Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honoré de Balzac (e reader TXT) 📕

unsticking it had been begun in La Force; two hours would not have been long enough; it had taken him half of the day before. The prisoner began by tearing this precious scrap of paper so as to have a strip four or five lines wide, which he divided into several bits; he then replaced his store of paper in the same strange hiding-place, after damping the gummed side so as to make it stick again. He felt in a lock of his hair for one of those pencil leads as thin as a stout pin, then recently invented by Susse, and which he had put in with some gum; he broke off a scrap long enough to write with and small enough to hide in his ear. Having made these preparations with the rapidity and certainty of hand peculiar to old convicts, who are as light-fingered as monkeys, Jacques Collin sat down on the edge of his bed to meditate on his instructions to Asie, in perfect confidence that he should come across her, so entirely did he rely on the woman's genius.

"During the preliminary examination," he reflected, "I pretended to be a Spaniard and spoke broken French, appealed to my Ambassador, and alleged diplomatic privilege, not understanding anything I was asked, the whole performance varied by fainting, pauses, sighs--in short, all the vagaries of a dying man. I must stick to that. My papers are all regular. Asie and I can eat up Monsieur Camusot; he is no great shakes!

"Now I must think of Lucien; he must be made to pull himself together. I must get at the boy at whatever cost, and show him some plan of conduct, otherwise he will give himself up, give me up, lose all! He must be taught his lesson before he is examined. And besides, I must find some witnesses to swear to my being a priest!"

Such was the position, moral and physical, of these two prisoners, whose fate at the moment depended on Monsieur Camusot, examining judge to the Inferior Court of the Seine, and sovereign master, during the time granted to him by the Code, of the smallest details of their existence, since he alone could grant leave for them to be visited by the chaplains, the doctor, or any one else in the world.

No human authority--neither the King, nor the Keeper of the Seals, nor the Prime Minister, can encroach on the power of an examining judge; nothing can stop him, no one can control him. He is a monarch, subject only to his conscience and the Law. At the present time, when philosophers, philanthropists, and politicians are constantly endeavoring to reduce every social power, the rights conferred on the examining judges have become the object of attacks that are all the more serious because they are almost justified by those rights, which, it must be owned, are enormous. And yet, as every man of sense will own, that power ought to remain unimpaired; in certain cases, its exercise can be mitigated by a strong infusion of caution; but society is already threatened by the ineptitude and weakness of the jury--which is, in fact, the really supreme bench, and which ought to be composed only of choice and elected men--and it would be in danger of ruin if this pillar were broken which now upholds our criminal procedure.

Arrest on suspicion is one of the terrible but necessary powers of which the risk to society is counterbalanced by its immense importance. And besides, distrust of the magistracy in general is a beginning of social dissolution. Destroy that institution, and reconstruct it on another basis; insist--as was the case before the Revolution--that judges should show a large guarantee of fortune; but, at any cost, believe in it! Do not make it an image of society to be insulted!

In these days a judge, paid as a functionary, and generally a poor man, has in the place of his dignity of old a haughtiness of demeanor that seems odious to the men raised to be his equals; for haughtiness is dignity without a solid basis. That is the vicious element in the present system. If France were divided into ten circuits, the magistracy might be reinstated by conferring its dignities on men of fortune; but with six-and-twenty circuits this is impossible.

The only real improvement to be insisted on in the exercise of the power intrusted to the examining judge, is an alteration in the conditions of preliminary imprisonment. The mere fact of suspicion ought to make no difference in the habits of life of the suspected parties. Houses of detention for them ought to be constructed in Paris, furnished and arranged in such a way as greatly to modify the feeling of the public with regard to suspected persons. The law is good, and is necessary; its application is in fault, and public feeling judges the laws from the way in which they are carried out. And public opinion in France condemns persons under suspicion, while, by an inexplicable reaction, it justifies those committed for trial. This, perhaps, is a result of the essentially refractory nature of the French.

This illogical temper of the Parisian people was one of the factors which contributed to the climax of this drama; nay, as may be seen, it was one of the most important.

To enter into the secret of the terrible scenes which are acted out in the examining judge's chambers; to understand the respective positions of the two belligerent powers, the Law and the examinee, the object of whose contest is a certain secret kept by the prisoner from the inquisition of the magistrate--well named in prison slang, "the curious man"--it must always be remembered that persons imprisoned under suspicion know nothing of what is being said by the seven or eight publics that compose _the Public_, nothing of how much the police know, or the authorities, or the little that newspapers can publish as to the circumstances of the crime.

