‘He is in despair because he cannot go to his child’s funeral,’ she said in broken French, ‘for this frightful miscarriage of Justice has made the holy man’s secret known to me!… I shall attend the mass for the dead in his place. There, sir,’ she said to Monsieur Gault, giving him a purse of gold, ‘it is something to relieve the wants of the poor prisoners…’
‘That’s a nice touch!’ whispered her satisfied nephew.
Jacques Collin followed the warder who was taking him back to the prison yard.
Bibi-Lupin, chafing furiously, had in the end caught the eye of a real gendarme, to whom, since Jacques Collin’s departure, he had been addressing significant throat-clearings and who in the end replaced him in the condemned man’s room. But Dodgedeath’s enemy could not arrive in time to see the great lady, who disappeared in her brilliant equipage, and whose voice, though disguised, carried to his ear its husky tones.
‘Three hundred toshes for the boys on remand!…’ said the head warder showing Bibi-Lupin the purse which Monsieur Gault had handed to his clerk.
‘Let’s have a look, Jacomety,’ said Bibi-Lupin.
The chief of the secret police took the purse, emptied the gold pieces into his palm, examined them carefully.
‘Well, it’s gold all right!…‘ he said, ‘and the purse is stamped with armorial bearings! Ah, the scoundrel! the clever sod! he thinks of everything! He bamboozles the lot of us, every time!… He ought to be shot like a dog! ’
‘What’s the matter, then?’ asked the clerk taking the purse back.
‘The matter is, that woman’s a common street whore!…’ cried Bibi-Lupin stamping his foot with rage on the flagstone outside the wicket.
These words produced a lively effect on the spectators, grouped not too closely about Monsieur Sanson, who remained standing, his back against the big stove, in the middle of that great, vaulted hall, waiting for the order to get the criminal trimmed up and to erect his scaffold in the Strand.
Seduction
ONCE he found himself back in the yard, Jacques Collin walked up to his friends with a true old lag’s gait.
‘What’s on your mind?’ he said to La Pouraille.
‘It’s all up with me,’ replied the murderer whom Jacques Collin had led into a corner. ‘What I want now is a real mate.’
‘Why?’
La Pouraille, having recounted all his crimes to his leader, in cant terms, told him all about the murder and theft at the house of the Crottat couple.
‘I admire you,’ said Jacques Collin. ‘It was a first-class job; but it seems to me you were guilty of one mistake.’
‘What?’
‘Once it was done, you should have had a Russian passport, disguised yourself as a Russian prince, bought a fine carriage with armorial bearings, gone and boldly placed your gold with a banker, taken out a bill of exchange on Hamburg, posted there with a manservant, a lady’s maid and your mistress attired like a princess; then, from Hamburg, taken ship for Mexico. With two hundred and eighty thousand francs in gold, you simpkin, a lad of spirit can do what he wants, and go where he wants!’
‘Ah, you think of things like that, because you’re a dab!… You never lose your seat of learning, you! But me, it’s different.’
‘Well, good advice to a man in your position, it’s offering soup to the dead,’ Jacques Collin went on fixing his fanandel with a hypnotic stare.
‘Too true! ‘ said La Pouraille uncertainly. ‘Offer it to me all the same, that soup; if it doesn’t feed me, I can wash my feet in it…’
‘Well, there you are, the Stork’s got you, with five classified thefts, three murders, the last of them two wealthy citizens… Juries don’t like wealthy citizens killing. You’ll be stacked for the long passage, you haven’t a chance!…’
‘They told me all that,’ replied La Pouraille piteously.
‘My Aunt Jacqueline, with whom I’ve just had a few words right in the gaoler’s office, and who is, as you know, the Fanandels’ mum, told me the Stork only wanted to be shot of you, they’re scared of you.’
‘But,’ said La Pouraille with a simplicity which shows how deeply imbued thieves are with their natural right to steal, ‘I’m quids-in right now, what are they worried about?’
‘We haven’t time to philosophize,’ said Jacques Collin. ‘Let’s get back to the position you’re in…’
‘What can you do about it?’ La Pouraille asked interrupting his Dab.
‘You’ll see! a dead dog is still worth something.’
‘Not to itself!’ said La Pouraille.
‘I’ll take you on!’ Jacques Collin answered.
‘That’s something, anyway!…’ said the murderer. ‘Then what?’
‘I’m not asking you where the money is, but what you want doing with it?’
La Pouraille studied the impenetrable countenance of his Dab, who went on.
