by Eugène Sue
“Oh, no, no!”
“It is a terrible misfortune; but I was so fearful of the notary.”
“The notary? Ah, yes, and well you might be; he is so wicked, so very wicked!”
“But you will forgive me now?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Really and truly?”
“Yes — ah, yes! Ah! I love you the same as ever, — although I cannot — not say — you see — because — oh, my head, my head!”
Louise looked at Rodolph in extreme alarm.
“He is suffering deeply; but let him calm himself. Go on.”
Louise, after looking twice or thrice at Morel with great disquietude, thus resumed:
“I clasped my infant to my breast, and was astonished at not hearing it breathe. I said to myself, ‘The breathing of a baby is so faint that it is difficult to hear it.’ But then it was so cold. I had no light, for they never would leave one with me. I waited until the dawn came, trying to keep it warm as well as I could; but it seemed to me colder and colder. I said to myself then; ‘It freezes so hard that it must be the cold that chills it so.’ At daybreak I carried my child to the window and looked at it; it was stiff and cold. I placed my mouth to its mouth, to try and feel its breath. I put my hand on its heart; but it did not beat; it was dead.”
And Louise burst into tears.
“Oh! at this moment,” she continued, “something passed within me which it is impossible to describe. I only remember confusedly what followed, — it was like a dream, — it was at once despair, terror, rage, and above all, I was seized with another fear; I no longer feared M. Ferrand would strangle me, but I feared that, if they found my child dead by my side, I should be accused of having killed it. Then I had but one thought, and that was to conceal the corpse from everybody’s sight; and then my dishonour would not be known, and I should no longer have to dread my father’s anger. I should escape from M. Ferrand’s vengeance, because I could now leave his house, obtain another situation, and gain something to help and support my family. Alas! sir, such were the reasons which induced me not to say any thing, but try and hide my child’s remains from all eyes. I was wrong, I know; but, in the situation in which I was, oppressed on all sides, worn out by suffering, and almost mad, I did not consider to what I exposed myself if I should be discovered.”
“What torture! what torture!” said Rodolph with deep sympathy.
“The day was advancing,” continued Louise, “and I had but a few moments before me until the household would be stirring. I hesitated no longer, but, wrapping up the unhappy babe as well as I could, I descended the staircase silently, and went to the bottom of the garden to try and make a hole in the ground to bury it; but it had frozen so hard in the night that I could not dig up the earth. So I concealed the body in the bottom of a sort of cellar, into which no one entered during the winter, and then I covered it up with an empty box which had held flowers, and returned to my apartment, without any person having seen me. Of all I tell you, sir, I have but a very confused recollection. Weak as I was, it is inexplicable to me how I had strength and courage to do all I did. At nine o’clock Madame Séraphin came to inquire why I had not risen. I told her that I was so very ill, and prayed of her to allow me to remain in bed during the day, and that on the following day I should quit the house, as M. Ferrand had dismissed me. At the end of an hour’s time, he came himself. ‘You are worse to-day. Ah! that is the consequence of your obstinacy,’ said he; ‘if you had taken advantage of my kind offer, you would to-day have been comfortably settled with some worthy people, who would have taken every care of you; but I will not be so cruel as to leave you without help in your present situation; and this evening Doctor Vincent shall come and see you.’ At this threat I shuddered; but I replied to M. Ferrand that I was wrong to refuse his offers the evening before, and that I would now accept them; but that, being too ill to move then, I could not go until the day after the next to the Martials, and that it was useless to send for Doctor Vincent. I only sought to gain time, for I had made up my mind to leave the house, and go the next day to my father, whom I hoped to keep in ignorance of all. Relying on my promise, M. Ferrand was almost kind to me, and, for the first time in his life, recommended Madame Séraphin to take care of me. I passed the day in mental agony, trembling every instant lest the body of my child should be accidentally discovered. I was only anxious that the frost should break up, so that, the ground not being so hard, I might be able to dig it up. The snow began to fall, and that gave