Thus, to give a man in custody such information as Jacques Collin had just received from Asie as to Lucien's arrest, is throwing a rope to a drowning man. As will be seen, in consequence of this ignorance, a stratagem which, without this warning, must certainly have been equally fatal to the convict, was doomed to failure.


Monsieur Camusot, the son-in-law of one of the clerks of the cabinet, too well known for any account of his position and connection to be necessary here, was at this moment almost as much perplexed as Carlos Herrera in view of the examination he was to conduct. He had formerly been President of a Court of the Paris circuit; he had been raised from that position and called to be a judge in Paris--one of the most coveted posts in the magistracy--by the influence of the celebrated Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, whose husband, attached to the Dauphin's person, and Colonel of a cavalry regiment of the Guards, was as much in favor with the King as she was with MADAME. In return for a very small service which he had done the Duchess--an important matter to her--on occasion of a charge of forgery brought against the young Comte d'Esgrignon by a banker of Alencon (see _La Cabinet des Antiques_; _Scenes de la vie de Province_), he was promoted from being a provincial judge to be president of his Court, and from being president to being an examining judge in Paris.

For eighteen months now he had sat on the most important Bench in the kingdom; and had once, at the desire of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, had an opportunity of forwarding the ends of a lady not less influential than the Duchess, namely, the Marquise d'Espard, but he had failed. (See the _Commission in Lunacy_.)

Lucien, as was told at the beginning of the Scene, to be revenged on Madame d'Espard, who aimed at depriving her husband of his liberty of action, was able to put the true facts before the Public Prosecutor and the Comte de Serizy. These two important authorities being thus won over to the Marquis d'Espard's party, his wife had barely escaped the censure of the Bench by her husband's generous intervention.

On hearing, yesterday, of Lucien's arrest, the Marquise d'Espard had sent her brother-in-law, the Chevalier d'Espard, to see Madame Camusot. Madame Camusot had set off forthwith to call on the notorious Marquise. Just before dinner, on her return home, she had called her husband aside in the bedroom.

"If you can commit that little fop Lucien de Rubempre for trial, and secure his condemnation," said she in his ear, "you will be Councillor to the Supreme Court----"

"How?"

"Madame d'Espard longs to see that poor young man guillotined. I shivered as I heard what a pretty woman's hatred can be!"

"Do not meddle in questions of the law," said Camusot.

"I! meddle!" said she. "If a third person could have heard us, he could not have guessed what we were talking about. The Marquise and I were as exquisitely hypocritical to each other as you are to me at this moment. She began by thanking me for your good offices in her suit, saying that she was grateful in spite of its having failed. She spoke of the terrible functions devolved on you by the law, 'It is fearful to have to send a man to the scaffold--but as to that man, it would be no more than justice,' and so forth. Then she lamented that such a handsome young fellow, brought to Paris by her cousin, Madame du Chatelet, should have turned out so badly. 'That,' said she, 'is what bad women like Coralie and Esther bring young men to when they are corrupt enough to share their disgraceful profits!' Next came some fine speeches about charity and religion! Madame du Chatelet had said that Lucien deserved a thousand deaths for having half killed his mother and his sister.

"Then she spoke of a vacancy in the Supreme Court--she knows the Keeper of the Seals. 'Your husband, madame, has a fine opportunity of distinguishing himself,' she said in conclusion--and that is all."

"We distinguish ourselves every day when we do our duty," said Camusot.

"You will go far if you are always the lawyer even to your wife," cried Madame Camusot. "Well, I used to think you a goose. Now I admire you."

The lawyer's lips wore one of those smiles which are as peculiar to them as dancers' smiles are to dancers.

"Madame, can I come in?" said the maid.

"What is it?" said her mistress.

"Madame, the head lady's-maid came from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse while you were out, and she will be obliged if you would go at once to the Hotel de Cadignan."

"Keep dinner back," said the lawyer's wife, remembering that the driver of the hackney coach that had brought her home was waiting to be paid.

She put her bonnet on again, got into the coach, and in twenty minutes was at the Hotel de Cadignan. Madame Camusot was led up the private stairs, and sat alone for ten minutes in a boudoir adjoining the Duchess' bedroom. The Duchess presently appeared, splendidly dressed, for she was starting for Saint-Cloud in obedience to a Royal invitation.

"Between you and me, my dear, a few words are enough."

"Yes, Madame la Duchesse."

"Lucien de Rubempre is in custody, your husband is conducting the inquiry; I will answer for the poor boy's innocence; see that he is released within twenty-four hours.--This is not all. Some one will ask to-morrow to see Lucien in private in his cell; your husband may be present if he chooses, so long as he is not discovered. The King looks for high