A Harlot High and Low
The examining magistrate is worried
MONSIEUR CAMUSOT, son-in-law of an usher to the King’s office, already too well known to need any explanation of his alliances and his position, was at that moment in a state of perplexity equal to Carlos Herrera’s own, with regard to the judicial inquiry entrusted to him. Formerly chairman of a court in the provinces, he had been extracted from this position and appointed to the magistracy in Paris, a coveted post which he owed to the protection of the famous Duchesse de Maufrigneuse whose husband, a companion of the Dauphin and colonel of a cavalry regiment of the Royal Guard, was as much in favour with the King as she was with Madame. For a small but important service rendered to the duchess at the time of a charge of forgery brought against the young Count Esgrignon by a banker in Alençon, he had been promoted from the minor ranks of the provincial magistracy to chairmanship of his own court and subsequently to an examining magistracy in Paris. For the past eighteen months, sitting as a member of the most important court of the realm, he had taken the opportunity to espouse the views of no less powerful a great lady, the Marquise d’Espard, to whom the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse had recommended him; but he had failed. Lucien, as we mentioned at the beginning of the present work, to avenge himself on Madame d’Espard who sought to deprive her husband of control over his estate, had succeeded in bringing the truth of the matter to the eyes of the Attorney General and Count Sérisy. These two great figures once aligned with the friends of the Marquis d’Espard, it was only through her husband’s clemency that his wife had escaped the reprimand of the court. The previous day, on hearing of Lucien’s arrest, the Marquise d’Espard had sent her brother-in-law, the Chevalier d’Espard, with a message to Madame Camusot. Madame Camusot had at once hurried round to see the marchioness. At dinner-time, back home, she had taken her husband aside into her bedroom.
‘If you can send that little fool Lucien de Rubempré before the court of assize, and he is duly sentenced,’ she said to him in an undertone, ‘you will be made a counsellor at the Royal Court…’
‘Why is that?’
‘Madame d’Espard would like to see that poor young man’s head fall. A shiver ran down my spine hearing such hatred speak on a pretty woman’s lips.’
‘Don’t get mixed up with matters at the Law Courts,’ replied Camusot to his wife.
‘Me, get mixed up?’ she went on. ‘A third party could have heard all we said, he wouldn’t have understood what it was about. The marchioness and I were both as amusingly hypocritical as you are being with me at this moment. She wanted to thank me for your good offices at the time of her action, telling me that, although it did not succeed, she was grateful. She spoke to me of the terrible mission with which you are entrusted by the law. “It is dreadful to have to send a young man to the scaffold, but with that one! justice must be done!… etc.” She was sorry that such a handsome young man, brought to Paris by her cousin, Madame du Châtelet, should have turned out so badly. “That,” she said, “is what bad women, such as Coralie, or Esther, bring young men to if they are so corrupt as to live on their immoral earnings!” All this with magnificent speeches about charity, about religion! Madame du Châtelet had told her that Lucien deserved a thousand deaths for almost killing his sister and his mother… She spoke of a vacancy at the Royal Court, she knew the Keeper of the Seals. “Your husband, Madame, has a splendid opportunity to distinguish himself!” she concluded. And there we are.
‘We distinguish ourselves every day, by doing our duty,’ said Camusot.
‘You’ll go a long way, if you act the magistrate everywhere, even with your wife,’ exclaimed Madame Camusot. ‘Well, I thought you were stupid, but now I’m full of admiration…’
The magistrate smiled in a manner exclusive to magistrates just as a dancer’s smile is like nobody else’s.
‘May I come in, Madame?’ asked her maid.
‘What do you want?’ said her mistress.
‘Madame, the first maid of Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse came here while Madame was out, and begs Madame, on behalf of her mistress, to go round to the Hôtel de Cadignan, whatever she may be doing.’
‘Dinner will have to wait,’ said the magistrate’s wife thinking that the cabman who had brought her home was still waiting to be paid.
She put her hat on again, got back into the cab, and in twenty minutes was at the Hôtel de Cadignan. Shown in by a side entrance, Madame Camusot waited ten minutes by herself in a boudoir leading to the bedroom of the duchess who appeared looking resplendent, for she was off to Saint Cloud where she had an invitation to the Court.
‘My child, between ourselves, a couple of words will do.’
‘Yes, Madame la Duchesse.’