me some hopes. I remained all day in bed, and when the night came, I waited until every one should be asleep, and then I summoned strength enough to rise and go to the wood-closet, where I found a chopper, with which I hoped to dig a hole in the ground which was covered with snow. After immense trouble I succeeded, and then, taking the body, I wept bitterly over it, and buried it as well as I could in the little box that had held flowers. I did not know the prayer for the dead; but I said a Pater and an Ave, and prayed to the good God to receive it into Paradise. I thought my courage would fail me when I was covering the mould over the sort of bier I had made. A mother burying her own child! At length I completed my task, and ah, what it cost me! I covered the place all over with snow, that it might conceal every trace of what I had done. The moon had lighted me; yet, when all was done, I could hardly resolve to go away. Poor little innocent! — in the icy ground, — beneath the snow! Although it was dead, yet I still seemed to fear that it must feel the cold. At length I returned to my chamber; and when I got into bed I was in a violent fever. In the morning M. Ferrand sent to know how I found myself. I replied that I was a little better, and that I felt sure I should be strong enough to go next day into the country. I remained the whole of the day in bed, hoping to acquire a little strength, and in the evening I arose and went down into the kitchen to warm myself. I was then quite alone, and then went out into the garden to to say a last prayer. As I went up to my room I met M. Germain on the landing-place of the study in which he wrote sometimes, looking very pale. He said to me hastily, placing a rouleau of money in my hand, ‘They are going to arrest your father to-morrow morning for an over-due bill of thirteen hundred francs; he is unable to pay it; but here is the money. As soon as it is light, run to him. It was only to-day that I found out what sort of a man M. Ferrand is; and he is a villain. I will unmask him. Above all, do not say that you have the money from me.’
“M. Germain did not even give me time to thank him, but ran quickly down-stairs. This morning,” continued Louise, “before any one had risen at M. Ferrand’s, I came here with the money which M. Germain had given me to save my father; but it was not enough, and but for your generosity, I could not have rescued him from the bailiff’s hands. Probably, after I had left, they went into my room and, having suspicions, have now sent to arrest me. One last service, sir,” said Louise, taking the rouleau of gold from her pocket, “will you give back this money to M. Germain; I had promised him not to say to any one that he was employed at M. Ferrand’s; but, since you know it, I have not broken my confidence. Now, sir, I repeat to you before God, who hears me, that I have not said a word that is not quite true; I have not tried to hide my faults, and—”
But, suddenly interrupting herself, Louise exclaimed with alarm:
“Sir, sir, look at my father! what can be the matter with him?”
Morel had heard the latter part of this narration with a dull indifference, which Rodolph had accounted for by attributing it to the heavy additional misfortune which had occurred to him. After such violent and repeated shocks, his tears must have dried up, his sensibility have become lost; he had not even the strength left to feel anger, as Rodolph thought; but Rodolph was mistaken. As the flame of a candle which is nearly extinguished dies away and recovers, so Morel’s reason, already much shaken, wavered for some time, throwing out now and then some small rays of intelligence, and then suddenly all was darkness.
Absolutely unconscious of what was said or passing around him, for some time the lapidary ha
d become quite insane. Although his hand-wheel was placed on the other side of his working-table, and he had not in his hands either stones or tools, yet the occupied artisan was feigning the operations of his daily labour, and affecting to use his implements. He accompanied this pantomime with a sort of noise with his tongue against the roof of his mouth, in imitation of the noise of his lathe in its rotatory motions.
“But, sir,” said Louise again, with increasing fright, “look, pray look at my father!”
Then, approaching the artisan, she said to him:
“Father! father!”
Morel gazed on his daughter with that troubled, vague, distracted, wandering look which characterises the insane, and without discontinuing his assumed labour, he replied, in a low and melancholy tone:
“I owe the notary thirteen hundred francs; it is the price of Louise’s blood, — so I must work, work, work! — oh, I’ll pay, I’ll pay, I’ll pay!”
