A Harlot High and Low

  His own air of kindness, directness, simplicity, of a man speaking freely without bitterness, without that philosophy of vice which till then made him so terrible to listen to, caused it all to seem like a transformation. This was no longer the same man.

  ‘I so believe in you that I wish to place myself entirely at your disposal,’ he continued with the humility of a penitent. ‘You see me with three ways before me: suicide, America and the rue de Jérusalem. Bibi-Lupin is rich, he has served his time; he works for both sides, and if you cared to let me act against him, I’d pick him up on the job within a week. If you give me that scoundrel’s place, you will have performed a great service to society. I’m not out for what I can get, I shall play straight. I have all the qualifications. I’m better educated than Bibi-Lupin; I was made to study up to the top classical form; I shan’t be as clumsy as he is, I have manners when I want. I have no other ambition than to be an instrument of law and order, instead of a corrupting influence. I shall never again recruit anyone into the great army of vice. When in war you take an enemy general, you see, sir, you don’t shoot him, you return him his sword, and give him a town for his prison; well, I am the general of the convict stations, and I surrender… It wasn’t the Law, it was death that defeated me… The sphere in which I want to live and operate is the only one that will suit me, and there I shall develop the strength I feel in me… Decide…’

  And Jacques Collin adopted a submissive, modest stance.

  ‘You have placed those letters at my disposal?…’ said the Public Prosecutor.

  ‘You can send for them, they will be handed to the person you dispatch…’

  ‘How?’

  Jacques Collin read the Procurator’s heart and went on with the game.

  ‘You promised me to commute Calvi’s death sentence to twenty years’ hard labour. Oh, I’m not reminding you of that to strike a bargain,’ he said briskly, noting the Attorney’s gesture of impatience; ‘that life must be saved for other reasons: the boy is innocent…’

  ‘How do I put my hand on those letters?’ the Procurator insisted. ‘I have the right and the obligation to know whether you are the man you say you are. I want you without conditions…’

  ‘Send a man you trust to the Quai aux Fleurs; he will see on the steps of an ironmonger’s shop, at the sign of the Shield of Achilles…’

  ‘The house of the Shield?…’

  ‘It’s there,’ said Jacques Collin with a bitter smile, ‘that I keep my shield. There your man will find an old woman dressed, as I was saying, like a well-to-do dealer in fish, wearing ear-rings, a figure at the markets; he will ask for Madame de Sainte Estéve. Don’t forget the de… And he will say: “Madame, I come from the Attorney General’s office for what you know of…” He will at once be given three sealed packets for you…’

  ‘Do they contain all the letters?’ said Monsieur de Granville.

  ‘That’s clever of you! I can see you don’t hold your position for nothing,’ said Jacques with a smile. ‘So you think me likely to draw you on and then deliver blank paper… You don’t know me!’ he added. ‘I trust you as a son trusts his father…’

  ‘You will be taken back to the Conciergerie,’ said the Procurator, ‘and wait there for a decision to be made about you.’ He rang, his messenger appeared, and he said: ‘Ask Monsieur Garnery to come here if he’s in.’

  Apart from the forty-eight police superintendents who watch over Paris like forty-eight little providences, and without counting the detective force – and that’s why in thieves’ slang a superintendent is called a quarter eye, there being four in each district – there are two superintendents attached at once to the Police and the Law Courts for missions of particular delicacy, sometimes replacing examining magistrates. The office of these magistrates, for police superintendents do belong to the magistracy, is called the delegations office, for they are in effect delegated each time and formally empowered to carry out either searches or arrests. The job calls for men of ripe years, proven capacity, high moral standards, absolute discretion, and one of the miracles Providence performs on behalf of Paris is that such men are always to be found. A description of the Law Courts would be inexact without some mention of these preventive magistracies, as we may call them, the most effective auxiliaries of Justice; for if, by the march of events, Justice has lost some of its ancient pomp, its former richness, material gains have to be acknowledged. Particularly in Paris, the machinery has been admirably perfected.

