Works of Honore De Balzac

by Honoré de Balzac

  “Lucien de Rubempre.

  “Lucien Chardon, son of an apothecary at Angouleme — his mother a

  Demoiselle de Rubempre — bears the name of Rubempre in virtue of a

  royal patent. This was granted by the request of Madame la

  Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Monsieur le Comte de Serizy.

  “This young man came to Paris in 182... without any means of

  subsistence, following Madame la Comtesse Sixte du Chatelet, then

  Madame de Bargeton, a cousin of Madame d’Espard’s.

  “He was ungrateful to Madame de Bargeton, and cohabited with a

  girl named Coralie, an actress at the Gymnase, now dead, who left

  Monsieur Camusot, a silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, to

  live with Rubempre.

  “Ere long, having sunk into poverty through the insufficiency of

  the money allowed him by this actress, he seriously compromised

  his brother-in-law, a highly respected printer of Angouleme, by

  giving forged bills, for which David Sechard was arrested, during

  a short visit paid to Angouleme by Lucien. In consequence of this

  affair Rubempre fled, but suddenly reappeared in Paris with the

  Abbe Carlos Herrera.

  “Though having no visible means of subsistence, the said Lucien de

  Rubempre spent on an average three hundred thousand francs during

  the three years of his second residence in Paris, and can only

  have obtained the money from the self-styled Abbe Carlos Herrera

  — but how did he come by it?

  “He has recently laid out above a million francs in repurchasing

  the Rubempre estates to fulfil the conditions on which he was to

  be allowed to marry Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu. This

  marriage has been broken off in consequence of inquiries made by

  the Grandlieu family, the said Lucien having told them that he had

  obtained the money from his brother-in-law and his sister; but the

  information obtained, more especially by Monsieur Derville,

  attorney-at-law, proves that not only were that worthy couple

  ignorant of his having made this purchase, but that they believed

  the said Lucien to be deeply in debt.

  “Moreover, the property inherited by the Sechards consists of

  houses; and the ready money, by their affidavit, amounted to about

  two hundred thousand francs.

  “Lucien was secretly cohabiting with Esther Gobseck; hence there

  can be no doubt that all the lavish gifts of the Baron de

  Nucingen, the girl’s protector, were handed over to the said

  Lucien.

  “Lucien and his companion, the convict, have succeeded in keeping

  their footing in the face of the world longer than Coignard did,

  deriving their income from the prostitution of the said Esther,

  formerly on the register of the town.”

  Though these notes are to a great extent a repetition of the story already told, it was necessary to reproduce them to show the part played by the police in Paris. As has already been seen from the note on Peyrade, the police has summaries, almost invariably correct, concerning every family or individual whose life is under suspicion, or whose actions are of a doubtful character. It knows every circumstance of their delinquencies. This universal register and account of consciences is as accurately kept as the register of the Bank of France and its accounts of fortunes. Just as the Bank notes the slightest delay in payment, gauges every credit, takes stock of every capitalist, and watches their proceedings, so does the police weigh and measure the honesty of each citizen. With it, as in a Court of Law, innocence has nothing to fear; it has no hold on anything but crime.

  However high the rank of a family, it cannot evade this social providence.

  And its discretion is equal to the extent of its power. This vast mass of written evidence compiled by the police — reports, notes, and summaries — an ocean of information, sleeps undisturbed, as deep and calm as the sea. Some accident occurs, some crime or misdemeanor becomes aggressive, — then the law refers to the police, and immediately, if any documents bear on the suspected criminal, the judge is informed. These records, an analysis of his antecedents, are merely side-lights, and unknown beyond the walls of the Palais de Justice. No legal use can be made of them; Justice is informed by them, and takes advantage of them; but that is all. These documents form, as it were, the inner lining of the tissue of crimes, their first cause, which is hardly ever made public. No jury would accept it; and the whole country would rise up in wrath if excerpts from those documents came out in the trial at the Assizes. In fact, it is the truth which is doomed to remain in the well, as it is everywhere and at all times. There is not a magistrate who, after twelve years’ experience in Paris, is not fully aware that the Assize Court and the police authorities keep the secret of half these squalid atrocities, or who does not admit that half the crimes that are committed are never punished by the law.

