This affair and Calvi’s name had escaped the attention of Jacques Collin, then preoccupied with his duel with Contenson, Corentin and Peyrade. Dodgedeath, in any case, wanted as far as possible to forget the mob and everything to do with the Law Courts. He shrank from any encounter which would have brought him face to face with a fanandel who might have demanded accounts which the dab would have found it impossible to furnish.
Charlie
THE governor of the Conciergerie went at once to the office of the Attorney General and there found the chief prosecution counsel talking with Monsieur de Granville, and holding the order of execution in his hand. Monsieur de Granville, who had just spent all night at the Sérisys’ house, although overcome with fatigue and unhappiness, for the doctors did not yet dare to say that the countess would preserve her reason, was obliged, by this important execution, to devote several hours to the work of his office. After a few minutes’ conversation with the governor, Monsieur de Granville took the order of execution from the barrister and gave it to Gault.
‘Let the execution take place,’ he said, ‘unless exceptional circumstances arise, which you will judge; I trust in your discretion. The erection of the scaffold may be put off until half past ten, which will give you an hour. On a morning like this, hours are like centuries, and a great deal happens in a century! Don’t hold out any hope of a reprieve. Let the prisoner be got ready, if he must, and if there is no confession, give Sanson his orders at half past nine. He can then hold himself in readiness!’
On leaving the Attorney General’s office, the prison governor met, beneath the arched passage which led to the gallery, Monsieur Camusot on his way to the place he had just left. He exchanged a few words with the magistrate; and, having informed him about what was happening at the Conciergerie in respect of Jacques Collin, he went down to arrange the confrontation between Dodgedeath and Madeleine; but he did not allow the supposed ecclesiastic to communicate with the condemned man until Bibi-Lupin, convincingly disguised as an armed constable, had replaced the stool-pigeon who was keeping an eye on the young Corsican.
The profound astonishment of the three convicts, when they saw a warder come to fetch Jacques Collin, to lead him to the condemned man’s quarters, can hardly be imagined. They pressed simultaneously about the chair on which Jacques Collin was sitting.
‘It’s for today, isn’t it, Monsieur Julien?’ Hair’s Breadth asked the warder.
‘Yes, Charlie’s there,’ replied the warder with perfect indifference.
Everybody in the prison world gives the name Chariot or Charlie to the executioner for Paris. This nickname dates from the revolution of 1789. The name produced a great sensation. All the prisoners looked at each other.
‘It’s all over!’ the warder went on. ‘The order of execution has reached Monsieur Gault, and the sentence has just been read out.’
‘So,’ said La Pouraille, ‘pretty-boy Madeleine has received all the sacraments?…’ and he gulped.
‘Poor young Théodore,…’ cried Biffon, ‘he’s a good lad. It’s no joke to sneeze in the bran at his age.’
The warder made his way to the wicket, under the impression that Jacques Collin was following him; but the Spaniard walked slowly, and, when he found himself ten paces behind Julien, he appeared to stumble and with a gesture called for La Pouraille’s arm.
‘He’s a murderer!’ said Napolitas to the priest pointing to La Pouraille and offering his own arm.
‘No, to me he’s a man in misfortune!…’ replied Dodgedeath with the presence of mind and the unction of the archbishop of Cambrai.
And he moved away from Napolitas, who at first glance had struck him as highly suspect.
‘He’s on the first step of the Abbey of Mount-Unwilling; but I’m the prior! I’ll show you how I’m going to deal with the Stork’ (the Procurator). ‘I’ll have that seat of learning out of his claws.’
‘For the sake of its breeches!’ said Hair’s Breadth with a smile.
‘I desire to give that soul to Heaven!’ Jacques Collin answered with compunction seeing other prisoners gather about him.
And he rejoined the warder at the wicket.
‘He came to save Madeleine,’ said Hair’s Breadth, ‘we were right. There’s a dab for you!…’
‘But how?… the guillotine hussars are everywhere, he won’t get the lad to himself,’ cried Biffon.
