Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.11 #4 (1847).
I.—A Mysterious Assassination and Robbery.
A poor widow living at Nanterre in the environs of Paris, and whose dwelling was situated on that desolate common which occupies a portion of the barren plain extending between the Mont Valerien, Saint Germains, and the hills of Sartrouville and of Argenteuil, had been assassinated and robbed a few days after having received her share of an unlooked-for inheritance.
This share amounted to three thousand francs, some plate, a chain, a gold watch, and some linen. Instead of depositing the money in the bank, as she was advised to do by the solicitor of the deceased publican from whom she inherited it, the old woman persisted in keeping every thing by her. In the first place she had never seen herself in the possession of so much money, and then, like most people who belong to the lower classes, she mistrusted every one in all that related to money matters.
After frequent consultations with a publican of Nanterre, her relative, and also relative of the deceased publican, the widow had come to the resolution of purchasing an annuity, of selling her cottage at Nanterre, and of retiring to live upon her income at Saint Germains.
The cottage in which she dwelt was connected with a tolerably sized garden, which was surrounded by a rotten paling, and the building itself was one of those miserable huts such as the small gardeners of the environs of Paris generally build for themselves. Stones and mortar are extremely abundant at Nanterre, where the soil is covered with quarries of stone and of plaster of Paris, and these had, as is so frequently the case, been employed in a hasty and careless manner without any architectural intentions. It is always the hut of the civilised savage all over the world.
The cottage consisted then of a ground-floor and of a first story, above which again was a garret. The quarry-man, husband of the widow, who had built the cottage, had affixed solid bars of iron to all the windows. The entrance-door was of remarkable solidity. The deceased knew that he was there alone in the open country, and what a country! His business placed him in connexion with the principal master-builders of Paris, and he had thus been enabled to bring back the most important materials of construction in carts that were returning empty, for his cottage was not above a few hundred steps from the quarry. He also selected from the rubbish of houses that were taken down the things that he wanted, at a very low price. Thus windows, gratings, doors, shutters, had all been derived from authorised depredations, and he always took care when there were two frames to choose from, to select the best.
Before this cottage there was a tolerably sized yard, enclosed with a wall. Within this were stables protected by a house-dog, and a little dog also slept in the cottage. Behind the cottage was a garden of nearly two and a-half acres in extent.
Being now a widow, and without any family, the wife of the quarry-man dwelt in the cottage with only one female servant. The price of the quarry had only sufficed to pay the debts of the quarry-man who had died two years before. The widow's means were solely confined to the possession of this isolated property, where she fed cows and poultry in order to sell milk and eggs at Nanterre. Having no one to help her, the garden was neglected and allowed to run to weeds.
The sale of the cottage and land, added to the money inherited, would, it was expected, make up together a sum of seven or eight thousand francs, and the widow had before her the prospect of ending her days happily at Saint Germains, with an annuity of seven to eight hundred francs, which she had reason to expect from her eight thousand. She had already had several conferences upon the subject with a solicitor residing at Saint Germains, for she had refused to place her money out in annuity with the publican, who had made an offer to that effect.
Circumstances were thus, when one day the widow Pigeau and her servant were no longer to be seen. The iron grating of the yard-door, the entrance-door of the house, the shutters were all closed. Three days having elapsed, the police, informed of the state of things, made a forcible entrance into the house. Bibi Lupin, inspector of police, was despatched from head-quarters to assist in the inquiry, and here is what was verified.
Neither the doors of the yard nor those of the house bore any marks of violence. The key was in the lock of the entrance-door in the inside. Not a bar of iron had been forced. The locks, the shutters, every thing was untouched. The walls presented no traces by which to distinguish the passage of malefactors. The chimneys, which were of tile, did not offer a practical issue, and the tiles which covered the roof were unbroken, and not displaced in any one instance.
On entering into the rooms upon the first floor, Bibi Lupin, the local inspector, and the gendarmes, found the widow Pigeau strangled in her bed, and the servant strangled in hers, by means of the kerchief which they wore upon their heads. The three thousand francs had been taken, as also the plate and the jewellery. The two bodies were in a state of putrefaction, as were also those of the little dog and of the larger house-dog in the yard. The palings of the garden were examined, nothing wore the appearance of recent violence.
On the garden side the door was secured by three bars of iron, which had neither been removed nor broken, and the key was in the inside of this door, just as it had been found in the case of the door opening upon the yard.
When all these extraordinary circumstances attendant upon the robbery and murder had been verified by Bibi Lupin and the gendarmes, who took a whole day in their examination, and had been reported to the magistracy, this assassination became a frightful problem, which it appeared very likely that the police would not be able to unravel.
This drama, which occurred in the winter of 1828 and 1829, was published in all the newspapers, and created the most intense curiosity in all Paris; but Paris has every day anew drama to captivate attention, and every thing is forgot in its turn. The police alone forgets nothing.
Three months after the first fruitless perquisitions, a young woman who had come under the surveillance of the police, from keeping company with known thieves, expressed to a friend a wish to pawn some plate and a watch and chain of gold. The friend refused, and this circumstance came to the ears of the police, and Bibi Lupin remembered the plate, watch, and chain of Nanterre. Accordingly all the receivers of the Mont de Piété were put upon their guard, and Manon la Blonde, as the young woman was called, was subjected to a formidable surveillance.
II.—Theodore Calvi.
It was soon ascertained that Manon la Blonde was attached to a young man who was seldom seen, for he was stated to be insensible to all the proofs of attachment of the fair Manon. Mystery upon mystery.