‘Is there some largue you’re fond of, a nipper, a chum that needs looking after? I shall be out of here within an hour, I can fix it for anybody you’d like to see all right.’
La Pouraille still hesitated, bearing his indecision like a rifle at the slope. Jacques Collin then put forward a last argument.
‘Your share in our exchequer is thirty thousand francs, are you leaving it to the fanandels, are you giving it to somebody? The money is safe, I can lay my hands on it this evening and give it to whoever you’re leaving it to.’
The murderer allowed a feeling of pleasure to appear.
‘I’ve got him!’ said Jacques Collin to himself. ‘But don’t let’s waste time, make up your mind?…’ he went on speaking in the ear of La Pouraille. ‘We’ve less than ten minutes, old friend… The Procurator will be asking for me and I’m going to have a conference with him. I’ve got him, that man, I can wring the Stork’s neck! I’m certain of saving Madeleine.’
‘If you save Madeleine, old Dab, well, me, you can…’
‘Let’s not waste breath,’ said Jacques Collin abruptly. ‘Make your will.’
‘I’d like la Gonore to have the money,’ La Pouraille answered with a piteous air.
‘Ah!… you lived with the widow of Moïse, the Jew who was on the rollers’ trail in the Midi?’ Jacques Collin queried.
Like a great general, Dodgedeath was admirably acquainted with the men in all the troops.
‘Herself, yes,’ said La Pouraille excessively flattered.
‘A pretty woman!’ said Jacques Collin who well knew how to manage these terrible machines. ‘She’s a fine largue! she knows everybody, and she’ll have been loyal! a bright prigger, too. So! you picked up with la Gonore, eh? it’s stupid to get yourself earthed up when you’ve a largue like that. Idiot! You should have started a little business and taken things easy!… And what’s her caper now?’
‘She’s set up in the rue Sainte Barbe, she runs a house…’
‘Well, then, you’re making her your heir? Well, there we are, my lad, that’s what happens when we’re stupid enough to start loving these trollops…’
‘Don’t give it to her till I’ve taken my tumble!’
‘That’s a sacred duty,’ said Jacques Collin in a serious tone. ‘And nothing to the fanandels?’
‘Nothing, it was them ‘at squealed,’ La Pouraille answered with an expression of hatred.
‘Which of ‘em? Do you want me to do him?’ asked Jacques Collin eagerly trying to awaken the last feeling which makes these hearts vibrate at the supreme moment. ‘You never know, my old chum, I might be able to avenge you and make your peace with the Stork at the same time?’
At this, the murderer gaped at his Dab with sudden happiness.
‘Don’t forget,’ was the Dab’s response to this play of the man’s features, ‘that right now I’m putting on this stunt for nobody but Théodore. After that, if the act goes down well, well, tosh, for a chum, and you’re one of mine, tosh, there might be a lot I can do.’
‘If only I can see you get poor little Théodore’s ceremony postponed,
well, look, I’ll do anything you tell me.’
‘It’s in the bag, I know I can get the Stork’s claws off his seat of learning. To get out of these holes, you know, La Pouraille, we’ve all got to give each other a hand… You can’t do anything on your own…’
‘Too true!’ cried the murderer.
Confidence was now so well-established between them, and his faith in the dab was so fanatical that La Pouraille no longer hesitated.
Last incarnation
LA POURAILLE gave awaý the names of his accomplices, the secret so carefully guarded till then. That was all Jacques Collin wanted to know.
‘Here’s the cackle, then! On that job, Ruffard, one of Bibi-Lupin’s agents, went third man with me and Godet…’
‘Woolpicker?…’ cried Jacques Collin giving Ruffard his name among the mob.
‘That’s him. The scabs shopped me, because I know where their dump is and they don’t know mine.’
‘That’s a bit of joy, my handsome!’ said Jacques Collin.
‘Eh?’
‘Well, well,’ the Dab answered, ‘just look what you stand to gain when you put all your confidence in me!… Your revenge is now part of my game!… I’m not asking you where the loot is, you can cough that up last thing; but let me know everything about Ruffard and Godet.’
‘You are and you always will be our Dab, I’ll keep no secrets from you,’ replied La Pouraille. ‘My gold is in the cellar at la Gonore’s.’
‘Can you trust the largue?’
‘Why, ay, she didn’t know when I was monkeying about!’
La Pouraille continued. ‘I got la Gonore drunk, though she’s a woman who wouldn’t blab with her head on the block. All that gold, though!’
‘Yes, that curdles the milk of the purest conscience!’ replied Jacques Collin.