‘The Baker’s on his side!’ cried La Pouraille. ‘Him, snitch my deeners!… He’s a chum, that one, he needs us and he likes us. They wanted us to make ’em a present of him, like we was scabs! If he gets Madeleine off, I’ll blab to him.’
This last statement, meaning that La Pouraille would let Dodgedeath know where his money was hidden, had the effect of augmenting the devotion of all three convicts to their deity; for at that moment all their hopes were pinned on the Dab.
Jacques Collin, despite the peril in which Madeleine stood, did not forget his part. This man, who knew the Conciergerie as well as he knew the three great convict settlements, took wrong turnings so guilelessly that the warder was obliged to say repeatedly: ‘This way, no, along here!’ until they reached the head gaoler’s office. There, Jacques Collin at once saw, leaning against the stove, a big, heavily built man, whose long, red face was not without distinction, and he recognized Sanson.
. ‘This gentleman is the chaplain,’ he said going up to him with every sign of cordiality.
This mistake was so appalling that it froze the onlookers.
‘No, sir,’ replied Sanson, ‘I perform other functions.’
Sanson, father of the last executioner of that name, dismissed in 1847, was the son of him who executed Louis XVI.
After four hundred years of discharging this duty, the heir to so many torturers had endeavoured to repudiate the hereditary burden. The Sansons, executioners in Rouen for two hundred years before they were invested with the first dignity of the kingdom, had been carrying out the decrees of Justice since the thirteenth century. Few families can show an office or a title of nobility handed on from father to son for six hundred years. At the moment when the young man, then a cavalry captain, saw himself with a fine career before him in the Army, his father demanded him as assistant at the execution of the king. Then he was appointed his father’s second-in-command when in 1793 two permanent scaffolds were set up; one at the Throne gate, the other in the Strand. Aged, at the time of our story, about sixty, this awful functionary was noted for his excellent attire, his quiet and composed manners, and for the contempt he displayed towards Bibi-Lupin and his acolytes, the machine’s provision merchants. The only indication, in this man, which betrayed the fact that in his veins flowed the blood of medieval torturers, was a certain breadth and formidable thickness in his hands. Sufficiently well educated, much concerned with his duties as a citizen and a voter, very fond, it was said, of gardening, this tall, broad-built man, who spoke in a low voice, always calm and of few words, his forehead broad, rather bald, far more closely resembled a member of the British aristocracy than a public executioner. Thus a Spanish canon might well make the mistake which Jacques Collin had made on purpose.
‘He’s no convict,’ said the head warder to the governor.
‘I begin to believe it,’ thought Monsieur Gault nodding to his subordinate.
The confession
JACQUES COLLIN was introduced into the kind of cellar where young Théodore, in a strait waistcoat, sat on the edge of the dreadful prison bed of his room. Dodgedeath, momentarily catching the light from the corridor, at once recognized Bibi-Lupin in the constable standing there, leaning on his sword.
‘Iο sono Gaba-Morto! Parla nostro italiano,’ Jacques Collin said quickly. ‘ Vengo ti salvar,’ thus at once indicating to the prisoner who he was by his nickname, that there was some hope and that they must speak a language incomprehensible to the false gendarme, who, since he was supposed to be guarding the prisoner, could not leave his post. The fury of the head of the C.I.D. may thus be imagined.
/> Théodore Calvi, a young man of sallow complexion, fair-haired, with deep-set, ambiguously blue eyes, well-proportioned, of prodigious muscular strength beneath that lymphatic air which is often found in those from the South, would have displayed the most attractive physiognomy but for arched eyebrows and a somewhat low forehead, sinister in their effect, but for red lips of a savage cruelty, and but for a muscular habit in which is revealed that irritability peculiar to Corsicans, the explanation of their readiness to kill in a sudden quarrel.
Seized with astonishment at the voice, Théodore abruptly raised his head and believed in some hallucination; but, as two months of living in this freestone box had accustomed him to its darkness, he looked at the bogus churchman and sighed deeply. He did not recognize Jacques Collin, whose face scarred by the action of sulphuric acid did not in the least seem to him to be that of his Dab.