  Monsieur de Granville had sent Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, his secretary, to join Lucien’s funeral procession; he had to be replaced, for the present mission, by a sound man; and Monsieur Garnery was one of the two superintendents in delegations.

  The funeral

  ‘MONSIEUR le Procureur-Général,’ Jacques Collin went on, ‘I have already given you proof that I have my point of honour… You let me free and I returned… It is almost eleven o’clock,… Lucien’s funeral mass is almost over, he will be leaving for the cemetery… Instead of sending me to the Conciergerie, let me accompany that child’s body to Père Lachaise; I shall return as your prisoner…’

  ‘Be off, then,’ said Monsieur de Granville with an inflection of voice all kindness.

  ‘One last word, Monsieur le Procureur Général. The money of that wench, Lucien’s mistress, wasn’t stolen… In the few moments of liberty you granted me, I was able to question the servants… I am as sure of them as you are of your two delegations superintendents. When the seals are lifted, you’re certain to find in Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck’s bedroom the money due to her for the bonds she sold. Her maid told me that the deceased was, as she put it, given to hiding, suspicious, she must have put the bank-notes in her bed. Let the bed be carefully searched, let them take it to pieces, open the mattress, the pillows, they’ll find the money…’

  ‘Are you sure of that?…’

  ‘I’m sure of the relative probity of my own rogues, they don’t play tricks on me… I have power of life and death over them, I judge and condemn, and my sentences are carried out without the formalities you need. I work to some effect, as you will see. I shall find you the sums stolen from Monsieur et Madame Crottat; I shall turn in one of Bibi-Lupin’s agents, his right-hand man, and you will learn the secret of the crime committed at Nanterre… That’s my deposit!… If now you take me into the service of Justice and the Police, at the end of a year you will congratulate yourself on what I reveal, I shall have become what I should be, and I shall find means to succeed in all the tasks confided to me.’

  ‘I can promise nothing, except my good will. What you ask doesn’t depend on me alone. To the King only, on a recommendation from the Keeper of the Seals, belongs the right of pardon, and the position you would like to occupy lies in the gift of the Prefect of Police.’

  ‘Monsieur Garnery,’ the office-boy announced.

  At a gesture from the Director of Public Prosecutions, the delegations superintendent entered, looked at Jacques Collin with a connoisseur’s eye, and suppressed his astonishment at hearing

  ‘Be off, then!’ addressed by Monsieur de Granville to Jacques Collin.

  ‘Will you allow me,’ replied Jacques Collin, ‘not to leave until Monsieur Garnery has brought you what constitutes my only strength, so that I can take away with me evidence that you are satisfied?’ The Procurator was touched by such humility and utter good faith.

  ‘Be off!’ this magistrate repeated. ‘I am sure enough of you.’

  Jacques Collin bowed deeply and with the total submission of an inferior before his superior. Ten minutes later, Monsieur de Granville had in his possession the letters contained in three packets sealed and intact. This matter’s importance and Jacques Collin’s effective confession, however, had made him forget the promise about curing Madame de Sérisy.

  Jacques Collin experienced, once outside, a sensation of incredible well-being. He felt free and born to a new life; he walked swiftly from the Law Courts to the church of Saint Germain des Pr
és, where mass was over. Holy water was being sprinkled on the bier, and he was in time to pay this Christian farewell to the mortal remains of the child so tenderly cherished, then he climbed into a carriage and followed the boy to the cemetery.

  At funerals in Paris, unless there are unusual circumstances, or in the rare cases of the natural death of a celebrity, the crowd at the church thins out as the procession moves towards Père Lachaise. There is time enough to show one’s face in church, but everyone has business to pursue and returns to it as soon as possible. Thus, of the ten mourners‘ carriages, not even four were full. When the procession reached Père Lachaise, the followers numbered no more than a dozen, among whom was Rastignac.

  ‘You are right to have kept faith with him,’ said Jacques Collin to his old acquaintance.

  Rastignac showed surprise at seeing Vautrin there.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said the former lodger at Madame Vauquer’s, ‘you enslave me by the mere fact of your presence here. My support is not to be despised, I am or shall be more powerful than ever. You’ve slipped your cable, you have been very clever; but you may yet need me, and I shall always be at your service.’