This young man, subjected to a careful surveillance, was soon discovered, and was found to be a runaway convict, the famous hero of certain Corsican vendettas (as manslaughter and murder are alike designated among that hasty and revengeful people), the handsome Theodore Calvi, commonly called Madeleine.
One of those sham receivers, who serve at the same time the police and the criminal, was let loose upon Theodore, and he offered to purchase the plate, the watch, and the chain. At this very moment, when a dealer in old iron, of the commune Saint Guillaume, was counting out the money to Theodore disguised as a woman, at half-past ten at night, the police came down upon him, arrested him, and seized the objects.
The inquiry was begun at once. With such small data to go upon, it was impossible, in the language of the bar, to obtain a condemnation to death.
Theodore Calvi never belied himself. He said that a countrywoman had sold him the objects in question at Argenteuil, and that after he had bought them, the report of the murder committed at Nanterre had warned him of the danger of having such things in his possession. He had, therefore, wished to get rid of them in disguise. Nothing further could be obtained from the convict, who partly succeeded by his silence and resolution in making the police believe that the publican of Nanterre had committed the crime, and that the woman from whom he had obtained the compromising articles was the wife of that publican.
The unfortunate relative of the widow Pigeau and his wife were taken up, but after a week's imprisonment, and a scrupulous inquiry, it was shown that neither the husband nor the wife had quitted their establishment at the period of the crime. Added to which, Calvi did not recognise in the wife of the publican the woman who, according to him, had sold him the plate and jewellery.
As Manon la Blonde was proved to have spent between the time of the robbery and that when Calvi had offered the jewellery for sale, the sum of at least one thousand francs, she was also arrested and committed for trial.
This assassination was the eighteenth committed by Theodore Calvi, and he was condemned to death, because he appeared also to be the author of the crime, so cleverly contrived. Although he did not recognise the publican of Nanterre, he was on his part recognised by both the husband and the wife. The inquiry established by numerous testimonies that Theodore had taken up his residence at Nanterre for about a month, where he had wrought in the plaster works, his face covered with white powder, and himself badly clothed. Thus it was to that he had been a month in making his preparations for this robbery.
The bar believed in the existence of accomplices. The tile chimney tops were measured and compared with the body of Manon la Blonde, but it was found that a child of six years of age could not have passed through them.
But for this singular and amazing mystery Theodore would have been executed at once. But he was placed in solitary confinement, and handed over to the care of the chaplain of the Conciergerie, who had hitherto failed in obtaining from him the slightest avowal of guilt.
III.—The Prison Yard.
Jacques Collin, better known as Trompe la Mort, had, ever since his re-integration in solitary confinement, been a prey to an anxiety which surpassed any thing that he had ever experienced during a life, marked by many crimes, and diversified by two condemnations and three evasions from prison.
For now seven years this heart of bronze had renounced self, for the sake of his young protegé. His powerful faculties, absorbed into Lucien de Rubempré, only acted for him and in his favour; he delighted in his progress, his ambition, and his successes. For him, Lucien had been his visible soul, The little spaniel dead, it became a question now, if his terrible companion, if the lion would survive!
The sudden death of Lucien, and the invasion of the Conciergerie by the Countess of Serizy, had produced such a disturbance in the wheels of the machinery, that the director had forgot to liberate the pretended Spanish priest from solitary confinement.
When the goaler presented himself at the door of his cell, he found him pallid, but calm, like a man who had regained his self-command by some terrible resolve that he had formed.
"This is the hour for going to the yard," said the gaoler; "and if you wish to take a little fresh air and have a walk, you are at liberty to do so."
Jacques Collin, absorbed in his grief and agonizing thoughts, never thought of the snare that Bibi Lupin was laying for him, but followed the gaoler mechanically. He even forgot his assumed character of a novice, and passed along the corridor which goes by the small cells in the magnificent arcades of the palace of the Kings of France, and which connects itself with the gallery of Saint Louis, leading thence to the different rooms connected with the court of appeal, with the preoccupied step of a man familiar with the details of the place.
"There is no doubt about his being a returned convict," said the gaoler to himself, as they descended the screw staircase in the tower Boubee at the end of the corridor, and which leads directly into the prison-yard.
This yard, the antechamber of the scaffold or the galleys, is connected with society at one extremity by the gendarmes, the magistracy, and the sessions; at the other, with all the infamies of the earth, united and without issue! The prison-yards of all the prisons in Paris, whether at La Force, Poissy, or Sainte Pelagie, are the same thing repeated over again. The same facts are reproduced in each, even to the space, the colour of the walls, and their height.
For the two hundred prisoners of the Conciergerie, it is their garden—a garden without trees, or soil, or flowers. Here, within a small paved space, prisoners of all kinds—those committed for trial, and those who have received their sentences, meet and walk about for a few hours, and those very early in the day in summer-time.
Connected with the prison-yard is the parlatory, to which purposes at the Conciergerie the two first arches in front of the magnificent Byzantine gallery, which is the only remaining evidence of the elegance of the palace of Saint Louis, are devoted; and at the fourth arcade there is a stone, which, it is said, was used by Saint Louis to distribute his charities, but which now serves for a table upon which food and drink are sold to the prisoners.
The moments spent in the prison-yard are the only ones during which the prisoner finds himself in the open air and in company, and it presents, in consequence, a frightful spectacle. In the first place, the reunion in a space of about fifty yards in length by forty in width, of a hundred criminated or condemned persons, does not constitute the élite of society. These miserable beings are for the most part badly dressed, their physiognomies are ignoble or horrible, for a criminal of the higher classes is happily a very rare exception. Persons guilty of peculation, forgery, or fraudulent bankruptcy, which could alone bring a better class of persons into such a place, have the privilege of being allowed to remain in their cells, which the inculpated take good care not to leave.
