A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  The inner workings of the Police

  IF ever a man feels the sweetness, the utility of friendship, must it not be that moral leper called by the crowd a spy, by the common people a nark, by the administration an agent? Peyrade and Corentin were thus friends like Orestes and Pylades. Peyrade had formed Corentin, as Vien formed David; but the pupil promptly surpassed his teacher. They had carried out more than one foray together. Peyrade, happy to have divined the merit of Corentin, had launched him on his career by preparing a triumph for him. He compelled his pupil to make use of a mistress who despised him as bait to catch a man. And Corentin was then barely twenty-five!… Corentin, remaining one of the generals whose marshal is the Minister of Police, had retained, under the Duke of Rovigo, the eminent position he occupied under the Duke of Otranto. Now, in those days it was the same with the General as with the Judicial Police. In any large-scale operation, the worst crimes were classified and, so to say, farmed out as for three, four or five capable men. The minister, informed about some plot, warned of some corporate machination, no matter how, said to one of the colonels of police: ‘What do you need to arrive at such-and-such a result?’ Corentin or Contenson would reply after ripe reflection: ‘Twenty, thirty, forty thousand francs.’ Then, once the order to proceed had been given, the choice of men and methods was left to the judgment of Corentin or the agent designated. The Judicial Police acted similarly in criminal matters under the famous Vidocq.

  The Political Police, like the Judicial Police, selected its men mainly from among known agents, regular, matriculated men, the soldiers of that secret force so necessary to governments, despite the denunciations of philanthropists or smalltime moralists. But the excessive confidence placed in the two or three generals of the temper of Peyrade and Corentin enabled them to employ unknown persons, for whom they must nevertheless account to the Ministry in serious cases. Now, Peyrade’s experience and discretion were too precious to Corentin, who, once the little matter of 1810 had blown over, continued to employ his old friend, consulted him regularly, and subsidized his needs. Corentin found means to pay Peyrade about a thousand francs a month. For his part, Peyrade rendered Corentin sterling service. In 1816, in connection with the discovery of the conspiracy in which the Bonapartist Gaudissart was deeply involved, Corentin tried to have Peyrade brought back into the General Police of the Kingdom; but an unknown influence worked against Peyrade. This is why. In their desire to render themselves indispensable, Peyrade, Corentin and Contenson, at the Duke of Otranto’s instigation, had organized, on behalf of Louis XVIII, a Counter-Police in which Contenson and other agents of the highest calibre were employed. Louis XVIII died, in possession of secrets which will remain secret from the best-informed historians. The struggle between the General Police of the Kingdom and the Counter-Police of the King gave rise to dreadful affairs whose secret was hushed on more than one scaffold. This is neither the time nor the place to enter into detail on the subject, for our Scenes from Parisian Life are not scenes from Political Life; it is only necessary to make plain what were the means of existence of the man known as Old Canquoëlle at the Café David, by what threads he was attached to the terrible and mysterious power of the Police. From 1817 to 1822, the mission of Corentin, Contenson, Peyrade and their agents was often to spy on the Minister himself. This may explain why the Minister refused to employ Peyrade and Contenson upon whom, unknown to them, Corentin caused ministerial suspicion to fall, so that he could make use of his friend, once the possibility of his official rehabilitation had been ruled out. The ministers then had confidence in Corentin, they instructed him to keep an eye on Peyrade, which made Louis XVIII smile. Corentin and Peyrade thus remained wholly in command of the field. Contenson, for long attached to Peyrade, continued to serve him. He had got himself into Trade Protection by order of Corentin and Peyrade. In love with their profession and exercising it to the point of madness, these two generals liked, indeed, to place their cleverest soldiers in all those places where information may abound. Besides, Contenson’s vices, his depraved habits which caused him to fall further than his two friends, required so much money, that he needed plenty of work. Contenson, without committing any indiscretion thereby, had told Louchard that he knew the one man capable of satisfying Baron Nucingen. Peyrade was, indeed, the only true agent who could with impunity carry out police work on behalf of an individual. On the death of Louis XVIII, Peyrade lost not only his general importance, but the perquisites of his position as Spy-in-Ordinary to His Majesty. Believing himself indispensable, he had continued in his way of life. Women, good cheer and the Foreign Visitors’ Club had made economy impossible to a man who, like all those cut out for the pursuit of vice, had a constitution of iron. But, from 1826 to 1829, in his seventy-fifth year, he began to call a halt, as he put it. From year to year, Peyrade had seen his well-being diminish. He was present at the obsequies of the Police, with mortification he saw the government of Charles X give up the best traditions. From one session to another, the House whittled away the allocations necessary to the existence of the Police, out of hatred for this instrument of rule and bent on moralizing the institution. ‘It’s like trying to cook in white gloves,’ said Peyrade to Corentin. Corentin and Peyrade foresaw 1830 already in 1822. They knew the deep hatred with which Louis XVIII viewed his successor, which explains his indulgence towards the younger branch, and without which the politics of his reign would be a wordless enigma.