‘So I was able to work without anybody watching! The birds were all in the hen-roost. The gold is three feet underground, behind the wine-bins. There’s a layer of stones and mortar over it.’
‘Good!’ said Jacques Collin. ‘And where have the others put theirs?’
‘Ruffard’s pile is at la Gonore’s, too, in the poor woman’s bedroom, it’s a hold he’s got on her, because she could be made accomplice as a receiver and end her days at Saint Lazare.’
‘The scab! that’s how the dicks set you up for a thief!’ said Jacques.
‘Godet’s lot’s at his sister’s, a washerwoman for the fine stuff, a good girl who might land herself up with five years’ bird. The chum pulled up tiles in the floor, put them back, and scarpered.’
‘Do you know what I want from you?’ Jacques Collin now said fixing La Pouraille with that same hypnotic gaze.
‘What?’
‘I want you to say you did Madeleine’s job…’
La Pouraille gave a violent start; but then at once took up his submissive stance again under the Dab’s unmoving stare.
‘So you’re already kicking! you won’t play the game my way! Look I four murders or three, what’s the difference?’
‘You tell me!’
‘By the Fanandels’ Meg, is it claret that runs in your vermicelli, or gnats’ piss. And me thinking I could save you!…’
‘That’s a right way!’
‘Imbecile; if we promise to give the gold back to the family, they’ll let you off with a lifer on the big field. I wouldn’t give a tanner for your nob if they’d got the rhino; but, right now, you idiot, you’re worth seven hundred thousand francs!’
‘Dab! Dab!’ cried La Pouraille overflowing with happiness.
‘What’s more,’ Jacques Collin persisted, ‘we can plant the murders on Ruffard… At one stroke, Bibi-Lupin comes unstuck… I’ve got him!’
La Pouraille remained stupefied by this idea, his eyes grew large, he was like a statue. Arrested three months before, on the eve of his appearance before the Court of Assize, advised by chums at La Force, where he’d said not a word about his accomplices, he was so utterly deprived of hope after the preliminary investigation, that this scheme had quite escaped his depressed intellectual powers. Thus the new glimpse of hope plunged him into a state of near-imbecility.
‘Have Ruffard and Godet been celebrating already? have they been throwing gold smackers around?’ asked Jacques Collin.
‘ They daren’t,’ answered La Pouraille. ‘The sods are waiting till after I’ve been topped. That’s the message my largue sent by Biffe when she came to see Biffon.’
‘Well, we’ll collect their loot within twenty-four hours!’ cried Jacques Collin. ‘Those jokers won’t be able to offer restitution then like you, you’ll be as white as snow and all the blood will be on them! The way I’ll work it, you’ll be turned into an honest lad egged on by them. With your money, I shall be able to fix up alibis for you on the other charges, and once on the big field, because you will go there, it’s up to you to escape… It isn’t much of a life, but it’s life all the same!’
The eyes of La Pouraille showed his inner delirium.
‘Old friend! with seven hundred thousand francs you’re a hero, you can buy yourself a medal!’ Jacques Collin was saying, making his fanandel drunk on hope.
‘Dab! Dab!’
‘I’ll make the Minister of Justice’s eyes shine… Ah, Ruffard’s the boy for the high jump, that nark wants rubbing out. Bibi-Lupin’s goose is cooked.’
‘You’ve said it!’ cried La Pouraille with savage joy. ‘Now give me your orders, I’ll obey.’
And he folded Jacques Collin in his arms, unashamed tears of joy in his eyes so possible did it seem to him now to save his head.
‘That’s not all,’ said Jacques Collin. ‘The Stork’s digestion is touchy, especially when it comes to new charges. What we’ve got to do yet is frame some largue.’
‘How? And what’s that for?’ asked the murderer.
‘Just put your mind to it! You’ll see!…’ Dodgedeath answered.
Jacques Collin rapidly told La Pouraille about the crime committed at Nanterre and made him see the need to have a woman who’d agree to play the part Ginetta had played. Then he went up to Biffon with a gay La Pouraille.
‘I know how fond you are of Biffe…,’ said Jacques Collin to Biffon.
The look on Biffon’s face was a horrible poem.
‘What will she do while you’re out at grass?’
A tear crept into Biffon’s fierce eyes.
‘Suppose I shut her up for you in the Madelonnettes or Saint Lazare for a year, just long enough for you to be cased, packed off to the field, get there and escape?’
‘You can’t work miracles, they’ve nix on her,’ replied Biffe’s lover.
