruit left – I have eaten it all.”

“Oh! my dear, my dear!” said the elder Duchess, “you really go too far.”

The two Dukes, hearing a coach stop at the door with the clatter of horses checked in full gallop, bowed to the ladies and left them, going into the Duc de Grandlieu’s study, whither came the gentleman from the Rue Honore-Chevalier – no less a man than the chief of the King’s private police, the obscure but puissant Corentin.

“Go on,” said the Duc de Grandlieu; “go first, Monsieur de Saint-Denis.”

Corentin, surprised that the Duke should have remembered him, went forward after bowing low to the two noblemen.

“Always about the same individual, or about his concerns, my dear sir,” said the Duc de Grandlieu.

“But he is dead,” said Corentin.

“He has left a partner,” said the Duc de Chaulieu, “a very tough customer.”

“The convict Jacques Collin,” replied Corentin.

“Will you speak, Ferdinand?” said the Duke de Chaulieu to his friend.

“That wretch is an object of fear,” said the Duc de Grandlieu, “for he has possessed himself, so as to be able to levy blackmail, of the letters written by Madame de Serizy and Madame de Maufrigneuse to Lucien Chardon, that man’s tool. It would seem that it was a matter of system in the young man to extract passionate letters in return for his own, for I am told that Mademoiselle de Grandlieu had written some – at least, so we fear – and we cannot find out from her – she is gone abroad.”

“That little young man,” replied Corentin, “was incapable of so much foresight. That was a precaution due to the Abbe Carlos Herrera.”

Corentin rested his elbow on the arm of the chair on which he was sitting, and his head on his hand, meditating.

“Money! – The man has more than we have,” said he. “Esther Gobseck served him as a bait to extract nearly two million francs from that well of gold called Nucingen. – Gentlemen, get me full legal powers, and I will rid you of the fellow.”

“And – the letters?” asked the Duc de Grandlieu.

“Listen to me, gentlemen,” said Corentin, standing up, his weasel-face betraying his excitement.

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his black doeskin trousers, shaped over the shoes. This great actor in the historical drama of the day had only stopped to put on a waistcoat and frock-coat, and had not changed his morning trousers, so well he knew how grateful men can be for immediate action in certain cases. He walked up and down the room quite at his ease, haranguing loudly, as if he had been alone.

“He is a convict. He could be sent off to Bicetre without trial, and put in solitary confinement, without a soul to speak to, and left there to die. – But he may have given instructions to his adherents, foreseeing this possibility.”

“But he was put into the secret cells,” said the Duc de Grandlieu, “the moment he was taken into custody at that woman’s house.”

“Is there such a thing as a secret cell for such a fellow as he is?” said Corentin. “He is a match for – for me!”

“What is to be done?” said the Dukes to each other by a glance.

“We can send the scoundrel back to the hulks at once – to Rochefort; he will be dead in six months! Oh! without committing any crime,” he added, in reply to a gesture on the part of the Duc de Grandlieu. “What do you expect? A convict cannot hold out more than six months of a hot summer if he is made to work really hard among the marshes of the Charente. But this is of no use if our man has taken precautions with regard to the letters. If the villain has been suspicious of his foes, and that is probable, we must find out what steps he has taken. Then, if the present holder of the letters is poor, he is open to bribery. So, no, we must make Jacques Collin speak. What a duel! He will beat me. The better plan would be to purchase those letters by exchange for another document – a letter of reprieve – and to place the man in my gang. Jacques Collin is the only man alive who is clever enough to come after me, poor Contenson and dear old Peyrade both being dead! Jacques Collin killed those two unrivaled spies on purpose, as it were, to make a place for himself. So, you see, gentlemen, you must give me a free hand. Jacques Collin is in the Conciergerie. I will go to see Monsieur de Granville in his Court. Send some one you can trust to meet me there, for I must have a letter to show to Monsieur de Granville, who knows nothing of me. I will hand the letter to the President of the Council, a very impressive sponsor. You have half an hour before you, for I need half an hour to dress, that is to say, to make myself presentable to the eyes of the public prosecutor.”

“Monsieur,” said the Duc de Chaulieu, “I know your wonderful skill. I only ask you to say Yes or No. Will you be bound to succeed?”

“Yes, if I have full powers, and your word that I shall never be questioned about the matter. – My plan is laid.”

This sinister reply made the two fine gentlemen shiver. “Go on, then, monsieur,” said the Duc de Chaulieu. “You can set down the charges of the case among those you are in the habit of undertaking.”

Corentin bowed and went away.

Henri de Lenoncourt, for whom Ferdinand de Grandlieu had a carriage brought out, went off forthwith to the King, whom he was privileged to see at all times in right of his office.