‘It really is me, your Jacques, I’m dressed as a priest and I’ve come to save you. Don’t show you recognize me or do anything stupid, and look as though you were at confession.’
This was spoken rapidly.
‘This young man is very low-spirited, death frightens him, he is going to confess all,’ said Jacques Collin addressing himself to the armed constable.
‘Say something to prove to me that it’s him, for you only have his voice.’
‘You see, he tells me, the poor unfortunate, that he is innocent,’ Jacques Collin said again speaking to the constable.
Bibi-Lupin did not dare to speak, for fear of being recognized.
‘Sempremi!’ replied Jacques returning to Théodore and murmuring the code word in his ear.
‘Sempreti!’ said the young man giving the agreed reply. ‘It’s my Dab all right…’
‘Did you do it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me the lot, so I can see how I can set about getting you off; there’s not much time, Charlie’s here.’
The Corsican at once knelt down and appeared ready to confess. Bibi-Lupin did not know what to do, for the conversation was so rapid that it barely took as long as it does to read. Théodore promptly went over the known circumstances of his crime, which were unknown to Jacques Collin.
‘The jury convicted me without proof,’ he said in conclusion.
‘My child, you argue while they are coming to cut your hair!…’
‘I need only have been charged with getting rid of the jewels. But that’s how a case is judged, even now and in Paris!… ’
‘How did you manage it?’ asked Dodgedeath.
‘It was easy! Since the last time I saw you, I’ve got a little Corsican girl I met when I got to’ – using the slang name for Paris – ‘Pantin.’
‘Men stupid enough to love a woman,’ cried Jacques Collin, ‘always die for it!… They’re tigers at large, tigers that prattle and look at themselves in mirrors… You were a fool!…’
‘But…’
‘Tell me, what use was she, this confounded largue?…’
‘This moppet as big as a handful of sticks, as thin as an eel, as quick as a monkey, got through to the top of the oven and opened the house door for me. The dogs, stuffed with a horse-doctor’s poison balls, were dead. I chilled the two women. Once I’d picked up the money, Ginetta shut the door again and got out by way of the oven.’
‘An idea as pretty as that deserves a life,’ said Jacques Collin, admiring the formation of the crime as a carver admires the modelling of a statuette.
‘I was fool enough to lay out all that talent for a thousand crowns!…’
‘No, for a woman!’ Jacques Collin continued. ‘When I told you how they take your intelligence away!…’
Jacques Collin turned on Théodore a look burning with scorn.
‘You weren’t around any longer!’ replied the Corsican. ‘I was on my own.’
‘And do you love the child?’ asked Jacques Collin sensible of the reproach contained in this reply.
‘Oh, if I want to live now, it’s more for you than for her.’
‘Don’t worry! I’ m not called Dodgedeath for nothing! I’ll see you’re all right! ’
‘What! life!…’ cried the young Corsican raising his swathed arms towards the damp roof of the dungeon.
‘My dear little Madeleine, get ready to go back to the shop on a lifer,’ went on Jacques Collin. ‘You’ll have to wait, they aren’t going to crown you with roses, like a fat ox!… If they’ve already got us ironed-up for Rochefort, that was to get rid of us! But I’ll get you sent to Toulon, you’ll escape, and you’ll come back to Pantin, where I’ll fix up quite a nice little existence for you…’
Few such sighs can ever have resounded beneath that merciless vault, it was a sigh exhaled by the joy of deliverance, vibrant against the stone which sent the note back, a note unequalled in music, to the ears of a stupefied Bibi-Lupin.
‘It is the effect of the absolution which I just promise him because of all he tells me,’ said Jacques Collin to the chief of the detective force. ‘These Corsicans, you see, constable, are full of faith! But he is innocent as the Christ child, and I must endeavour to save him…’
‘God be with you, Father!…’ said Théodore in French.
Dodgedeath, now more Carlos Herrera, more a canon than ever, left the condemned cell, hurried into the corridor, and presented a face of horror to Monsieur Gault.