“Can it be possible? This cannot be, — he is not mad, — no, no!” exclaimed Louise, in a heart-rending voice. “He will recover, — it is but a momentary fit of absence!”
“Morel, my good fellow,” said Rodolph to him, “we are here. Your daughter is near you, — she is innocent.”
“Thirteen hundred francs!” said the lapidary, not attending to Rodolph, but going on with his sham employment.
“My father!” exclaimed Louise, throwing herself at his feet, and clasping his hands in her own, in spite of his resistance, “it is I — it is your Louise!”
“Thirteen hundred francs,” he repeated, wresting his hands from the grasp of his daughter. “Thirteen hundred francs, — and if not,” he added, in a low and as it were, confidential tone, “and if not, Louise is to be guillotined.”
And again he imitated the turning of his lathe.
Louise gave a piercing shriek.
“He is mad!” she exclaimed, “he is mad! and it is I — it is I who am the cause! Oh! Yet it is not my fault, — I did not desire to do ill, — it was that monster.”
“Courage, courage, my poor girl,” said Rodolph, “let us hope that this attack is but momentary. Your father has suffered so much; so many troubles, all at once, were more than he could bear. His reason wanders for a moment; it will soon be restored.”
“But my mother, my grandmother, my sisters, my brothers, what will become of them all?” exclaimed Louise, “Now they are deprived of my father and myself, they must die of hunger, misery and despair!”
“Am I not here? — make your mind, easy; they shall want for nothing. Courage, I say to you. Your disclosure will bring about the punishment of a great criminal. You have convinced me of your innocence, and I have no doubt but that it will be discovered and proclaimed.”
“Ah, sir, you see, — dishonour, madness, death, — see the miseries which that man causes, and yet no one can do any thing against him! Nothing! The very thought completes all my wretchedness.”
“So far from that, let the contrary thought help to support you.”
“What mean you, sir?”
“Take with you the assurance that your father, yourself, and your family shall be avenged.”
“Avenged!”
“Yes, that I swear to you,” replied Rodolph, solemnly; “I swear to you that his crimes shall be exposed, and this man shall bitterly expiate the dishonour, madness, and death which he has caused. If the laws are powerless to reach him, if his cunning and skill equal his misdeeds, then his cunning must be met by cunning, his skill must be counteracted by skill, his misdeeds faced by other misdeeds, but which shall be to his but a just and avenging retribution, inflicted on a guilty wretch by an inexorable hand, when compared to a cowardly and base murder.”
“Ah, sir, may Heaven hear you! It is no longer myself whom I seek to avenge, but a poor, distracted father, — my child killed in its birth—”
Then, trying another effort to turn Morel from his insanity, Louise again exclaimed:
“Adieu, father! They are going to lead me to prison, and I shall never see you again. It is your poor Louise who bids you adieu. My father! my father! my father!”
To this distressing appeal there was no response. In that poor, destroyed mind there was no echo, — none. The paternal cords, always the last broken, no longer vibrated.
The door of the garret opened; the commissary entered.
“My moments are numbered, sir,” said he to Rodolph. “I declare to you with much regret that I cannot allow this conversation to be protracted any longer.”
“This conversation is ended, sir,” replied Rodolph, bitterly, and pointing to the lapidary. “Louise has nothing more to say to her father, — he has nothing more to hear from his daughter, — he is a lunatic.”
“I feared as much. It is really frightful!” exclaimed the magistrate.
And approaching the workman hastily, after a minute’s scrutiny, he was convinced of the sad reality.
“Ah, sir,” said he sorrowfully to Rodolph, “I had already expressed my sincerest wishes that the innocence of this young girl might be discovered; but after such a misfortune I will not confine myself to good wishes, — no, — no! I will speak of this honest and distressed family; I will speak of this fearful and last blow which has overwhelmed it; and do not doubt but that the judges will have an additional motive to find the accused innocent.”