This place of recreation, framed in by formidable dark-coloured walls, by a colonnade divided into little cells, and double railings, overlooked by attentive guardians, and filled with a herd of ignoble criminals, distrustful the one of the other, terrifies the observer by its gloomy aspect, but still more so, when all these physiognomies are seen to express nothing but hatred, animosity, anxiety, or despair. There is no gladness there! every thing is gloomy, the place and the inhabitants. The police, that never takes its eyes off them, poisons the very atmosphere for them, and corrupts every thing, even to the shaking of hands between two friends in guilt.
Crime and folly have, in some respects, a certain similarity of aspect. To see the prisoners of the Conciergerie in the yard, or to see a number of lunatics in the garden of an asylum, is almost the same thing. In the one and in the other, the occupants walk about, avoiding one another, looking at one another in a more or less singular manner, never either gay or serious, for either they know one another, or they fear one another. The anticipation of a sentence, remorse and anxiety give to the promenaders in a prison-yard, the unquiet and haggard look of madmen.
IV.—The Three Convicts.
Among those who were walking in the prison-yard, when Trompe la Mort entered into that repulsive place, was, first on the list—for the aristocracy of the prison is the degree of criminality—Dannepont, commonly called La Pouraille, a dry, thin personage, of about forty-five years of age, who, three times a tenant of the galleys since he had been nineteen years of age, was intimately acquainted with Jacques Collin. Compromised in a third assassination, since his last liberation, the murder of a Monsieur and Madame Crottat, and a robbery of 800,000 francs in gold, La Pouraille had avoided the most active researches of the police, by means of seven or eight different aliases, for five years, and now that a certain sentence of death awaited him, still the fact of his being extremely rich (for not a farthing of the plunder had ever been recovered), made him an object of respect and admiration to the other prisoners.
Another, and formerly a confidential friend of Trompe la Mort, was a liberated convict of the name of Selerier, but also called L'Auvergnat, and still better known as Fil de Soie, who was at this moment implicated in various robberies, but without any blood having been spilt.
A third convict, and also an old acquaintance of Trompe la Mort's, was a certain Riganson, who, from his intimacy with a fair damsel generally called La Biffe, was himself designated by the masculine exression Le Biffon, for these savages have no more respect for natural history than they have for law or morality.
The introduction of Trompe la Mort into the prison-yard, his sudden appearance in the midst of his enemies, so cleverly managed by Bibi Lupin, could not fail to create a sensation among such a troop of hardened villains. It is well known, from avowals made by the most competent authorities, that there have always been among convicts man that were capitalists. Trompe la Mort had been a long time the receiver-general and banker to these monied men in chains. Bibi Lupin himself had formerly occupied the same confidential and exalted situation among his brethren, and his treachery had had its origin in wounded vanity. He had been hurt to the quick, in finding that the high intelligence and prodigious force of Trompe la Mort always placed him in advance of his own gifts in either way. It was in this, also, that the rooted animosity of this famous thief-catcher against Trompe la Mort had its origin. And it was with the full expectation of establishing his identity that he had let loose upon the would-be Spanish priest, the three convicts, La Pouraille, Fil de Soie, and Le Biffon.
Each of these convicts had certain accounts to arrange with Trompe la Mort, accounts which it would have been very difficult to regulate. The banker himself alone knew how many of the associates survived, and what was the amount due to each. It was always in his power to assert that so much had been paid to those who had suffered the last penalty of the law. They could never contradict his assertions, and, considering the mortality that prevailed among his clients, by keeping himself out of the way for nine long years, both of the police and of his old companions, Trompe la Mort had calculated upon inheriting at least two-thirds of the monies deposited. He had thought, that with 100,000 francs taken from the 300,000 deposited, he might always materially facilitate his liberation when in trouble.
When Trompe la Mort entered the prison yard, he was dressed in black trousers, black stockings, shoes with silver buckles, a black waistcoat, a dark chesnut surtout, the cut of which betrayed the ecclesiastic, do what he had a mind to prevent it; but still more so when the cut of the hair corresponded to the general outward appearance.
"Why," exclaimed La Pouraille to the Biffon, "here is a bad sign for some one, a priest! What has he come to do here?"
"A spy, probably, of a new description," observed Fil de Soie, as his little eyes, covered like those of a bird of prey, with stiff, grey eye-lashes, flashed from beneath his enormous head.
Fil de Soie and Biffon were generally in the company of La Pouraille, to whom they paid marked attentions, tempered with that deference which was due to a man, who was sure to be tried, condemned, and executed in less than four months, and who was known to have buried 250,000 francs, his share of the robbery and murder of the unfortunate Crottats. True, that Biffon and Fil de Soie had every certainty of being sentenced to fifteen years at the galleys, which were not to be confounded with ten years of a previous sentence, which they had taken the liberty to interrupt; but they hoped to be able to effect an evasion long before the twenty-four or five years of imprisonment should have elapsed, and to be thus enabled to disinter La Pouraille's gold. But La Pouraille kept his secret to himself. Belonging to the high aristocracy of the prison he had revealed nothing that might implicate his accomplices.
Trompe la Mort, buried in his grief, did not perceive the three convicts approach him as he advanced slowly into the yard, looking up at the fatal window at which Lucien had hung himself.