  If the public could know how reserved the employes of the police are — who do not forget — they would reverence these honest men as much as they do Cheverus. The police is supposed to be astute, Machiavellian; it is, in fact most benign. But it hears every passion in its paroxysms, it listens to every kind of treachery, and keeps notes of all. The police is terrible on one side only. What it does for justice it does no less for political interests; but in these it is as ruthless and as one-sided as the fires of the Inquisition.

  “Put this aside,” said the lawyer, replacing the notes in their cover; “this is a secret between the police and the law. The judge will estimate its value, but Monsieur and Madame Camusot must know nothing of it.”

  “As if I needed telling that!” said his wife.

  “Lucien is guilty,” he went on; “but of what?”

  “A man who is the favorite of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, of the Comtesse de Serizy, and loved by Clotilde de Grandlieu, is not guilty,” said Amelie. “The other must be answerable for everything.”

  “But Lucien is his accomplice,” cried Camusot.

  “Take my advice,” said Amelie. “Restore this priest to the diplomatic career he so greatly adorns, exculpate this little wretch, and find some other criminal — — ”

  “How you run on!” said the magistrate with a smile. “Women go to the point, plunging through the law as birds fly through the air, and find nothing to stop them.”

  “But,” said Amelie, “whether he is a diplomate or a convict, the Abbe Carlos will find some one to get him out of the scrape.”

  “I am only a considering cap; you are the brain,” said Camusot.

  “Well, the sitting is closed; give your Melie a kiss; it is one o’clock.”

  And Madame Camusot went to bed, leaving her husband to arrange his papers and his ideas in preparation for the task of examining the two prisoners next morning.

  And thus, while the prison vans were conveying Jacques Collin and Lucien to the Conciergerie, the examining judge, having breakfasted, was making his way across Paris on foot, after the unpretentious fashion of Parisian magistrates, to go to his chambers, where all the documents in the case were laid ready for him.

  This was the way of it: Every examining judge has a head-clerk, a sort of sworn legal secretary — a race that perpetuates itself without any premiums or encouragement, producing a number of excellent souls in whom secrecy is natural and incorruptible. From the origin of the Parlement to the present day, no case has ever been known at the Palais de Justice of any gossip or indiscretion on the part of a clerk bound to the Courts of Inquiry. Gentil sold the release given by Louise de Savoie to Semblancay; a War Office clerk sold the plan of the Russian campaign to Czernitchef; and these traitors were more or less rich. The prospect of a post in the Palais and professional conscientiousness are enough to make a judge
’s clerk a successful rival of the tomb — for the tomb has betrayed many secrets since chemistry has made such progress.

  This official is, in fact, the magistrate’s pen. It will be understood by many readers that a man may gladly be the shaft of a machine, while they wonder why he is content to remain a bolt; still a bolt is content — perhaps the machinery terrifies him.

  Camusot’s clerk, a young man of two-and-twenty, named Coquart, had come in the morning to fetch all the documents and the judge’s notes, and laid everything ready in his chambers, while the lawyer himself was wandering along the quays, looking at the curiosities in the shops, and wondering within himself: —

  “How on earth am I to set to work with such a clever rascal as this Jacques Collin, supposing it is he? The head of the Safety will know him. I must look as if I knew what I was about, if only for the sake of the police! I see so many insuperable difficulties, that the best plan would be to enlighten the Marquise and the Duchess by showing them the notes of the police, and I should avenge my father, from whom Lucien stole Coralie. — If I can unveil these scoundrels, my skill will be loudly proclaimed, and Lucien will soon be thrown over by his friends. — Well, well, the examination will settle all that.”