‘Mr Governor, this young man is innocent, he has told me who the guilty person is!… He was about to die for a false point of honour… He is a Corsican! Go, please, ask for me,’ he said, ‘five minutes of interview with the Attorney General. Monsieur de Granville will not refuse to hear immediately a Spanish priest who suffers so much from the errors of French justice!’
‘I shall go at once!’ replied Monsieur Gault to the surprise of all who witnessed this extraordinary scene.
‘But, please,’ said Jacques Collin, ‘meanwhile show me into the prison yard, for there I will finish the conversion of a criminal whose heart I have already touched… They have a heart those wretches!’
This speech affected everybody there. The constables, the committal clerk, Sanson, the warders, the executioner’s assistant, who awaited the order to set up the machine, in prison style; all these, who are little subject to feeling, were moved by an easily imagined curiosity.
In which Mademoiselle Collin appears on the scene
AT that moment, an equipage with fine horses was to be heard pulling up at the gates of the Conciergerie, on the quay, with an air of importance. The carriage door was flung open and the steps pulled out so briskly that everyone believed the arrival to be that of a person of great note. Presently, a lady, waving a piece of blue paper and followed by two flunkeys, presented herself at the wicket. Dressed magnificently all in black, a veil thrown back over her hat, she was dabbing her eyes with a large embroidered handkerchief.
Jacques Collin immediately recognized Asia, or, to restore to this woman her real name, Jacqueline Collin, his aunt. The atrocious old creature, worthy of her nephew, her thoughts wholly concentrated on the prisoner, whom she was defending with an intelligence and a perspicacity at least as powerful as those of the Law, held a permit made out the previous evening in the name of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse’s personal maid, on the recommendation of Monsieur de Sérisy, to see Lucien and the Abbé Carlos Herrera as soon as they were out of solitary confinement, and the divisional magistrate in charge of prisons had also scribbled a note on the form. Its very colour indicated that it carried authority; for these permits, like complimentary tickets at theatres, vary in appearance.
The turnkey therefore opened the wicket, the more readily at the sight of the footman with a feather in his hat, his green and gold livery as bright as that of a Russian general, evidence of an aristocratic if not indeed a royal visitor.
‘Ah, dear Father!’ cried the bogus great lady weeping copiously at sight of the ecclesiastic, ‘how could they bring you here even for a moment so hol a man!’
The governor took the permit and read
: On the recommendation ofHis Excellency Count Sérisy.
‘Ah, Madame de San Esteban, Madame la Marquise,’ said Carlos Herrera, ‘how beautiful this devotion!’
‘Madame, communication with prisoners is not quite so informal,’ said worthy old Gault.
And he himself halted in passage that tun of black watered silk and lace.
‘But from this distance!’ protested Jacques Collin, ‘and with you present?…’ he added casting a glance round the assembly.
His aunt, whose costume must have dazed the office staff, the governor, the warders and the constabulary, smelled strongly of musk. Apart from a thousand crowns worth of lace, she wore a black cashmere shawl worth six thousand francs. The footman paraded about the courtyard of the Conciergerie with the insolence of a lackey who knows that he is indispensable to an exacting princess. He did not speak to his fellow-servant, who stood at the quayside gate, kept open during the day.
‘What do you want? What am I to do?’ said Madame de San Esteban in the slang used between aunt and nephew, a diplomatic code applied to popular speech.
‘Put all the letters in a safe place, take out those which are most compromising to those two ladies, come back to the waiting-hall looking like a streetwalker, and await my orders.’
Asia or Jacqueline knelt as though to receive a blessing, and the sham priest blessed his aunt with evangelical compunction.
‘Addio, marchesa!’ he said aloud. ‘Also,’ he added in their private language, ‘find Europe and Paccard with the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs they’ve made away with, we need them.’
‘Paccard is here,’ replied the pious marchioness indicating the liveried footman with tears in her eyes.
Such promptitude of understanding caused Jacques Collin not only to smile but to start with surprise. His aunt alone could startle him like that. The false marchioness turned to the witnesses of this scene like a woman certain of her position.