"Look," said La Pouraille, "he is one of us. See how he limps."
This was a diagnostic familiar alike to convicts and to the police. The convicts at the galleys are always chained two together, generally an old and a young one, and the weight of the chains fastened to the instep is so great, that it never fails, after being worn upwards of a year, to give a perpetual limp in the convict's gait. With Trompe la Mort, who had so long ago effected his evasion, the vice was scarcely perceptible, but still sufficiently so to catch the experienced eye of La Pouraille.
"It is our master," exclaimed Fil de Soie, upon receiving from Trompe la Mort one of those abstracted looks, which the man, whose whole soul is full of despair, casts upon those who are around him.
"It is, indeed, it is Trompe la Mort," said the Biffon, as he rubbed his hands; "but he does not resemble even himself!"
"I have it," said Fil de Soie, "he has an object in view. He wants to see his companion, who is about to be executed."
"Ah, yes," observed La Pouraille, "they are going to decapitate that poor Theodore! a fine boy, what a loss to society! So you are here, old fellow, are you," exclaimed the convict in a loud tone of voice, and addressing himself to Trompe la Mort.
"So, master, you have turned priest, have you," chimed in Biffon, and assuming a threatening manner he added, "they say you have made away with our gold."
"Yes, are you going to give us our money?" exclaimed Fil de Soie.
These three questions came like three pistol shots upon him to whom they were addressed. The gestures and the sight of his three companions whom he recognised at once, drew Trompe la Mort from the state of prostration in which all his faculties had sunk, and restored him at once to the reality of life.
"Do not arouse suspicions upon your master!" he replied at once in a low, but deep and threatening voice, that somewhat resembled the murmuring of a lion that precedes a roar. "The police is close by, let it be taken in. I am playing the part for a companion who is at the last extremity."
All this was said with the unction of a priest who was endeavouring to convert some unfortunates, and accompanied at the same time by a glance with which Trompe la Mort embraced the whole yard, and discovering the spies under the arcades, he pointed them out, smilingly, to his three comrades.
"Are there no spies here? look yonder. Come, do not recognise me, I must be a priest to you, or I will ruin you all, you, your wives, and your fortunes."
"What! do you distrust us?" said Filde Soie. "You come to save your friend."
"Madeleine is prepared for the Place de Grève," said La Pouraille.
"Theodore!" exclaimed Trompe la Mort, with difficulty suppressing a cry. It was the last torture that could have racked this prostrated colossus.
"He is going to be executed," said La Pouraille; "it is now two months since he was condemned to death."
The young Corsican, Theodore Calvi, had, when only eighteen years of age, been the companion in chains of Trompe la Mort, from 1819 to 1820. The last evasion of Jacques Collin had been one of his finest conceptions, he had made his escape disguised as a gendarme, Theodore Calvi walking by his side as a convict being conducted before the authorities; this took place at Rochfort, where»the convicts die off rapidly, and where they were in hopes of getting rid of these two dangerous personages. Although the evasion had been effected together, they had been obliged to separate from the force of circumstances.
Theodore recaptured had been re-instated in prison. After having escaped into Spain, and having transformed himself there into the Abbé Carlos Herrera, Jacques Collin was on his way back to Rochfort to set his Corsican free, when he fell in with Lucien, on the borders of the Charente. The hero of the Corsican bandits, to whom Trompe la Mort was indebted for his knowledge of the Italian language, was naturally sacrificed for this new idol. Life with Lucien, a boy free from all condemnation, and who had only a few peccadilloes to reproach himself with, presented itself to the convict as a splendid vision, brilliant as a sunny summer's day; whilst with Theodore Jacques Collin perceived no futurity but the scaffold as the terminus of a series of indispensable crimes.
When Jacques Collin, already so sadly afflicted by the death of his last favourite, first learnt in the prison-yard that his old comrade in chains was on the eve of being executed, he was seized with a sudden faintness, his knees gave way beneath him, and he had only presence of mind enough to join his hands as if in the attitude of prayer, as the convicts hastened to support him. La Pouraille and Biffon respectful tendered their assistance to the sacrilegious convict, while Fil de Soie ran up to one of the guardians.
"The venerable priest," said he, "is ill; cannot you give me a chair for him to sit down upon?"
Thus the whole plot, so skilfully laid by Bibi Lupin, failed. Trompe la Mort, like Napoleon when he was recognised by his soldiers, received submission and respect from the other convicts. Two words had sufficed for this. These two words were, your money and your wives, the sum total of all the real affections of man.
V.—The Cell of the Condemned.
The director of the Conciergerie, informed of the sudden illness of the Spanish priest, came himself into the prison-yard. He made him seat himself upon a chair, examining him at the same time in broad daylight, with all that sagacity which is so perfected by long experience.
"Oh, Heaven!" exclaimed Jacques Collin, "to be mixed up with these people, the refuse of society, criminals and assassins! But Heaven will not abandon its servant. Monsieur the director, I will mark my passage here by acts of charity, the memory of which shall remain after me; I will convert some of these unfortunates."
"Ah, as for him, Monsieur Gault," said the formidable La Pouraille, who, with the other two terrible convicts had been keeping a crowd of twenty or thirty persons at a respectable distance, "we would listen to a good man like that."
"I have been told, Monsieur Gault," continued Jacques Collin, "that there is in this prison one who is condemned to death."
"The recorder has only just now been reading to him the rejection of his appeal," answered M. Gault; "the unfortunate man has always refused consolation or advice."