  ‘What are you to be, then?’

  ‘Purveyor to the penitentiary instead of being its tenant,’ replied Jacques Collin.

  Rastignac’s features expressed disgust.

  ‘Ah, you might be robbed one day!…’

  Rastignac walked quickly to place a distance between himself and Jacques Collin.

  ‘You never know what circumstances you may find yourself in.’

  They had reached the grave dug beside that of Esther.

  ‘Two creatures who loved each other and were happy!’ said Jacques Collin, ‘are reunited. It is still a form of happiness to rot together. They shall put me there too.’

  When Lucien’s body was lowered into the grave, Jacques Collin fell stiffly, in a faint. So strong a man could not endure the light sound of the spadefuls of earth which the gravediggers throw upon the body before they come round asking for a tip. At that moment, two agents of the security brigade appeared, recognized Jacques Collin and lifted him into a cab.

  In which Dodgedeath comes to an arrangement with the Stork

  ‘WHAT is the matter now?…’ asked Jacques Collin, when he had recovered consciousness and looked round the interior of the cab. He saw that he was sitting between two police agents, one of whom was precisely Ruffard; on this man he cast a glance which plumbed the murderer’s soul as deep as the hiding-place of la Gonore.

  ‘It’s just that the A.G. was asking for you,’ Ruffard answered, ‘that we looked everywhere, and that we only found you at the cemetery, where you nearly toppled head first into that young man’s grave.’

  Jacques Collin was silent for a while. Then, ‘Was it Bibi-Lupin who sent you out looking for me?’ he asked the other agent.

  ‘No, it was Monsieur Garnery who booked us.’

  ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  The two agents looked inquiringly at each other in expressive dumb show.

  ‘Look! how did he give you the order?’

  ‘He ordered us,’ said Ruffard, ‘to find you at once, saying you were at the church of Saint Germain des Prés; and that, if the procession had already left, you’d be at the cemetery.’

  ‘The Attorney General was asking for me?…’

  ‘Might be.’

  ‘That’s it,’ replied Jacques Collin, ‘he needs me for something!…’

  And he relapsed into silence, which greatly disquieted the two agents. At about half past two, Jacques Collin went into the office of Monsieur de Granville and there saw a person new to him, Monsieur de Granville’s predecessor, Count Octave de Bauvan, now a presiding judge at the Central Court of Criminal Appeal.

  ‘You forgot the dangerous state of Madame de Sérisy, whom you promised me you could save.’

  ‘If, Monsieur le Procureur Général, you cared to ask these two jokers,’ making a sign to the two agents to enter, ‘what state they found me in?…’

  ‘Unconscious, Monsieur le Procureur Général, beside the open grave of the young man they were burying.’

  ‘Save Madame de Sérisy,’ said Monsieur de Bauvan, ‘and you shall have everything you are asking!’

  ‘I am asking for nothing,’ Jacques Collin went on, ‘I have submitted unconditionally, and the Attorney General should have received…’

  ‘All the letters!’ said Monsieur de Granville; ‘but you promised me to preserve Madame de Sérisy’s reason, didn’t you? Wasn’t that idle boasting?’

  ‘I think I can do it,’ answered Jacques Collin modestly.

  ‘Well, then, come with me,’ said Count Octave.

  ‘No, sir,’ said Jacques Collin. ‘I won’t sit in a carriage at your side… I am still a convict. If my purpose is to serve Justice, I won’t begin by dishonouring it… Go you to Madame la Comtesse’s house, I shall be there shortly after you… Tell her that Lucien’s best friend, Carlos Herrera, is coming… The mere expectation of my visit will inevitably produce on her the kind of impression to relieve her crisis. You must forgive me if I again take on the false character of the Spanish canon; it is in order to perform a very great service!’

  ‘I’ll see you there at about four,’ said Monsieur de Granville, ‘I have to go with the Keeper of the Seals to see the King.’