“Thanks, thanks, sir!” said Rodolph; “by acting thus it will not be a mere duty that you fulfil, but a holy office which you undertake.”
“Believe me, sir, our duty is always such a painful one that it is most grateful to us to be interested in any thing which is worthy and good.”
“One word more, sir. The disclosures of Louise Morel have fully convinced me of her innocence. Will you be so kind as inform me how her pretended crime was discovered, or rather denounced?”
“This morning,” said the magistrate, “a housekeeper in the service of M. Ferrand, the notary, came and deposed before me that, after the hasty departure of Louise Morel, whom she knew to be seven months advanced in the family way, she went into the young girl’s apartment, and was convinced that she had been prematurely confined; footsteps had been traced in the snow, which had led to the detection of the body of a new-born child buried in the garden. After this declaration I went myself to the Rue du Sentier, and found M. Jacques Ferrand most indignant that such a scandalous affair should have happened in his house. The curé of the church Bonne Nouvelle, whom he had sent for, also declared to me that Louise Morel had owned her fault in his presence one day, when, on this account, she was imploring the indulgence and pity of her master; that, besides, he had often heard M. Ferrand give Louise Morel the most serious warnings, telling her that, sooner or later, she would be lost,— ‘a prediction,’ added the abbé, ‘which has been unfortunately fulfilled.’ The indignation of M. Ferrand,” continued the magistrate, “seemed to me so just and natural, that I shared in it. He told me that, no doubt, Louise Morel had taken refuge with her father. I came hither instantly, for the crime being flagrant, I was empowered to proceed by immediate apprehension.”
Rodolph with difficulty restrained himself when he heard of the indignation of M. Ferrand, and said to the magistrate:
“I thank you a thousand times, sir, for your kindness, and the support you promise Louise. I will take care that this poor man, as well as his wife’s mother, are sent to a lunatic asylum.”
Then, addressing Louise, who was still kneeling close to her father, endeavouring, but vainly, to recall him to his senses:
“Make up your mind, my poor girl, to go without taking leave of your mother, — spare her the pain of such a parting. Be assured that she shall be taken care of, and nothing shall in future be wanting to your family, for a woman shall be found who will take care of your mother and occupy herself with your brothers, and sisters, under the superintendence of your kind neighbour, Mlle. Rigolette. As for your father, nothing shall be spared to make his return to reason as rapid as it is complete. Courage! Believe me, hones
t people are often severely tried by misfortune, but they always come out of these struggles more pure, more strong, and more respected.”
Two hours after the apprehension of Louise, the lapidary and the old idiot mother were, by Rodolph’s orders, taken to the Bicêtre by David, where they were to be kept in private rooms and to receive particular care. Morel left the house in the Rue du Temple without resistance; indifferent as he was, he went wherever they led him, — his lunacy was gentle, inoffensive, and melancholy. The grandmother was hungry, and when they showed her bread and meat she followed the bread and meat. The jewels of the lapidary, entrusted to his wife, were the same day given to Madame Mathieu (the jewel-matcher), who fetched them. Unfortunately she was watched and followed by Tortillard, who knew the value of the pretended false stones in consequence of the conversation he had overheard during the time Morel was arrested by the bailiffs. The son of Bras Rouge discovered that she lived, Boulevard Saint-Denis, No. 11.
Rigolette apprised Madeleine Morel, with considerable delicacy, of the fit of lunacy which had attacked the lapidary, and of Louise’s imprisonment. At first, Madeleine wept bitterly, and uttered terrible shrieks; then, the first burst of her grief over, the poor creature, weak and overcome, consoled herself as well as she could by seeing that she and her children were surrounded by the many comforts which she owed to the generosity of their benefactor.