"Ah, monsieur the director, it is a soul to be saved. Only allow me, sir, to show you what I am and what I can do, by allowing me to open that hardened heart! What have you to apprehend, let me be accompanied by gendarmes or by guardians, if you like."
"I will go and see if the chaplain of the prison will accede to your wishes," said the director, as he quitted the yard.
People the least susceptible of sympathy in this selfish world must feel for Jacques Collin thus suddenly placed between the corpse of the being for whom he had done so much and the body of his old companion in chains—the future corpse of Theodore Calvi. Was it only to see the unfortunate man, a rare skill and enterprise would be necessary, but to rescue him would require a miracle, yet he already thought of it.
Monsieur Gault, on passing from the prison yard to the parlatory, went up to Bibi Lupin, who, hid behind one of the dark arches, had been carefully watching every movement of the false priest.
"He wishes to confess the condemned prisoner," said M. Gault.
"Well, that will be another chance," replied Bibi Lupin. "Theodore Calvi was the companion in chains of Jacques Collin, he used to make him nice wadding of tow to place between his tender feet and the ring of the chain. I will go and disguise myself as a gendarme, I shall be there and shall hear every thing that is said."
"There is no time to lose," observed the director. "His execution is ordered for to-day. Indeed, but for the hesitation of the authorities, it would have already taken place; the youth has never confessed to the crime, and the evidence is any thing but perfectly satisfactory."
"He is a Corsican," observed Bibi Lupin, ‘and he will not yield to the last."
These few words comprised the dark history of those who are condemned to death. The last moments of a condemned man who has not acknowledged his crimes are passed in frightful tortures. Justice delivers up the condemned man entirely to himself, and it commits him to silence and to darkness with only one companion whom he most mistrusts.
Since the abolition of torture, the natural wish to reassure the tender consciences of the jury had led to the adoption of the terrible resources which solitude presents to justice as suggestive of remorse. Solitude is a vacuum, and moral nature has as great a horror of such as has physical nature. Solitude stands also in the same relation to torture that the moral does to the physical man. What the one inflicts upon the body, the other communicates far more painfully to the mind.
The cell of the condemned to death in the Conciergerie is separated from the gaoler's room by a wall of great thickness, and on the opposite side it is enclosed by a wall seven or eight feet thick, which supports part of the Salle des Pas-Perdus. This dark cell receives only a few rays of light and a breath of air by a formidable grating, which has been opened in the small space between the outer wall and the gaoler's apartment. The corridor which leads to this cell, from whence escape is impossible, opens upon the fire-place, at which a number of gendarmes are always seated.
Besides that no human power could touch the thickness of the walls, the criminal who is condemned to death is immediately invested with a jacket which deprives him of the use of his hands; he is further chained by the foot to his bed; and he has a guardian to watch him and to feed him, who is relieved every few hours.
It is impossible even to inspect the cell of the condemned without feeling one's self frozen to the very bones. Imagine, then, the criminal there in company with his remorse, in silence and darkness, and think if it is not enough to drive a human being to madness? Yet Theodore Calvi, now twenty-seven years of age, had resisted to this accumulated torture for two months, and had not spoken a word!
VI.—The Mystery Unravelled.
After consulting with Bibi Lupin, the director of the Conciergerie had repaired directly to M. de Grandville, who had passed the night with Madame de Serizy, and who, overcome with fatigue and grief, had been nevertheless obliged, on account of this very execution, to spend a portion of the morning at the Palais de Justice.
The result of the interview was, that the order to prepare the scaffold was deferred till half-past ten, in order that Trompe la Mort and Madeleine should be confronted, after which, unless extraordinary circumstances should intervene, the execution was to take place. Bibi Lupin had in the same interval been assuming his disguise of a gendarme.
The surprise of the three convicts can be imagined when they saw a guardian come to fetch Jacques Collin, to conduct him to the condemned cell.
"He came here to save Madeleine," exclaimed Fil de Soie; "we guessed rightly—what a master!" and their devotion to their leader knew no limits.
As Jacques Collin was being led by the fire-place in the corridor, he saw at a glance a tall, stout man, with a red face, leaning against the chimney-piece, and he recognised Sanson.
Sanson, the father of the last executioner of that name, was himself the son of him who executed Louis XVI.
"Monsieur is the chaplain?" said Trompe la Mort, going up to him with true priestly unction.
This mistake was such a terrible one, that it iced the spectators.
"No, sir," replied Sanson, "I have other duties to perform."
Sanson was at that time nearly sixty years of age, and this terrible functionary was remarkable for his careful dress, and his quiet unassuming manners, as well as for his utter contempt of Bibi Lupin and all other caterers for his machine. The only indication which with this man betrayed the blood of the old torturers of the middle ages, was a formidable expanse and thickness of his hands. In other respects, tolerably well educated, proud of his dignity as a citizen and a voter, extremely partial, it is said, to gardening—this tall, stout personage, speaking in a low tone of voice, of calm and composed manners, and an open, bald forehead, resembled much more a member of the French aristocracy than an executioner. He was just the person towards whom a Spanish priest might have been expected to have committed the mistake which Jacques Collin voluntarily committed.
"He is not a convict," observed the chief guardian to the director.
"I really begin to think so myself," replied the latter, with a significative movement of the head.
Jacques Collin was introduced into the cell in which young Theodore was seated, in his strait-jacket, upon the border of his bed. A ray of light that came in with the open door, showed to Trompe la Mort, in a single glance, Bibi Lupin in the person of the gendarme who was standing upright, leaning upon his sword.