  He turned into a curiosity shop, tempted by a Boule clock.

  “Not to be false to my conscience, and yet to oblige two great ladies — that will be a triumph of skill,” thought he. “What, do you collect coins too, monsieur?” said Camusot to the Public Prosecutor, whom he found in the shop.

  “It is a taste dear to all dispensers of justice,” said the Comte de Granville, laughing. “They look at the reverse side of every medal.”

  And after looking about the shop for some minutes, as if continuing his search, he accompanied Camusot on his way down the quay without it ever occurring to Camusot that anything but chance had brought them together.

  “You are examining Monsieur de Rubempre this morning,” said the Public Prosecutor. “Poor fellow — I liked him.”

  “There are several charges against him,” said Camusot.

  “Yes, I saw the police papers; but some of the information came from an agent who is independent of the Prefet, the notorious Corentin, who had caused the death of more innocent men than you will ever send guilty men to the scaffold, and — — But that rascal is out of your reach. — Without trying to influence the conscience of such a magistrate as you are, I may point out to you that if you could be perfectly sure that Lucien was ignorant of the contents of that woman’s will, it would be self-evident that he had no interest in her death, for she gave him enormous sums of money.”

  “We can prove his absence at the time when this Esther was poisoned,” said Camusot. “He was at Fontainebleau, on the watch for Mademoiselle de Grandlieu and the Duchesse de Lenoncourt.”

  “And he still cherished such hopes of marrying Mademoiselle de Grandlieu,” said the Public Prosecutor — ”I have it from the Duchesse de Grandlieu herself — that it is inconceivable that such a clever young fellow should compromise his chances by a perfectly aimless crime.”

  “Yes,” said Camusot, “especially if Esther gave him all she got.”

  “Derville and Nucingen both say that she died in ignorance of the inheritance she had long since come into,” added Granville.

  “But then what do you suppose is the meaning of it all?” asked Camusot. “For there is something at the bottom of it.”

  “A crime committed by some servant,” said the Public Prosecutor.

  “Unfortunately,” remarked Camusot, “it would be quite like Jacques Collin — for the Spanish priest is certainly none other than that escaped convict — to have taken possession of the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs derived from the sale of the certificate of shares given to Esther by Nucingen.”

  “Weigh everything with care, my dear Camusot. Be prudent. The Abbe Carlos Herrera has diplomatic connections; still, an envoy who had committed a crime would not be sheltered by his position. Is he or is he not the Abbe Carlos Herrera? That is the important question.”

  And Monsieur de Granville bowed, and turned away, as requiring no answer.

  “So he too wants to save Lucien!” thought Camusot, going on by the Quai des Lunettes, while the Public Prosecutor entered the Palais through the Cour de Harlay.

  On reaching the courtyard of the Conciergerie, Camusot went to the Governor’s room and led him into the middle of the pavement, where no one could overhear them.

  “My dear sir, do me the favor of going to La Force, and inquiring of your colleague there whether he happens at this moment to have there any convicts who were on the hulks at Toulon between 1810 and 1815; or have you any imprisoned here? We will transfer those of La Force here for a few days, and you will let me know whether this so-called Spanish priest is known to them as Jacques Collin, otherwise Trompe-la-Mort.”

  “Very good, Monsieur Camusot. — But Bibi-Lupin is come...”

  “What, already?” said the judge.

  “He was at Melun. He was told that Trompe-la-Mort had to be identified, and he smiled with joy. He awaits your orders.”

  “Send him to me.”

  The Governor was then able to lay before Monsieur Camusot Jacques Collin’s request, and he described the man’s deplorable condition.