‘Lucien de Rubempré has been arrested, your husband is conducting the inquiry, I guarantee that poor boy’s innocence, I want to see him at liberty within twenty-four hours. That isn’t all. Somebody wants to see Lucien alone tomorrow in prison, your husband could be present, if he wishes, so long as he isn’t seen… I am faithful to those who do things for me, as you know. The King is hoping for much from the courage of his magistrates in the grave circumstances in which he will presently find himself; I’ll put your husband forward, I’ll recommend him as a man devoted to the King, even to the point of staking his life. Our Camusot will first be a counsellor, then he shall have his own court wherever he likes… Good-bye… they’re waiting for me, you’ll excuse me, won’t you? You’ll be obliging not only the Attorney General, who can’t speak out in this matter; you’ll be saving the life of a woman who’d certainly die of it otherwise, Madame de Sérisy. So you won’t be without support… Well, you see how I trust you, I don’t need to tell you what has to be done… you know!’
She put a finger on her lips and went.
‘And me not able to tell her that the Marquise d’Espard hopes to see Lucien on the scaffold!…’ thought the magistrate’s wife as she returned to her cab.
She reached home in such a state of anxiety that at sight of her the magistrate said:
‘Amelia what’s the matter?…’
‘We’re caught between two fires…’
She recounted her interview with the duchess, whispering it to her husband, so afraid was she of her maid listening at the door.
‘Which of the two is the more powerful?’ she ended by saying. ‘The marchioness nearly compromised you in the silly affair of getting her husband deprived of control, while we owe everything to the duchess. One of them made me vague promises; while the other said: ‘You’ll first be a counsellor, then you shall have your own court wherever you like!”… God preserve me from offering you advice, I won’t get myself mixed up in Law Court matters; but I must faithfully pass on what is being said at the other Court and what is afoot there…’
‘What you don’t know, Amelia, is what the Prefect of Police sent me this morning, and by whom? by one of the most important men in the general Police of the Kingdom, the Bibi-Lupin of the political squad, who told me that the State had undisclosed interests in the case. Let’s eat and then go to the Variétés… We’ll talk about it all tonight, when we’re on our own; for I shall need your point of view, a magistrate’s judgement may not be enough…’
How bedrooms are often council chambers
NINE tenths of magistrates will deny the influence of wife on husband in such a matter; but, however exceptional such influence may be, there is no doubt that it occurs. The magistrate is like the priest, especially in Paris where the cream of the magistracy is found, he rarely discusses the affairs of the Courts, unless they have already been heard and judged. Magistrates’ wives not only pretend to know nothing, but they have enough sense of what is fitting to see that they would damage their husbands if, when they have been taken into some secret, they let the fact be known. Nevertheless, on those great occasions when advancement seems to depend on taking a certain line, many women have, like Amelia, been a party to their husbands’ deliberations. In the last resort, such exceptional cases, the m
ore easily denied in that nobody can really know about them, depend entirely on the manner in which the battle between two characters is fought out within a particular household. Now, Madame Camusot wholly dominated her husband. When all was quiet in the house, the magistrate and his wife sat together at the desk on which he had already set out the documents in the affair.
‘Here,’ said Camusot, ‘are the notes the Prefect’s office have sent me, at my request.’
FATHER CARLOS HERRERA
This individual is certainly the Jacques Collin called Dodgedeath, whose last arrest goes back to the year 1819, and took place at the home of a certain Madame Vauquer, who kept a boarding house in the rue Neuve Sainte Genevieve, where he lived in hiding under the name of Vautrin.
In the margin, in the Prefect’s own hand, one read:
An order has been transmitted by telegraph to Bibi-Lupin, head of the C.I.D., to return immediately to help with the confrontation, he being personally acquainted with Jacques Collin whom he arrested in 1819 with the connivance of a certain Mademoiselle Michonneau.
His fellow-boarders at the Vauquer house are still traceable and may be cited to establish identity.
This so-called Carlos Herrera is the intimate friend and counsellor of Monsieur Lucien de Rubempré, to whom, over the past three years, he has furnished considerable sums, evidently proceeds of theft.
This association, if the identity of the supposed Spaniard with Jacques Collin is established, will serve to convict the said Lucien de Rubempré.
The sudden death of the agent Peyrade was due to a poisoning effected by Jacques Collin, by Rubempré or their minions. The reason for this murder was that the agent had been, for some time past, on the trail of these two clever criminals.
In the margin, the magistrate pointed out a phrase in the Prefect’s own hand, which read:
This is a matter of personal knowledge to me, and I am quite sure that Sieur Lucien de Rubempré has basely worked on his lordship Count Sérisy and the Attorney General.
‘What do you say to that, Amelia?’
‘It’s terrifying!…’ replied the judge’s wife. ‘But let’s hear the rest!’
The substitution of the Spanish priest for the convict Collin is the result of some crime more cleverly committed than that by which Cogniard made himself the count of Saint Helena.
LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRÉ
Lucien Chardon, son of an apothecary in Angoulême and whose mother is a Demoiselle de Rubempré, has royal authority for bearing the name of Rubempré. This authority was issued at the solicitation of Madame la Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and of Monsieur le Comte de Sérisy.
In 182…, the young man came to Paris without means of subsistence, in the retinue of Madame la Comtesse Sixte du Châtelet, then Madame de Bargeton, a cousin of Madame d’Espard.
Ungrateful towards Madame de Bargeton, he lived as man and wife with a Demoiselle Coralie, deceased, actress at the Gymnase, till then cohabiting with Monsieur Camusot, silk merchant in the rue des Bourdonnais.
Presently, reduced to poverty by the insufficiency of the means with which this actress supplied him, he gravely compromised his honourable brother-in-law, a printer in Angoulême, by issuing false letters of credit for the payment of which David Séchard was arrested during a short stay of the said Lucien in Angoulême.
This affair determined the flight of Rubempré, who suddenly reappeared in Paris with Abbé Carlos Herrera.
Without known means of subsistence, Sieur Lucien spent, on an average, during the first three years of his second stay in Paris, about three hundred thousand francs which he can only have received from the so-called Abbé Carlos Herrera, but under what right?
He recently, moreover, laid out more than a million on the purchase of the Rubempré estate in order to meet a condition set to his marriage with Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu. The breaking off of this marriage was due to the fact that the Grandlieu family, to whom Sieur Lucien had said that these sums came to him from his brother-in-law and sister, caused information to be procured from the worthy Séchard couple, notably by the solicitor Derville; not only were they ignorant of his recent purchases, but further they understood Lucien to be heavily in debt.
Furthermore, the estate inherited by the Séchards consists of houses and land; the total amount of ready money was, according to their declaration, no more than two hundred thousand francs.
Lucien was living secretly with Esther Gobseck, it is therefore certain that all the money lavished on this person by her protector, Baron Nucingen, was passed on to the said Lucien.
Lucien and his companion the convict maintained themselves longer than Cogniard in the face of society, drawing their resources from the immoral earnings of the said Esther, formerly a registered prostitute.
Police files
DESPITE the repetitions these notes introduce into the narrative, it was necessary to give them textually in order to show the workings of the Police in Paris. The Police have, as we already saw from the note requested on Peyrade, files, generally of some exactitude, on all families and individuals whose way of life is suspect, whose acts are considered reprehensible. No abnormality goes unrecorded. This universal ledger, this balance-sheet of consciences, is as well-kept as the Bank of France’s account of private fortunes. Just as the Bank pricks off the least arrears in regard to payment, evaluates all credits, puts a price on capitalists, keeping an eye on their operations; so does the Police with regard to the public repute of its citizens. In this, as at the Law Courts, innocence has nothing to fear, such action is taken only with respect to misdemeanours. However highly placed a family may be, it cannot avoid this social provision. The extent of its power is equalled by its discreetness. The enormous quantity of reports made by police superintendents, of records, notes, files, this ocean of information sleeps motionless, deep and calm as the sea. If some important accident happens, if there is public disorder or an outbreak of crime, the Law makes its appeal to the Police; and at once, a file is produced on the incriminated persons, the judge is apprised of the facts. These files, setting out the background to what has happened, contain information of which the Law cannot make overt use, they become a dead letter within the walls of the Palais de Justice, but the information is noted and may meet one or another practical need. These are the threads which show on the reverse side of the tapestry of crime, the materials, otherwise unseen, out of which the pattern was made. No jury would accept them as evidence, the country as a whole would rise up in indignation if they were put in at the public hearing of a criminal case. They contain the truth condemned to stay underground, as the truth is everywhere and always. No magistrate could fail, after working twelve years in Paris, to know very well that the courts of assize and of summary jurisdiction conceal half these infamies, which are as it were the nest in which crime is slowly hatched; every magistrate knows well that the Law never punishes half of the outrages and criminal acts committed annually. If the public knew how far the discretion of the Police goes among those of its minions whose memories are long, it would revere these worthy people as it does an Archbishop Cheverus. The Police are thought to be crafty, Machiavellian, what they are remarkable for is their benignity; all they do is listen to the paroxysmal words of passion, hear what information is laid, take notes and keep them. Only in one aspect is their behaviour frightening. What they do for Justice, they do also for the government. In political matters, they are as cruel and as partial as the late Inquisition.
‘Well, let’s leave that,’ said the magistrate putting the notes back in the folder, ‘it’s a secret between the Police and the Law. In my judicial capacity I shall see what it’s worth; but Monsieur and Madame Camusot know nothing about it.’
‘Do you need to remind me of that?’ said Madame Camusot.