"Io sono Gaba-Morto! Parla nostro Italiano," exclaimed Jacques Collin, quickly. "Vengo ti salvar." (I am Trompe la Mort; let us speak Italian. I come to save you.)
Struck with astonishment at the sound of that voice, Theodore raised his head quickly, imagining himself for the moment the victim of an illusion; and, although his eyes were accustomed to the obscurity of the stone-box in which he had now been confined for two months, he looked at the priest without recognising Jacques Collin, and sighed.
"This young man is very downcast," observed Jacques Collin to the gendarmes, "he is frightened of death, and will avow every thing."
Bibi Lupin could not answer without betraying himself, so he held his tongue.
"Sempremi!" said Jacques to Theodore in his ear.
"Sempreti!" answered the young man, as he answered the pass-word. "It is most certainly Trompe la Mort," he muttered to himself.
"Tell me all about this little transaction, that I may see what I can do to save you. There is no time to be lost. The executioner is below."
At this, the Corsican knelt down as if about to confess himself. Bibi Lupin was in an agony of passion. Every thing that the two friends were about to communicate to each other was necessarily incomprehensible to him; yet, as he had taken the place of the real gendarme, and had thus made himself responsible for the prisoner, he could not leave the place. His annoyance at being thus defeated, it is impossible to describe.
"Since we parted," Theodore related, "I made the acquaintance of a little Corsican girl, whom I met on my return to Pantin (Paris). This little girl, no taller than a faggot, as slender as an eel, and as quick as a monkey, went into the house by the oven, and opened the door for me. The dogs, silenced by some tempting delicacies, were dead. It was necessary that the two women should share the same fate. When we had secured the money, La Ginetta stopped behind, shut the door, and got out by the oven."
"Such a noble inventor deserves to live," said Jacques, admiring the manner in which the crime had been committed. "But what a madness to throw away so much talent upon a girl!" continued the old convict, as he cast upon Theodore a glance of profound anger and contempt.
"Ah," replied Theodore, "you was not there to advise me. If I wish to live now, it is more for you than for her."
"Have hopes! I am not called Trompe la Mort, for nothing! I will take care of you!"
"What, my life may yet be spared!" exclaimed the young Corsican, endeavouring to lift up his shackled hands towards the damp ceiling of his cell; while a sigh, such as had seldom been heard in that gloomy vault, and which was born of the happy dream of life, struck the astonished ear of Bibi Lupin.
"It is the result of the absolution I have given him, for his revelations," observed Jacques to Bibi Lupin. "But the Corsican is perfectly innocent of the crime imputed to him, and I must endeavour to save him."
"May Heaven be with you, Monsieur l'Abbé," said Theodore in French.
VII.—The Convict Capitalists.
Trompe la Mort, more Carlos Herrera, more a priest than ever, rushed out of the condemned cell, and hurried along the corridor, to make his appearance before M. Gault with an expression of mingled horror and anxiety.
"Monsieur the Director," exclaimed Jacques, "that young man is innocent, he has revealed to me the guilty one. I pray you ask for me an audience of five minutes with M. de Grandeville."
"I shall go at once," replied M. Gault, to the great surprise of all the spectators of this extraordinary scene.
"But allow me, in the mean time," continued Jacques Collin, "to be reconducted to the prison-yard, I may there be enabled to complete the conversion of a criminal, whose heart I had already touched."
At this moment the sound of a carriage driving up to the door of the Conciergerie was heard. The door was opened, and a lady with a bit of blue paper in her hand, followed by a valet and a chasseur, appeared at the grating. Dressed in deep mourning, she wore a black veil and lace worth at least a thousand crowns, and a black cashmere shawl of about six thousand francs. An atmosphere of musk surrounded her, and the chasseur paraded behind her with the airs of a servant who knows himself to be indispensable to an, exacting princess. Jacques Collin recognised in a moment Asia, or, to give her her real name, his aunt Jacqueline Collin.
"Ah! my dear abbé!" exclaimed the great lady, who shed a torrent of tears upon perceiving the priest, "how have they dared to place here, even for a moment, so holy a man?"
"Ah! Madame de San Esteban, madame the marchioness," replied Carlos Herrera, "what devoted kindness on your part!"
"What do you wish, what must I do?" inquired Madame de Esteban in a language only comprehensible to the nephew and his aunt.
"Put all your letters in a place of safety, take those which compromise more than any of the others each of the ladies and return dressed as a common person to the Salle des Pas Perdus, and wait there for my orders."
Asia knelt down, as if to receive the worthy abbé's blessing. "Addio, marchesa," said the latter in a loud voice, and then he added in a lower tone, "Find out Europe and Paccard, we must have the 750,000 francs which they have made away with."
"Paccard is there," answered the afflicted marchesa, with tears in her eyes, as she pointed indirectly to the chasseur, in green and gold, and feathered like a Russian general. Jacques gave a look of satisfaction as the marchesa withdrew, after leaving a purse of gold for the poor prisoners. Trompe la Mort was following the guardian to the prison-yard at the moment when Bibi Lupin returned, having only after the lapse of some time made himself heard by a gendarme from without.
The voice which he had just heard in the distance appeared familiar to him, but the lady herself was gone.
"Show me the purse," he said to the gaoler, and taking it in his hand he examined it. "Gold, most certainly," he remarked, "and emblazoned too! The rascal catches us all every moment, he ought to be fired upon like a dog!"
"What is the matter?" inquired the gaoler, taking the purse.
"The matter! Why he has had a conversation with an accomplice," replied Bibi Lupin, striking his foot against the grating with passionate perplexity.