  “I intended to examine him first,” replied the magistrate, “but not on account of his health. I received a note this morning from the Governor of La Force. Well, this rascal, who described himself to you as having been dying for twenty-four hours past, slept so soundly that they went into his cell there, with the doctor for whom the Governor had sent, without his hearing them; the doctor did not even feel his pulse, he left him to sleep — which proves that his conscience is as tough as his health. I shall accept this feigned illness only so far as it may enable me to study my man,” added Monsieur Camusot, smiling.

  “We live to learn every day with these various grades of prisoners,” said the Governor of the prison.

  The Prefecture of police adjoins the Conciergerie, and the magistrates, like the Governor, knowing all the subterranean passages, can get to and fro with the greatest rapidity. This explains the miraculous ease with which information can be conveyed, during the sitting of the Courts, to the officials and the presidents of the Assize Courts. And by the time Monsieur Camusot had reached the top of the stairs leading to his chambers, Bibi-Lupin was there too, having come by the Salle des Pas-Perdus.

  “What zeal!” said Camusot, with a smile.

  “Ah, well, you see if it is he,” replied the man, “you will see great fun in the prison-yard if by chance there are any old stagers here.”

  “Why?”

  “Trompe-la-Mort sneaked their chips, and I know that they have vowed to be the death of him.”

  They were the convicts whose money, intrusted to Trompe-la-Mort, had all been made away with by him for Lucien, as has been told.

  “Could you lay your hand on the witnesses of his former arrest?”

  “Give me two summonses of witnesses and I will find you some to-day.”

  “Coquart,” said the lawyer, as he took off his gloves, and placed his hat and stick in a corner, “fill up two summonses by monsieur’s directions.”

  He looked at himself in the glass over the chimney shelf, where stood, in the place of a clock, a basin and jug. On one side was a bottle of water and a glass, on the other a lamp. He rang the bell; his usher came in a few minutes after.

  “Is anybody here for me yet?” he asked the man, whose business it was to receive the witnesses, to verify their summons, and to set them in the order of their arrival.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take their names, and bring me the list.”

  The examining judges, to save time, are often obliged to carry on several inquiries at once. Hence the long waiting inflicted on the witnesses, who have seats in the ushers’ hall, where the judges’ bells are constantly ringing.

  “And then,” Camusot went on, “bring up the Abb
e Carlos Herrera.”

  “Ah, ha! I was told that he was a priest in Spanish. Pooh! It is a new edition of Collet, Monsieur Camusot,” said the head of the Safety department.

  “There is nothing new!” replied Camusot.

  And he signed the two formidable documents which alarm everybody, even the most innocent witnesses, whom the law thus requires to appear, under severe penalties in case of failure.

  By this time Jacques Collin had, about half an hour since, finished his deep meditations, and was armed for the fray. Nothing is more perfectly characteristic of this type of the mob in rebellion against the law than the few words he had written on the greasy scraps of paper.

  The sense of the first — for it was written in the language, the very slang of slang, agreed upon by Asie and himself, a cipher of words — was as follows: —

  “Go to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse or Madame de Serizy: one of

  them must see Lucien before he is examined, and give him the

  enclosed paper to read. Then find Europe and Paccard; those two

  thieves must be at my orders, and ready to play any part I may

  set them.

  “Go to Rastignac; tell him, from the man he met at the opera-ball,

  to come and swear that the Abbe Carlos Herrera has no resemblance

  to Jacques Collin who was apprehended at Vauquer’s. Do the same

  with Dr. Bianchon, and get Lucien’s two women to work to the same

  end.”

  On the enclosed fragment were these words in good French:

  “Lucien, confess nothing about me. I am the Abbe Carlos Herrera.

  Not only will this be your exculpation; but, if you do not lose

  your head, you will have seven millions and your honor cleared.”

  These two bits of paper, gummed on the side of the writing so as to look like one piece, were then rolled tightly, with a dexterity peculiar to men who have dreamed of getting free from the hulks. The whole thing assumed the shape and consistency of a ball of dirty rubbish, about as big as the sealing-wax heads which thrifty women stick on the head of a large needle when the eye is broken.