‘Ah, Biffon my boy,’ said La Pouraille, ‘our Dab can do anything Meg almighty can do!…’
‘What’s the password between you and her?’ Jacques Collin asked Biffon with the assurance of a master who can’t be denied.
‘Pantin by night. If you say that, she knows you come from me, and if you want her to do something, show her a ten-hog piece and say: “Clip it! ” ’
‘She’ll be sentenced alongside La Pouraille here, and released on confession after a year in the shade!’ said Jacques Collin sententiously looking at La Pouraille.
La Pouraille understood his dab’s scheme, and promised him, with a look, to persuade Biffon to cooperate by obtaining Biffe’s sham complicity in the crime he was going to admit.
‘Good-bye, then, children. You’ll be hearing presently that I’ve saved my youngster from the hands of Charlie,’ said Dodgedeath. ‘Yes, Charlie was there at the desk with his waiting-maids to perform Madeleine’s toilet! Ah, but,’ he said, ‘I can see they’re coming to look for me on the part of His Majesty the Stork.’
A warder had indeed appeared through the wicket and was making a sign to this extraordinary man, to whom the young Corsican’s peril had restored all the savage power with which he battled against society.
It is not without interest to note here that, at the moment when Lucien’s body was taken awa
y from him, Jacques Collin had resolved, in a moment of supreme decision, to attempt a last incarnation, not with a living creature, but with a thing. He had as fatally made his last cast as Napoleon aboard the shallop which rowed him out to the Bellerophon. By a strange concatenation of circumstances, everything conspired to aid this genius of evil and corruption in his enterprise.
Thus, even though the unexpected outcome of this life of crime thereby loses a little of that air of the marvellous, which, in our time, is achieved only through the abandonment of all verisimilitude, we must, before we penetrate with Jacques Collin into the office of the Attorney General, follow Madame Camusot as she calls on various people, while all these things were going on at the Conciergerie. An obligation forever incumbent upon the historian of our changing customs is that of never spoiling the truth by supposedly dramatic contrivances, especially when the truth itself has been at pains to take the form of a novel. The natural history of man’s society, especially in Paris, comprises so many freaks of chance, such tangling of conjecture and caprice, that the imagination of the inventor is left far behind. The boldness of truth rises to a level of coincidence forbidden to art, so improbable, so indecorous are its devices, so that the writer must tone them down, trim and prune them.
Madame Camusot’s first call
MADAME Camusot endeavoured to get herself up for the morning in a style with pretensions to good taste, difficult work for the wife of a judge who had spent most of the past six years in the provinces. It was a question of avoiding criticism at the houses of the Marquise d’Espard and the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, when calling on them between eight and nine o’clock in the morning. Amélie-Cécile Camusot, although, let us hasten to say, née Thirion, half-succeeded. In the matter of dress, may we not say that this is to deceive oneself twice over?…
It is difficult to over-estimate the value of Parisian women to those who are ambitious in any field; their participation is as necessary in society as in the underworld, where, as we have just seen, they play a very considerable part. Take, for instance, a man who, in order not to be left behind in the arena, must, within a given time, speak to the personage still known as the Keeper of the Seals, whose influence under the Restoration was enormous. A judge might be thought in a favourable position, almost a regular visitor. And yet such a magistrate is obliged to seek out some departmental head, or a private secretary, or the general secretary, and to persuade them of his need for an immediate audience. Is a Keeper of the Seals to be seen there and then without warning? During the day, if he is not in the House, he is at a cabinet meeting, or he is signing documents, or he has other callers. In the morning, one does not know where he is to be found in bed. In the evening, he has public and private engagements. If all the judges were able to demand their five minutes’ attention, on any pretext whatever, the head of the legal system would be under constant siege. The purpose for which a prompt and private interview is sought must therefore be submitted to the consideration of one of the various intermediate powers, who become obstacles, doors to open, themselves beset by competitors. A woman, on the other hand, goes in search of another woman; she gains immediate access to a bedroom, arousing curiosity either in the mistress or her maid, especially when the mistress is labouring under external pressure or keen self-interest. The female authority known as Madame d’Espard, who held a ministry in her hands, had only to write a little perfumed note and dispatch it by a footman to the minister’s valet. The missive reaches the minister as he awakes, he reads it at once. Whatever his business that day, the minister is delighted to call on one of the queens of Paris, one of the powers of the Faubourg Saint Germain, one of the favourites of Madame, of the Dauphin or the King. Casimir Périer, the one real prime minister after the July revolution, put everything aside to call on a former first gentleman of the bedchamber of King Charles X.