Once more in the prison-yard, Jacques Collin took La Pouraille aside.
"So you are taken at last, are you?" said Jacques Collin, "with five robberies and three assassinations to account for, the last of which was committed upon two rich citizens. Juries never overlook the murder of their fellow-citizens! You will be guillotined, there is no hope for you."
"They all tell me that," answered La Pouraille, with a sigh.
"I do not ask you where your money is," continued Jacques, "I only want to know what you intend to do with it. Have you no one that you love, no wife nor child that you wish it given to? Your share in the general deposit alone amounts to 30,000 francs. I shall be out in a few hours, I can give it this very evening to whomsoever you may wish."
La Pouraille hesitated for some moments. At length he said, in a piteous tone, "I should wish the money given to La Gonore."
"Do you leave nothing to your friends?"
"Nothing, they betrayed me!"
"They betrayed you! I will revenge you, then. Who knows but that I may, while I am revenging you, make your peace with justice!"
The assassin looked at Jacques, besotted with satisfaction. His confidence in Jacques amounted to fanaticism. "Ruffart," he said, "Bibi Lupin's agent went thirds with me and Godet. The rascals betrayed me because I knew their hiding-place and they did not know mine. My gold is in the cellar of La Gonore's house, three feet under the ground, beneath some wine bottles. Ruffart has his money in the same house, Rue Sainte Barbe; Godet has his share at his sister's, a washerwoman's, he took up a plank of the flooring, deposited his funds, and made off.
Trompe la Mort had now learned all that he wished.
"Do you know what I want you to do?" he said, casting a resolute glance at the assassin.
"What?"
"Why, that you take upon yourself the affair of Nanterre."
La Pouraille made a movement of surprise, but he recovered himself under the steady look of his master.
"Fool!" said the latter, "four murders or one is it not the same thing? I may be able to send you to the galleys yet, and save your neck. Have you not 700,000 francs to dispose of? You can promise to give up the money to the family upon that condition, and as for the assassination, we can throw that upon Ruffart. For once, Bibi Lupin is taken in."
La Pouraille was intoxicated with joy. Such a plan had never presented itself to his obscure intelligence. He could have kissed his master from head to foot.
"But this is not all," continued Jacques Collin, "we must also denounce a woman. We must have some one to take La Ginetta's place."
And so saying, he led La Pouraille towards the Biffon.
"I know how much you love La Biffe," said Jacques to the Biffon.
The look which the fatter gave his master was terrific.
"What will she do while you are at the galleys?"
A tear stood in the eye of the ferocious robber.
"Well, if you was to have her placed in the Madeleinnettes or at Saint Lazare, for a year or so, she would be taken care of," observed Jacques. "What is your password?"
"Night in Pantin," answered the Biffon.
"Well, she shall be preserved for you," added Jacques. "Now good bye, children. They are coming for me to go before M. de Grandville. You, La Pouraille, can explain the rest."
And this extraordinary man took his departure with that firmness which new events had restored to him. The danger of the young Corsican had restored to him all that savage power with which he was accustomed to struggle against society.
VIII.—Trompe la Mort's First Appearance in Comedy.
The attorney-general, M. de Grandville, was busy in his cabinet discussing with the police magistrate, M. Camusot, the Lucien catastrophe, and the possibility of obtaining from the survivors those papers which so deeply compromised two of the greatest families of Paris, when the steps of several persons and the sound of arms was heard. It must be Jacques Collin. The attorney-general put a mask of gravity upon his face, behind which the man disappeared, Camusot imitated his chief. An attendant at that moment opened the door of the study, and Jacques Collin entered, composed and not in the least degree abashed.
"You have wished to speak to me," said the magistrate, "I am all attention."
"Sir, I am Jacques Collin, I give myself up!"
Camusot shuddered, the attorney-general remained cool and unchanged.
"You must naturally imagine," continued the convict, "that I have reasons for acting thus. These reasons, sir, I can only communicate to yourself, unless you are afraid of remaining alone with a runaway convict."
"You can leave us, M. Camusot," said the attorney-general.
"You have done well to send away the assassin of Lucien," said Jacques, his hands firmly knit, and apparently indifferent as to whether the magistrate heard him or not. "I could not have refrained from strangling him."
"And what good could such a murder have done you?" the attorney-general quietly asked of the criminal.
"What are you daily employed in revenging or fancying that you revenge society, sir, and you ask me the reason for taking revenge in my own hands! Ah, never did mother love her only son as I loved the child, whose loss was caused by that idiot of a magistrate. You do not know what grief is—I alone know it-—my very soul has been taken from me. I am like the dog from whom the physiologist has taken away its blood. That is why I came to you to say 'I am Jacques Collin; I give myself up!' I wished to put myself in the hands of justice without conditions."
"You have a future," said the attorney-general, "Lucien has left a will in which he bequeathes you three hundred thousand francs."
The convict made a gesture indicative of utter indifference to self.
"If nothing interests you any further," inquired M. de Grandville, "why did you ask for this interview?"
"You were going, sir, to execute an innocent man, and I, sir, know the guilty one," observed Jacques Collin, gravely. "I do not come here for them but for you, for I love all those who loved Lucien and I wished to save you from remorse. Theodore Calvi is no more guilty of the affair of Nanterre than you are. If he had indicated to you the woman from whom he obtained the stolen objects you would have discovered not only the real criminal, who is already in your power, but an accomplice whom Theodore would not sacrifice because she is a woman. Promise me that Calvi shall be spared, and I will tell you every thing."
"Is that all that you require?" said M. de Grandville.