  Jacques Collin went to find his aunt, who was waiting for him on the Quai des Fleurs.

  ‘Well, then, so you’ve turned yourself over to the Stork?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s risky!’

  ‘No, I owed poor Théodore his life, and he’ll get a reprieve.’

  ‘What about yourself?’

  ‘Me, I shall be what I should be! I shall always be feared in our world! But we must set to work! Go tell Paccard to dash off at full speed, and Europe to do what I ordered.’

  ‘It won’t be much trouble, I know how to handle la Gonore!…’ said the terrible Jacqueline. ‘I didn’t waste my time picking daisies!’

  ‘Ginetta, that Corsican moppet, has to be found by tomorrow,’ Jacques Collin went on smiling at his aunt.

  ‘How do I pick up her trail?’

  ‘You start with Manon la Blonde,’ replied Jacques.

  ‘We’ll have it this evening!’ his aunt said. ‘What a hurry you’re in! This is it, then?’

  ‘I want by these first efforts to surpass anything Bibi-Lupin has done. I’ve had my little bit of conversation with the monster who killed Lucien for me, and I live only for my revenge on him! By reason of our positions, the two of us will be equally armed, equally protected! It will take me several years to deal with that wretch; but when I strike, it will be to the heart.’

  ‘I dare say he’s got the same thing in mind for you,’ said the aunt, ‘for he’s taken Peyrade’s daughter into his house, you know, the kid we sold to Madame Nourrisson.’

  ‘Our first trick will be to find him a servant.’

  ‘That won’t be easy, he’ll be good at picking servants!’ said Jacqueline.

  ‘Go to it, hate gives you new life! to work!’

  Jacques Collin took a cab and went at once to the Quai Malaquais, to the small room where he lodged, which didn’t connect with Lucien’s apartment. The porter, very surprised to see him again, wanted to tell him everything that had happened.

  ‘I know it all,’ said the priest. ‘I was compromised, despite the sanctity of my character; but thanks to the intervention of the Spanish ambassador, I was released.’

  And he went up quickly to his room, where he picked up, between the covers of a breviary, a letter which Lucien had addressed to Madame de Sérisy, when Madame de Sérisy had banished him, after seeing him at the Italiens with Esther.

  The doctor

  IN his despair, Lucien had omitted to send this letter, believing himself lost for ever; but Jacques Collin had read the masterpiece, and as everything Lucien wrote was sacred for him, he had kept the letter pressed in his bre
viary, because of the poetical expressions used about that vain love. When Monsieur de Granville had told him of the state in which Madame de Sérisy lay, it immediately occurred to this deep-minded man that the despair and madness of the great lady were due to the quarrel she had allowed to subsist between her and Lucien. He knew women, as magistrates know criminals, he divined the most intimate feelings of their hearts, and he at once thought that the countess must attribute Lucien’s death in part to her own severity, and reproach herself bitterly. A man filled with love for her would manifestly not have relinquished his hold on life. To know that, in spite of harsh treatment, she was still loved might restore her reason.

  If Jacques Collin was a great general to the convicts, it must be acknowledged that he was nevertheless a great doctor of souls. This man’s arrival in the apartments of the Sérisy house was at once a source of shame and of hope. A number of people, the count himself, the doctors were in the little drawing-room which led to the countess’s bedroom; but, to avoid all spot of dishonour to his soul, Count de Bauvan sent everybody away to be alone with his friend. To a privy councillor, to a vice-president of the Council of State, it was already something of a blow to see the gloomy, sinister individual enter.

  Jacques Collin had changed his clothes. He had put on long trousers and a frock coat of black cloth, and his bearing, his looks, his gestures, all was of a perfect appropriateness. He greeted the two statesmen, and asked whether he might go into the countess’s room.

  ‘She awaits you with impatience,’ said Monsieur de Bauvan.

  ‘With impatience?… Then she is safe,’ said the dreadful enchanter. And in fact, after half an hour’s discussion, Jacques Collin opened the door and said: ‘Come along, Monsieur le Comte, you need no longer anticipate any fatal outcome.’