  As he grew old, Peyrade’s affection for his natural daughter increased. For her, he had adopted a respectable way of life, for he wanted to marry his Lydia to some worthy man. Thus, more especially during the past three years, he had sought means to settle down, either at the Prefecture of Police or at the headquarters of the General Police of the Kingdom, in some openly avowable position. He had ended by inventing a post whose necessity, he said to Corentin, would sooner or later make itself felt. It was a matter of setting-up, at the Prefecture, an information bureau, to serve as intermediary between the Paris Police properly so-called, the Judicial Police and the Police of the Kingdom so that the central direction could profit by all its disseminated forces. Peyrade alone could, at his age, after fifty-five years of professional discretion, provide the necessary link between the three police organizations, be himself the archivist to whom both politics and the law should address themselves for enlightenment in particular cases. Peyrade hoped in this way, with Corentin’s help, to catch both a dowry and a husband for his little Lydia. Corentin had already discussed the matter with the Director General of the Police of the Kingdom, without mentioning Peyrade, and the Director General, who came from the south, took the view that the suggestion ought to come from the Prefecture.

  At the moment when Contenson had struck the café table three times with his piece of gold, a signal which meant: ‘I have something to talk to you about,’ the dean of policemen was meditating the problem: ‘Through what person, by what interest to make the present police prefect take action?’ And he looked like an idiot studying his Courrier Français.

  ‘Our poor Fouché,’ he said to himself as he walked along the rue Saint Honoré, ‘that great man is dead! our intermediaries with Louis XVIII are in disgrace! Besides, as Corentin was saying only yesterday, people won’t believe now in the agility or the intelligence of a septuagenarian… Ah, why did I ever form the habit of dining at Véry’s, of drinking the finest wines,… of singing “Mother Godichon”,… of gaming when I have money! To establish a position, a good mind is not enough, as Corentin says, it has to be a well-behaved mind! Dear M. Lenoir told me my fortune when, in connection with the affair of the Necklace, he cried: “You will never be anybody!” on learning that I hadn’t stayed under the maid Oliva’s bed.’

  A spy’s household

  IF the venerable Father Canquoëlle (he was called Father Canquoëlle at home) had stayed in the rue des Moineaux, on the fourth floor, be sure that he had found, in this setting, peculiarities which favoured the execution of his fell designs. Situate
d at the corner of the rue Saint Roch, his house was without neighbour on one side. As the staircase divided it into two, there were, on each floor, two completely isolated rooms. These two rooms overlooked the rue Saint Roch. Extending over the fourth floor were attic rooms of which one served as a kitchen, while the other was the bedroom of Father Canquoëlle’s only maidservant, a Fleming by the name of Katt, who had been Lydia’s nurse. Father Canquoëlle’s own bedroom was the first of the two that were isolated, and the other was his study. A thick party wall shut off the far side of this study. A casement, from which the rue des Moineaux could be seen, faced a windowless corner wall. Thus, as the whole breadth of Peyrade’s bedroom separated them from the staircase, the two friends feared neither eye nor ear when they talked business in this study expressly designed for their dreadful trade. By way of precaution, Peyrade had placed a straw bed, a coarse haircloth and a very thick carpet in the Fleming’s room, on the pretext of increasing the comfort of his child’s nurse. Moreover, he had blocked up the fireplace, using a stove whose pipe passed through the outer wall in the rue Saint Roch. Finally, he had spread several thicknesses of carpet over the tiled floor, to prevent the tenants on the floor below catching any sound. Experienced in the ways of espionage, he sounded the party wall, the ceiling and the floor once a week, and examined them like a man in search of troublesome insects. The certitude of being free there of either witnesses or hearers had made Corentin choose this study as a place for any discussion which he did not hold at home. Corentin’s lodging was known only to the Director General of the Police of the Kingdom and to Peyrade, he received there any personages whom the Ministry or the Castle used as go-betweens in grave circumstances; but no agent, no subordinate ever went there, and professional schemes were all worked out at Peyrade’s. In this unpretentious room plans were concocted, decisions taken which would provide strange annals and curious dramas if walls could speak. There, between 1816 and 1826, huge interests were analysed and weighed against each other. There were perceived in germ events which all France would feel. There, Peyrade and Corentin, as far-seeing, but better informed than Bellart, the Director of Public Prosecutions, were already saying in 1819: ‘If Louis XVIII is holding his hand, if he won’t get rid of such-and-such a prince, he hates his brother, then? he wants to leave him with a revolution on his hands?’

  Peyrade’s door was decorated with a slate upon which apparently meaningless signs and figures might sometimes be found written in chalk. This kind of devilish algebra conveyed very precise meanings to the initiated. Facing Peyrade’s shabby apartment was Lydia’s, composed of an ante-room, a small drawing-room, a bedroom and a dressing-room… Lydia’s door, like that of Peyrade’s bedroom, was made of four thicknesses of sheet iron placed between stout oak boards, with a system of locks and hinges which would have made both as difficult to force as prison doors. Thus, although it was an open house, with a shop on the ground floor and no porter, Lydia lived there with nothing to fear. The dining-room, the drawing-room, the bedroom, all of whose casements had window-boxes, were Flemish in their spotlessness and luxuriously furnished. The Flemish nurse had never left Lydia, whom she called her daughter. The two went to church together with a regularity which gave old Canquoëlle an enviable reputation with the royalist grocer established in the house, at the corner of the rue des Moineaux and the rue Neuve Saint Roch, whose family, kitchen, errand-boys occupied the mezzanine and first floor. On the second floor lived the owner, and the third had been rented, for twenty years past, by a stone-cutter. Each of the tenants had a key to the house door. The grocer’s wife took in letters and parcels addressed to the three peaceful households, with all the more willingness in that the grocery was provided with a letter box. Without these details, neither outsiders nor those who know Paris would understand the secrecy and quietness, the unguardedness and security which made the house an exception in the city. After midnight, Father Canquoëlle could weave intrigues and hatch plots, receive visits from informers and ministers, women and girls, without anyone in the world noticing. Peyrade, of whom the Flemishwoman had said to the grocer’s cook: ‘He wouldn’t hurt a fly!’ passed for the best of men. He spared nothing where his daughter was concerned. Having had Schmucke as a music master, Lydia was musician enough to compose. She could wash a sepia, paint in water-colour or poster paints. Peyrade dined every Sunday with his daughter. That day, the old fellow was a father to the exclusion of all else. Religious without being sanctimonious, Lydia performed her Easter duties and went to confession every month. This did not stop her taking some interest in the passing scene. She walked in the Tuileries when it was fine. Those were her only pleasures, however, for she led a mainly sedentary existence. Lydia adored her father and knew nothing of his sinister capacities and shady occupations. No desire had troubled the blameless life of this pure child. Slender, beautiful like her mother, gifted with a delightful voice, her pretty features delicate and mobile in their frame of fair hair, she was like one of those angels, more mystical than real, which primitive painters sometimes placed in the background of their Holy Families. The glance of her blue eyes seemed to bestow light from the sky upon anyone whom she favoured with a look. Her chaste attire, totally devoid of affectation, exhaled a delightful odour of family worth. Imagine an old Satan, father of an angel, refreshed by contact with the divine being, and you will have some idea of Peyrade and his daughter. If anyone had sullied this diamond, the father, to swallow him up, would have devised one of those fearsome traps into which, under the Restoration, fell those unfortunates who subsequently took their heads to the scaffold. A thousand crowns sufficed Lydia and Katt, whom she called her maid.

  Turning into the rue des Moineaux, Peyrade saw Contenson; he walked past him, went up first, heard his agent’s steps in the staircase, and let him in before the Fleming had shown her nose at the kitchen door. A bell set off by a gate, placed on the third floor where the stone-cutter lived, warned the third and fourth floor tenants when there was a visitor for them. Needless to say, at midnight Peyrade muffled the tongue of this bell.