Thus all the various interests that had got entangled from the highest to the lowest ranks of society were to meet presently in Monsieur de Granville’s room at the Palais, all brought together by necessity embodied in three men – Justice in Monsieur de Granville, and the family in Corentin, face to face with Jacques Collin, the terrible foe who represented social crime in its fiercest energy.

What a duel is that between justice and arbitrary wills on one side and the hulks and cunning on the other! The hulks – symbolical of that daring which throws off calculation and reflection, which avails itself of any means, which has none of the hyprocrisy of high-handed justice, but is the hideous outcome of the starving stomach – the swift and bloodthirsty pretext of hunger. Is it not attack as against self-protection, theft as against property? The terrible quarrel between the social state and the natural man, fought out on the narrowest possible ground! In short, it is a terrible and vivid image of those compromises, hostile to social interests, which the representatives of authority, when they lack power, submit to with the fiercest rebels.

When Monsieur Camusot was announced, the public prosecutor signed that he should be admitted. Monsieur de Granville had foreseen this visit, and wished to come to an understanding with the examining judge as to how to wind up this business of Lucien’s death. The end could no longer be that on which he had decided the day before in agreement with Camusot, before the suicide of the hapless poet.

“Sit down, Monsieur Camusot,” said Monsieur de Granville, dropping into his armchair. The public prosecutor, alone with the inferior judge, made no secret of his depressed state. Camusot looked at Monsieur de Granville and observed his almost livid pallor, and such utter fatigue, such complete prostration, as betrayed greater suffering perhaps than that of the condemned man to whom the clerk had announced the rejection of his appeal. And yet that announcement, in the forms of justice, is a much as to say, “Prepare to die; your last hour has come.”

“I will return later, Monsieur le Comte,” said Camusot. “Though business is pressing – ”

“No, stay,” replied the public prosecutor with dignity. “A magistrate, monsieur, must accept his anxieties and know how to hide them. I was in fault if you saw any traces of agitation in me – ”

Camusot bowed apologetically.

“God grant you may never know these crucial perplexities of our life. A man might sink under less! I have just spent the night with one of my most intimate friends. – I have but two friends, the Comte Octave de Bauvan and the Comte de Serizy. – We sat together, Monsieur de Serizy, the Count, and I, from six in the evening till six this morning, taking it in turns to go from the drawing-room to Madame de Serizy’s bedside, fearing each time that we might find her dead or irremediably insane. Desplein, Bianchon, and Sinard never left the room, and she has two nurses. The Count worships his wife. Imagine the night I have spent, between a woman crazy with love and a man crazy with despair. And a statesman’s despair is not like that of an idiot. Serizy, as calm as if he were sitting in his place in council, clutched his chair to force himself to show us an unmoved countenance, while sweat stood over the brows bent by so much hard thought. – Worn out by want of sleep, I dozed from five till half-past seven, and I had to be here by half-past eight to warrant an execution. Take my word for it, Monsieur Camusot, when a judge has been toiling all night in such gulfs of sorrow, feeling the heavy hand of God on all human concerns, and heaviest on noble souls, it is hard to sit down here, in front of a desk, and say in cold blood, ‘Cut off a head at four o’clock! Destroy one of God’s creatures full of life, health, and strength!’ – And yet this is my duty! Sunk in grief myself, I must order the scaffold —

“The condemned wretch cannot know that his judge suffers anguish equal to his own. At this moment he and I, linked by a sheet of paper – I, society avenging itself; he, the crime to be avenged – embody the same duty seen from two sides; we are two lives joined for the moment by the sword of the law.

“Who pities the judge’s deep sorrow? Who can soothe it? Our glory is to bury it in the depth of our heart. The priest with his life given to God, the soldier with a thousand deaths for his country’s sake, seem to me far happier than the magistrate with his doubts and fears and appalling responsibility.

“You know who the condemned man is?” Monsieur de Granville went on. “A young man of seven-and-twenty – as handsome as he who killed himself yesterday, and as fair; condemned against all our anticipations, for the only proof against him was his concealment of the stolen goods. Though sentenced, the lad will confess nothing! For seventy days he has held out against every test, constantly declaring that he is innocent. For two months I have felt two heads on my shoulders! I would give a year of my life if he would confess, for juries need encouragement; and imagine what a blow it would be to justice if some day it should be discovered that the crime for which he is punished was committed by another.

“In Paris everything is so terribly important; the most trivial incidents in the law courts have political consequences.