As to Rodolph, his thoughts were very poignant when he considered the disclosures of Louise. “Nothing is more common,” he said, “than this corrupting of the female servant by the master, either by consent or against it; sometimes by terror and surprise, sometimes by the imperious nature of those relations which create servitude. This depravity, descending from the rich to the poor, despising (in its selfish desire) the sanctity of the domestic hearth, — this depravity, still most deplorable when it is voluntarily submitted to, becomes hideous, frightful, when it is satisfied with violence. It is an impure and brutal slavery, an ignoble and barbarous tyranny over a fellow-creature, who in her fright replies to the solicitations of her master by her tears, and to his declarations with a shudder of fear and disgust. And then,” continued Rodolph, “what is the consequence to the female? Almost invariably there follow degradation, misery, prostitution, theft, and sometimes infanticide! And yet the laws are, as yet, strangers to this crime! Every accomplice of a crime has the punishment of that crime; every receiver is considered as guilty as the thief. That is justice. But when a man wantonly seduces a young, innocent, and pure girl, renders her a mother, abandons her, leaving her but shame, disgrace, despair, and driving her, perchance, to infanticide, a crime for which she forfeits her life, is this man considered as her accomplice? Pooh! What, then, follows? Oh, ’tis nothing, — nothing but a little love-affair! the whim of the day for a pair of bright eyes. Then she is left, and he looks out for the next. Still more, it is just possible that the man may be of an original, an inquisitive turn, perhaps, at the same time, an excellent brother and son, and may go to the bar of the criminal court and see his paramour tried for her life! If by chance he should be subpœnaed as a witness, he may amuse himself by saying to the persons desirous of having the poor girl executed as soon as possible, for the greater edification of the public morals, ‘I have something important to disclose to justice.’ ‘Speak!’ ‘Gentlemen of the jury, — This unhappy female was pure and virtuous, it is true. I seduced her, — that is equally true; she bore me a child, — that is also true. After that, as she has a light complexion, I completely forsook her for a pretty brunette, — that is still more true; but, in doing so, I have only followed out an imprescriptible right, a sacred right which society recognizes and accords to me.’ ‘The truth is, this young man is perfectly in the right,’ the jury would say one to another; ‘there is no law which prevents a young man from seducing a fair girl, and then forsaking her for a brunette; he is a gay young chap, and that’s all.’ ‘Now, gentlemen of the jury, this unhappy girl is said to have killed her child, — I will say our child, — because I abandoned her; because, finding herself alone and in the deepest misery, she became frightened, and lost her senses! And wherefore? Because having, as she says, to bring up and feed her child, it was impossible that she could continue to work regularly at her occupation, and gain a livelihood for herself and this pledge of our love! But I think these reasons quite unworthy of consideration, allow me to say, gentlemen of the jury. Could she not have gone to the Lying-in Hospital, if there was room for her? Could she not, at the critical moment, have gone to the magistrate of her district and made a declaration of her shame, so that she might have had authority for placing her child in the Enfants Trouvés? In fact, could she not, whilst I was playing billiards at the coffee-house, whilst awaiting my other mistress, could she not have extricated herself from this affair by some genteeler mode than this? For, gentlemen of the jury, I will admit that I consider this way of disposing of the pledge of our loves as rather too unceremonious and rude, under the idea of thus quietly escaping all future care and trouble. What, is it enough for a young girl to lose her character, brave contempt, infamy, and have an illegitimate child? No; but she must also educate the child, take care of it, bring it up, give it a business, and make an honest man of it, if it be a boy, like its father; or an honest girl, who does not turn wanton like her mother. For, really, maternity has its sacred duties, and the wretches who trample them under foot are unnatural mothers, who deserve an exemplary and notable punishment; as a proof of which, gentlemen of the jury, I beg you will unhesitatingly hand over this miserable woman to the executioner, and you will thus do your duty like independent, firm, and enlightened citizens. Dixi!’ ‘This gentleman looks at the question in a very moral point of view,’ will say some hatmaker or retired furrier, who is foreman of the jury; ‘he has done, i’faith, what we should all have done in his place; for the girl is very pretty, though rather pallid in complexion. This gay spark, as the song says: