A Harlot High and Low

by Honoré de Balzac

  ‘Oh! yes, he is, isn’t he?…’ cried the countess looking at the frightful crone with benevolent kindness.

  ‘But,’ said Asia continuing, ‘if Monsieur Camusot interrogates him hard, with two phrases he can make him guilty; and, if you have the power to get inside the Conciergerie and speak to him, set off at once and give him this paper… Tomorrow he’ll be free, I promise you… Get him out of there, for it’s you who put him in…’

  ‘I!…’

  ‘Yes, you!… You great ladies, you never have a penny, even when there are millions behind you. When I allowed myself the luxury of having kids, they had their pockets stuffed with gold! it amused me to see them happy. It’s nice to be mother and mistress at the same time! Women like you, you let people you love die of hunger without inquiring into their means. Esther, she didn’t just talk, she gave, at the cost of perdition to body and soul, the million demanded of Lucien, and that’s what got him into the plight he’s in now…’

  ‘Poor creature! she did that! I love her!…’ said Léontine.

  ‘Ah! it’s a bit late,’ said Asia with glacial irony.

  ‘She was very beautiful, but now, my angel, you are far more beautiful than she is,… and Lucien’s marriage with Clotilde is so badly broken that nothing will put a new handle on it now,’ said the duchess in an undertone to Léontine.

  The effect of this reflection and this calculation on the countess were such, that she no longer felt ill; she passed her hands over her forehead, she was young.

  ‘Come along, my child, paws up, and let’s be going!…’ said Asia who saw this transfiguration and divined its cause.

  ‘But,’ said Madame de Maufrigneuse, ‘if the main thing is to prevent Monsieur Camusot questioning Lucien, we can do that by writing him a note, which a footman of yours can take round to the Law Courts, Léontine.’

  ‘Let’s go back to the house, then,’ said Madame de Sérisy.

  While Lucien’s protectresses carried out the orders set down by Jacques Collin, this is what was happening at the Law Courts.

  Observations

  CONSTABLES carried the dying man to a chair placed facing the window in Monsieur Camusot’s office, the latter sitting in comfort at his desk. Coquart, pen in hand, sat at a little table a few yards away from the judge.

  The position of the examining magistrates’ offices is not a matter of indifference, and if it was not selected with intention, it must be conceded that Chance greatly favoured the Law. These magistrates are like painters, they need the pure, even light which comes from the north, for the face of any criminal before them is a picture they must constantly study. For this reason, they almost invariably dispose their furniture as Monsieur Camusot had done, themselves sitting with their backs to the light, to which the faces of those they are questioning are consequently exposed. Not one of them, after six months’ practice, fails to wear either spectacles or a distraught, indifferent air during the course of each interrogation. It was by a sudden change of expression, perceived in this way and caused by a question suddenly put at close quarters, that the crime of Castaing was discovered, just as the judge, after lengthy consultation with the Attorney General, was about to restore the criminal to society, for lack of proof. A small detail of that kind may indicate to those who have given the matter little thought how vital, interesting, curious, dramatic and terrifying a battle a judicial inquiry may be, a battle waged without witnesses but recorded as it takes place. God knows what remains on paper of these scenes so glacially ardent, where the eyes, the tone of voice, a quiver of the facial muscles, the slightest change of colour caused by a new feeling, are signs of no less danger than those noted by savages mutually seeking out to kill each other. The written report can be no more than the ashes of such a conflagration.

  ‘What are your real names?’ Camusot asked Jacques Collin.

  ‘Don Carlos Herrera, canon of the royal chapter of Toledo, secret envoy of His Majesty Ferdinand VII.’

  Here Jacques Collin must be envisaged as speaking French ‘like a Spanish cow’, as we say, jabbering in such a way as to make his replies almost unintelligible, so that he had to be asked to repeat what he had said. The Germanisms of Monsieur de Nucingen have already been so much used for decorative effect in the course of this narrative that the reader shall be spared anything here so difficult to read, since it would hold up the speed with which these events reach their outcome.

  As a man of what mark the convict proves himself to be

  ‘You have papers which show these to be your qualifications?’ asked the judge.

  ‘Yes, sir, a passport, a letter from His Catholic Majesty authorizing my mission… You could also dispatch at once to the Spanish embassy a few words which I would write now in front of you, they would claim me. Then, if you had need of further proofs, I could write to His Eminence the High Chaplain of France, and he would send his private secretary here.’

  ‘Do you still claim to be on the point of death?’ said Camusot. ‘If you were truly as ill as you have never ceased to complain that you were since your arrest, you should be dead by now,’ the judge added with a touch of irony.

  ‘I see that an innocent man’s courage and strength are on trial!’ replied the prisoner gently.

  ‘Ring the bell, Coquart! have the doctor come with an attendant from the Conciergerie. We shall be obliged to take your frock coat off and verify the mark on your shoulder…’ Camusot went on.

  ‘ I am in your hands, sir.’

  The prisoner asked whether his judge would be kind enough to explain to him what mark this was, and why it should be looked for on his shoulder? The judge was expecting this question.

  ‘You are suspected of being Jacques Collin, an escaped convict whose audacity recoils before nothing, not even sacrilege…’ said the magistrate briskly plunging his gaze into the prisoner’s eyes.

  Jacques Collin neither quivered nor reddened; he remained calm and assumed a mildly quizzical airas he looked at Camusot.

  ‘I, sir, a convict?… May God and the Order to which I belong forgive you your mistake! tell me what I must do to spare you persisting in so grave an insult to the Law of Nations, to the Church, to the King my master.’

  The magistrate, without replying directly, explained to the prisoner that, if he had once been branded as the law then decreed for those once sentenced to hard labour, a slap on his shoulder would cause the letters to reappear at once.

  ‘Ah! my dear sir,’ said Jacques Collin, ‘it would be hard indeed if my devotion to the royal cause were now to prove detrimental to me.’

  ‘Explain yourself,’ said the judge, ‘that’s what you’re here for.’

  ‘Why, sir! I must have many scars on my back, for I was shot from behind, as a traitor to the country, while I was only faithful to my king, by the Constitutionalists who left me for dead.’

  ‘You were shot, and you’re still alive!…’ said Camusot.

  ‘I had an understanding with several of the soldiers to whom pious persons had given a little money; and in consequence I was stood at such a distance that I received only balls that were almost spent, the soldiers aimed at my back. This is a fact to which His Excellency the Ambassador will be able to testify…’

  ‘This devil of a man has an answer to everything. So much the better, I suppose,’ thought Camusot, who showed so much severity only by way of meeting the exigencies of legal procedure and police regulations.

  Jacques Collin’s admirable invention

  ‘HOW did a man of your character come to be at the house of Baron Nucingen’s mistress? and what a mistress, once a common prostitute!…’

  ‘The reason why I was discovered at a harlo’s house, sir, is as follows,’ replied Jacques Collin. ‘But before I explain that, I must tell you that it was just as I set foot on the first step of the staircase that I was suddenly taken ill, I was therefore not able to speak to the girl in time. I had learnt of Mademoiselle Esther’s intention of killing herself, and as it concerned young Luci
en de Rubempré, of whom I am particularly fond, for the holiest possible motives, I wished to do my best to turn the poor creature’s mind from the path despair had pointed out to her: I wanted to tell her that Lucien’s final appeal to Mademoiselle Clotilde could not succeed; and, by informing her that she inherited seven millions, I hoped to give her back the courage to live. I know very well, my dear judge, that I am a victim of the secrets confided to me. From the manner in which I was strck down, it is clear that I must have been poisoned that very morning; but the strength of my constitution saved me. I know that, for a long time, an agent of the political police has followed me about, seeking to involve me in some disreputable matter… If, as I asked, at the time of my arrest, you had sent a doctor to me, you would have had proof of what I am now telling you about the state of my health. Believe me, sir, that individual’s beyond our reach are violently bent on causing me to be confused with some rogue in order to have the right to be rid of me. It is not all gain to serve kings, they have their petty side; the Church alone is perfect.’

  It is impossible to describe the play of facial expression with which Jacques Collin spent ten minutes unfolding this speech, phrase by phrase; everything in it was made to appear so probable, especially the illusion to Corentin, that the magistrate was shaken.

  ‘Are you able to confide in me the grounds of your affection for Monsieur Lucien de Rubempré…?’

  ‘Can’t you guess? I am sixty years old, sir… I beg you, don’t write that down… It is simply that – but, indeed, must I?’

  ‘It is in your own interest and that of Lucien de Rubempré to tell all,’ answered the judge.

  ‘Ah, well, then! he is… O my God!… he is my son!’ came the murmured answer.

  And he fainted.

  ‘Don’t write that down, Coquart,’ said Camusot in an undertone.

  Coquart rose from his table and went to get a small vial of Marseilles vinegar.

  ‘If this is Jacques Collin, he is a consummate actor,’ thought Camusot.

  Coquart held the vinegar under the nose of the old convict whom the judge examined with a perspicacity common to lynx and magistrate.

  Diamond cut diamond

  ‘WE must get him to take his wig off,’ said Camusot as he waited for Jacques Collin to recover consciousness.

  The old convict heard what he said and felt afraid, for he knew how base was then the expression his physiognomy acquired.

  ‘If you don’t feel strong enough to take your wig off… yes, Coquart, remove it,’ said the magistrate to his clerk.

  Jacques Collin held his head forward to the clerk with touching resignation, but thereupon head and face, unadorned, became frightful to see, their true character was exposed. The sight plunged Camusot into deep uncertainty. Awaiting the arrival of doctor and male nurse, he set himself to classifying and inspecting all the papers and other objects seized at Lucien’s domicile. After performing its duties in the rue Saint Georges, at Mademoiselle Esther’s, the Law had descended upon the Quai Malaquais to carry out a search there.

  ‘You have your hand on letters from Madame la Comtesse de Sérisy,’ said Carlos Herrera; ‘but I don’t know why you should want almost all Lucien’s papers,’ he added with a sudden smile of irony at the judge.

  Perceiving this smile, Camusot understood how much the word ‘almost’ conveyed.

  ‘Lucien de Rubempré, suspected of being your accomplice, has been arrested,’ replied the magistrate wishing to see what effect this news would produce on his prisoner.

  ‘You have done great wrong, for he is every bit as innocent as I am,’ the false Spaniard added without showing the least sign of emotion.

  ‘We shall see, for the moment we’re still concerned with your identity,’ continued Camusot, astonished by his prisoner’s calm. ‘If you are really Don Carlos Herrera, the fact would have immediate bearing on the situation of Lucien Chardon.’

  ‘Yes, it was indeed Madame Chardon, Mademoiselle de Rubempré! ’ murmured Carlos. ‘ Ah! it was one of the greatest faults of my life! ’

  He raised his eyes heavenward; and, from the way in which his lips moved, it seemed that he was praying fervently.

  ‘But if you are Jacques Collin, if he was knowingly the companion of an escaped convict, guilty of sacrilege, all those crimes suspected by the Law will seem more than probable.’

  Carlos Herrera did not betray a tremor as he listened to the magistrate’s cleverly phrased statement, and for his only reaction to the words ‘knowingly’, ‘escaped convict’, he held up his hands in an expression of noble grief.

  ‘Monsieur l’Abbé,’ the magistrate continued with exaggerated politeness, ‘if you are Don Carlos Herrera, you will forgive all that we are obliged to do in the interests of justice and truth…’

  Jacques Collin divined the trap laid for him solely by the sound of the judge’s voice as he pronounced the words ‘Monsieur l’Abbé,’ for the man’s countenance did not change, Camusot was waiting for a look of joy which would have been as it were a first sign of his convict nature, the ineffable pleasure taken by a criminal in deceiving his judges; but he found the hero of the penitentiary armed with Machiavellian powers of dissimulation.

  ‘I am a diplomatist and I belong to an Order in which one takes vows of the greatest austerity,’ replied Jacques Collin with apostolic sweetness, ‘I understand, and am accustomed to suffering. I should already be at liberty if you had found at my dwelling the hiding-place in which I kept my papers, for I see that those you have confiscated are of very little significance…’

  This was a mortal blow for Camusot; Jacques Collin had already, by the ease and simplicity of his manner, outweighed all the suspicions to which the sight of his head had given rise.

  ‘Where are those papers?…’

  ‘I will describe the place to you if you will allow your messenger to be accompanied by a legation secretary from the Spanish embassy, who will take charge of them and to whom you will be responsible, for they concern my diplomatic status, they are secret documents some of which compromise the late king Louis XVIII. Oh, sir! it would be better… But there, you are a magistrate!… Besides, the ambassador, to whom I appeal in all this, will appreciate…’

  The mark is abolished

  AT that moment the doctor and the infirmary attendant came in, after being announced by the usher.

  ‘Good morning, Monsieur Lebrun,’ said Camusot to the. doctor, ‘I called you to pronounce on the state of the prisoner you see here. He says he has been poisoned, he claims to have been on the point of death since the day before yesterday; see if there is any danger in undressing him so that we can verify what marks there may be on his body…’

  Doctor Lebrun took Jacques Collin’s hand, felt his pulse, told him to put his tongue out, and looked at him very attentively. This examination lasted about ten minutes.

  ‘The prisoner,’ replied the doctor, ‘has been very unwell, but at this moment he is in full possession of his strength…’

  ‘This apparent strength is due, sir, to the nervous excitement which my curious situation causes me,’ said Jacques Collin with the dignity of a bishop.

  ‘That could well be,’ agreed Monsieur Lebrun.

  At a sign from the magistrate, the prisoner was undressed, he was allowed his breeches, but everything else was removed, even his shirt; revealed, then, to the admiration of those present might be seen a hairy torso of Cyclopean power. It might have been the Farnese Hercules of Naples without its exaggerated gigantism.

  ‘To what end are men thus built destined by nature?…’ said the doctor to Camusot.

  The usher returned with that species of ebony bat which, from time immemorial, has been the badge of their office and which is mildly known as a rod; with it he struck several blows on the place where the executioner had applied the fatal letters. The scars of seventeen holes thereupon reappeared, distributed at random; but, despite the care with which the back was examined, no letters could be made out. The usher did indeed p
oint out that the horizontal of a Τ might be indicated by two holes as wide apart as the two serifs at either end of that stroke, and that another hole would then correspond with the bottom of the vertical.

  ‘That’s pretty vague, all the same,’ said Camusot seeing doubt depicted on the face of the doctor from the Conciergerie.

  Carlos begged them to perform the same operation on his left shoulder and half way down his back. Fifteen other scars became visible which the doctor studied at the Spaniard’s request, and he declared that the back had been so deeply furrowed by wounds, that the mark could not possibly show, supposing that the executioner had imprinted it there.

  Thrusts

  AT that moment a messenger from the Prefecture of Police entered, delivered an envelope to Monsieur Camusot and waited for the reply. Having read the message, the magistrate went over and spoke to Coquart, but so quietly that nobody could hear what he said. The only thing was that, from a look Camusot gave him, Jacques Collin guessed that new information about him had come from the Prefect.

  ‘I’ve still got Peyrade’s friend on my heels,’ thought Jacques Collin; ‘if I knew who he was, I’d get rid of him as I did of Contenson. Could I manage to see Asia again?…’

  Having signed the paper written out by Coquart, the judge put it in an envelope and handed it to the messenger from the Delegations office.

  This office is an indispensable auxiliary of Justice. Presided over by a police superintendent appointed ad hoc, it consists of officers who act in conjunction with the superintendents in any particular quarter to carry out search warrants and even warrants of arrest at the abodes of persons suspected of complicity in crimes and misdemeanours. Those so delegated by judicial authority spare magistrates in charge of an investigation a great deal of valuable time.