“The jury, an institution regarded by the legislators of the Revolution as a source of strength, is, in fact, an instrument of social ruin, for it fails in action; it does not sufficiently protect society. The jury trifles with its functions. The class of jurymen is divided into two parties, one averse to capital punishment; the result is a total upheaval of true equality in administration of the law. Parricide, a most horrible crime, is in some departments treated with leniency, while in others a common murder, so to speak, is punished with death. [There are in penal servitude twenty-three parricides who have been allowed the benefit of extenuating circumstances.] And what would happen if here in Paris, in our home district, an innocent man should be executed!”

“He is an escaped convict,” said Monsieur Camusot, diffidently.

“The Opposition and the Press would make him a paschal lamb!” cried Monsieur de Granville; “and the Opposition would enjoy white-washing him, for he is a fanatical Corsican, full of his native notions, and his murders were a Vendetta. In that island you may kill your enemy, and think yourself, and be thought, a very good man.

“A thorough-paced magistrate, I tell you, is an unhappy man. They ought to live apart from all society, like the pontiffs of old. The world should never see them but at fixed hours, leaving their cells, grave, and old, and venerable, passing sentence like the high priests of antiquity, who combined in their person the functions of judicial and sacerdotal authority. We should be accessible only in our high seat. – As it is, we are to be seen every day, amused or unhappy, like other men. We are to be found in drawing-rooms and at home, as ordinary citizens, moved by our passions; and we seem, perhaps, more grotesque than terrible.”

This bitter cry, broken by pauses and interjections, and emphasized by gestures which gave it an eloquence impossible to reduce to writing, made Camusot’s blood run chill.

“And I, monsieur,” said he, “began yesterday my apprenticeship to the sufferings of our calling. – I could have died of that young fellow’s death. He misunderstood my wish to be lenient, and the poor wretch committed himself.”

“Ah, you ought never to have examined him!” cried Monsieur de Granville; “it is so easy to oblige by doing nothing.”

“And the law, monsieur?” replied Camusot. “He had been in custody two days.”

“The mischief is done,” said the public prosecutor. “I have done my best to remedy what is indeed irremediable. My carriage and servants are following the poor weak poet to the grave. Serizy has sent his too; nay, more, he accepts the duty imposed on him by the unfortunate boy, and will act as his executor. By promising this to his wife he won from her a gleam of returning sanity. And Count Octave is attending the funeral in person.”

“Well, then, Monsieur le Comte,” said Camusot, “let us complete our work. We have a very dangerous man on our hands. He is Jacques Collin – and you know it as well as I do. The ruffian will be recognized – ”

“Then we are lost!” cried Monsieur de Granville.

“He is at this moment shut up with your condemned murderer, who, on the hulks, was to him what Lucien has been in Paris – a favorite protege. Bibi-Lupin, disguised as a gendarme, is watching the interview.”

“What business has the superior police to interfere?” said the public prosecutor. “He has no business to act without my orders!”

“All the Conciergerie must know that we have caught Jacques Collin. – Well, I have come on purpose to tell you that this daring felon has in his possession the most compromising letters of Lucien’s correspondence with Madame de Serizy, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu.”

“Are you sure of that?” asked Monsieur de Granville, his face full of pained surprise.

“You shall hear, Monsieur le Comte, what reason I have to fear such a misfortune. When I untied the papers found in the young man’s rooms, Jacques Collin gave a keen look at the parcel, and smiled with satisfaction in a way that no examining judge could misunderstand. So deep a villain as Jacques Collin takes good care not to let such a weapon slip through his fingers. What is to be said if these documents should be placed in the hands of counsel chosen by that rascal from among the foes of the government and the aristocracy! – My wife, to whom the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse has shown so much kindness, is gone to warn her, and by this time they must be with the Grandlieus holding council.”

“But we cannot possibly try the man!” cried the public prosecutor, rising and striding up and down the room. “He must have put the papers in some safe place – ”

“I know where,” said Camusot.

These words finally effaced every prejudice the public prosecutor had felt against him.

“Well, then – ” said Monsieur de Granville, sitting down again.

“On my way here this morning I reflected deeply on this miserable business. Jacques Collin has an aunt – an aunt by nature, not putative – a woman concerning whom the superior police have communicated a report to the Prefecture. He is this woman’s pupil and idol; she is his father’s sister, her name is Jacqueline Collin. This wretched woman carries on a trade as a wardrobe purchaser, and by the connection this business has secured her she gets hold of many family secrets. If Jacques Collin has intrusted those papers, which would be his salvation, to any one’s keeping, it is to that of this creature. Have her arrested.”

The public prosecutor gave Camusot a keen look, as much as to say, “This man is not such a fool as I thought him; he is still young, and does not yet know how to handle the reins of justice.”

“But,” Camusot went on, “in order to succeed, we must give up all the plans we laid yesterday, and I came to take your advice – your orders – ”

The public prosecutor took up his paper-knife and tapped it against the edge of the table with one of the tricky movements familiar to thoughtful men when they give themselves up to meditation.

“Three noble families involved!” he exclaimed. “We must not make the smallest blunder! – You are right: as a first step let us act on Fouche’s principle, ‘Arrest!’ – and Jacques Collin must at once be sent back to the secret cells.”

“That is to proclaim him a convict and to ruin Lucien’s memory!”

“What a desperate business!” said Monsieur de Granville. “There is danger on every side.”

At this instant the governor of the Conciergerie came in, not without knocking; and the private room of a public prosecutor is so well guarded, that only those concerned about the courts may even knock at the door.

“Monsieur le Comte,” said Monsieur Gault, “the prisoner calling himself Carlos Herrera wishes to speak with you.”

“Has he had communication with anybody?” asked Monsieur de Granville.

“With all the prisoners, for he has been out in the yard since about half-past seven. And he has seen the condemned man, who would seem to have talked to him.”

A speech of Camusot’s, which recurred to his mind like a flash of light, showed Monsieur de Granville all the advantage that might be taken of a confession of intimacy between Jacques Collin and Theodore Calvi to obtain the letters. The public prosecutor, glad to have an excuse for postponing the execution, beckoned Monsieur Gault to his side.

“I intend,” said he, “to put off the execution till to-morrow; but let no one in the prison suspect it. Absolute silence! Let the executioner seem to be superintending the preparations.

“Send the Spanish priest here under a strong guard; the Spanish Embassy claims his person! Gendarmes can bring up the self-styled Carlos by your back stairs so that he may see no one. Instruct the men each to hold him by one arm, and never let him go till they reach this door.

“Are you sure, Monsieur Gault, that this dangerous foreigner has spoken to no one but the prisoners!”

“Ah! just as he came out of the condemned cell a lady came to see him – ”

The two magistrates exchanged looks, and such looks!

“What lady was that!” asked Camusot.

“One of his penitents – a Marquise,” replied Gault.

“Worse and worse!” said Monsieur de Granville, looking at Camusot.

“She gave all the gendarmes and warders a sick headache,” said Monsieur Gault, much puzzled.

“Nothing can be a matter of indifference in your business,” said the public prosecutor. “The Conciergerie has not such tremendous walls for nothing. How did this lady get in?”

“With a regular permit, monsieur,” replied the governor. “The lady, beautifully dressed, in a fine carriage with a footman and a chasseur, came to see her confessor before going to the funeral of the poor young man whose body you had had removed.”

“Bring me the order for admission,” said Monsieur de Granville.

“It was given on the recommendation of the Comte de Serizy.”

“What was the woman like?” asked the public prosecutor.

“She seemed to be a lady.”

“Did you see her face?”

“She wore a black veil.”

“What did they say to each other?”

“Well – a pious person, with a prayer-book in her hand – what could she say? She asked the Abbe’s blessing and went on her knees.”

“Did they talk together a long time?”

“Not five minutes; but we none of us understood what they said; they spoke Spanish no doubt.”

“Tell us everything, monsieur,” the public prosecutor insisted. “I repeat, the very smallest detail is to us of the first importance. Let this be a caution to you.”

“She was crying, monsieur.”

“Really weeping?”

“That we could not see, she hid her face in her handkerchief. She left three hundred francs in gold for the prisoners.”

“That was not she!” said Camusot.

“Bibi-Lupin at once said, ‘She is a thief!’” said Monsieur Gault.

“He knows the tribe,” said Monsieur de Granville. – “Get out your warrant,” he added, turning to Camusot, “and have seals placed on everything in her house – at once! But how can she have got hold of Monsieur de Serizy’s recommendation? – Bring me the order – and go, Monsieur Gault; send me that Abbe immediately. So long as we have him safe, the danger cannot be greater. And in the course of two hours’ talk you get a long way into a man’s mind.”

“Especially such a public prosecutor as you are,” said Camusot insidiously.

“There will be two of us,” replied Monsieur de Granville politely.

And he became discursive once more.

“There ought to be created for every prison parlor, a post of superintendent, to be given with a good salary to the cleverest and most energetic police officers,” said he, after a long pause. “Bibi-Lupin ought to end his days in such a place. Then we should have an eye and ear on the watch in a department that needs closer supervision than it gets. – Monsieur Gault could tell us nothing positive.”

“He has so much to do,” said Camusot. “Still, between these secret cells and us there lies a gap which ought not to exist. On the way from the Conciergerie to the judges’ rooms there are passages, courtyards, and stairs. The attention of the agents cannot be unflagging, whereas the prisoner is always alive to his own affairs.

“I was told that a lady had already placed herself in the way of Jacques Collin when he was brought up from the cells to be examined. That woman got into the guardroom at the top of the narrow stairs from the mousetrap; the ushers told me, and I blamed the gendarmes.”

“Oh! the Palais needs entire reconstruction,” said Monsieur de Granville. “But it is an outlay of twenty to thirty million francs! Just try asking the Chambers for thirty millions for the more decent accommodation of Justice.”

The sound of many footsteps and a clatter of arms fell on their ear. It would be Jacques Collin.

The public prosecutor assumed a mask of gravity that hid the man. Camusot imitated his chief.

The office-boy opened the door, and Jacques Collin came in, quite calm and unmoved.

“You wished to speak to me,” said Monsieur de Granville. “I am ready to listen.”

“Monsieur le Comte, I am Jacques Collin. I surrender!”

Camusot started; the public prosecutor was immovable.

“As you may suppose, I have my reasons for doing this,” said Jacques Collin, with an ironical glance at the two magistrates. “I must inconvenience you greatly; for if I had remained a Spanish priest, you would simply have packed me off with an escort of gendarmes as far as the frontier by Bayonne, and there Spanish bayonets would have relieved you of me.”

The lawyers sat silent and imperturbable.

“Monsieur le Comte,” the convict went on, “the reasons which have led me to this step are yet more pressing than this, but devilish personal to myself. I can tell them to no one but you. – If you are afraid – ”

“Afraid of whom? Of what?” said the Comte de Granville.

In attitude and expression, in the turn of his head, his demeanor and his look, this distinguished judge was at this moment a living embodiment of the law which ought to supply us with the noblest examples of civic courage. In this brief instant he was on a level with the magistrates of the old French Parlement in the time of the civil wars, when the presidents found themselves face to face with death, and stood, made of marble, like the statues that commemorate them.

“Afraid to be alone with an escaped convict!”

“Leave us, Monsieur Camusot,” said the public prosecutor at once.

“I was about to suggest that you should bind me hand and foot,” Jacques Collin coolly added, with an ominous glare at the two gentlemen. He paused, and then said with great gravity:

“Monsieur le Comte, you had my esteem, but you now command my admiration.”

“Then you think you are formidable?” said the magistrate, with a look of supreme contempt.

“Think myself formidable?” retorted the convict. “Why think about it? I am, and I know it.”

Jacques Collin took a chair and sat down, with all the ease of a man who feels himself a match for his adversary in an interview where they would treat on equal terms.

At this instant Monsieur Camusot, who was on the point of closing the door behind him, turned back, came up to Monsieur de Granville, and handed him two folded papers.

“Look!” said he to Monsieur de Granville, pointing to one of them.

“Call back Monsieur Gault!” cried the Comte de Granville, as he read the name of Madame de Maufrigneuse’s maid – a woman he knew.

The governor of the prison came in.

“Describe the woman who came to see the prisoner,” said the public prosecutor in his ear.

“Short, thick-set, fat, and square,” replied Monsieur Gault.

“The woman to whom this permit was given is tall and thin,” said Monsieur de Granville. “How old was she?”

“About sixty.”

“This concerns me, gentlemen?” said Jacques Collin. “Come, do not puzzle your heads. That person is my aunt, a very plausible aunt, a woman, and an old woman. I can save you a great deal of trouble. You will never find my aunt unless I choose. If we beat about the bush, we shall never get forwarder.”

“Monsieur l’Abbe has lost his Spanish accent,” observed Monsieur Gault; “he does not speak broken French.”

“Because things are in a desperate mess, my dear Monsieur Gault,” replied Jacques Collin with a bitter smile, as he addressed the Governor by name.

Monsieur Gault went quickly up to his chief, and said in a whisper, “Beware of that man, Monsieur le Comte; he is mad with rage.”

Monsieur de Granville gazed slowly at Jacques Collin, and saw that he was controlling himself; but he saw, too, that what the governor said was true. This treacherous demeanor covered the cold but terrible nervous irritation of a savage. In Jacques Collin’s eyes were the lurid fires of a volcanic eruption, his fists were clenched. He was a tiger gathering himself up to spring.

“Leave us,” said the Count gravely to the prison governor and the judge.

“You did wisely to send away Lucien’s murderer!” said Jacques Collin, without caring whether Camusot heard him or no; “I could not contain myself, I should have strangled him.”