"There is one thing further. I possess the letters of Madame de Serizy and of the Duchess de Maufrigneuse, and what letters? I can let you see them. There is at the present moment an old woman in the Salle des Pas Perdus; send your valet to her, let him say, Dabor ti mandana, and she will come."
"The execution is countermanded," said the attorney-general, ringing his bell, "now will you give me your word not to escape? If so, you may go and fetch the woman yourself."
Jacques Collin looked at the magistrate with surprise. The convict was conquered with his own weapons.
The surprise of Asia, at being suddenly addressed by Jacques in the Salle des Pas Perdu, may be imagined. Although versed in the tricks played by her nephew, this one surpassed all.
"Well," said Jacques, "are you going to look at me as if I was a museum of natural history! come along," and taking his aunt under his arm he led her down the staircase of the shopkeeper's gallery.
"Where is Paccard?"
"He is waiting for me in the flower-market."
"And Prudence?"
"At the widow Roussés."
"Let us go there."
After the lapse of a very short space of time, Jacques Collin, his aunt, Paccard, and Prudence Servien, who had been in Esther's service under the name of Europe, were all four seated in a hackney-coach, which Jacques ordered to drive to the gate of Ivry. Prudence and Paccard trembled in the presence of their formidable master.
"Where are the 750,000 francs?" inquired Trompe la Mort, in a tone that would admit of no evasion.
"The seven hundred and thirty thousand francs," answered Jacqueline, "are safe."
"If you had not given them to my aunt," continued Jacques, addressing his confederates, "you should have gone straight there," he said, pointing to the Place de Grève, which the coach was now approaching.
"Prudence," continued Jacques, "listen tome. There is in the Rue Sainte Barbe a very good house, kept for Madame Saint Esteve by La Gonore; Jacqueline shall enter into arrangements with madame for the cession of that house, which I intend you and Paccard, when you get married, to dwell in.
Paccard seized the old convict's hand and kissed it respectfully.
"There is in the cellar of that house," continued Jacques, "two hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold. This sum must be extracted between this and three nights hence. A hundred thousand francs will suffice to pay for the house, fifty thousand for the good-will, and keep the remainder. Prudence, Jacqueline will this evening give you the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs."
"Seven hundred and thirty," interrupted Paccard, tremblingly.
"Well, let it be seven hundred and thirty, you will go with them to Fsther's house, get in by the chimney, for the seals are on, and place the moneys in the mattress of your late mistress's bed. And now, children, good bye. Be to-night at the Pont des Arts, and my aunt will tell you if there are any counter-orders."
Prudence and Paccard jumped out of the coach as pleased as thieves who had just received their pardon.
"And now, Jacqueline," said Trompe la Mort, when the others were gone, "you must take charge of La Gonore. She will be arrested before five days are over, and one hundred and fifty thousand francs in gold will be found in her room, which will testify to the murder of the Crottat family. Now cut open your dress and let me have the specimens of the letters."
"Driver, to the Palais de Justice!" shouted out Jacques, "I promised to be quick and I have been away half an hour already. Jacqueline; you must go to La Roussé's and give the remainder of the letters to any one who shall call for them with my pass. You must seek out for me, also, the little Corsican girl, for whom Theodore committed the Nanterre robbery. La Ginetta must be let loose upon Godet's sister, the washer-woman, the other third of the 750,000 francs are in her house. We shall have all, except the 150,000 francs, which will be delivered up to justice with La Gonore, to attest the guilt of Godet and Ruffart. Instead of being the banker of the convicts, I intend to become the figaro of justice, and to revenge Lucien. Now do you be at the grating of the Conciergerie in two hours from this time. Give the coachman three francs."
The coach was at the Palais de Justice. Jacqueline astounded, paid the driver. Trompe la Mort ascended the staircase to appear before the attorney-general.
IX.—Conclusion.
Notwithstanding his natural decision of character, Jacques Collin had been subjected to such severe trials, both moral and physical, within the last few days, that he ascended the stairs of the Palais de Justice with a slow and somewhat enfeebled step. At the very moment that he had reached the vaulted landing-place, Bibi Lupin was passing out of the door that led from the Conciergerie into the Palais de Justice.
"This time I have you," exclaimed the thief-taker, as he recognised the chesnut-coloured coat of the Abbé Herrera, and he sprang at the throat of his enemy, who, with one blow, sent him rolling many paces distant on the floor, and then, like an English boxer, who does not wish better than to begin again, he stretched out his hand to lift him up.
"Do you wish to arrest me?" asked Jacques of his enemy. "If so, let us go together before the attorney-general."
Bibi Lupin, who was delighted to appear at the bar with such a capture, acceded at once.
"Sir," said the thief-taker, as he advanced with his prize into the cabinet of the attorney-general, "I have good news for you. Jacques Collin, who had escaped, has been recaptured."
"Where did you find him?" inquired M. de Grandville.
"At the door of your cabinet," answered Bibi Lupin.
"Retire," said the attorney-general, with severity. "You act as if you was the police and justice united. Know that till you are ordered to arrest him, this man is free."
"Here, sir," said the convict, after casting a glance at his discomfited enemy, in which he seemed to intimate to him his proximate fall—"here, sir, not to lose time, are the specimens of my merchandise;" and he held out three letters to M. de Grandville.
M. de Grandville, after reading the letters, remained some time with his head buried in his hands.
"And you can get all the letters?" he at length observed to the convict, who stood silent before him.
"Monsieur de Grandville," said Jacques Collin, assuming a serious and sad expression, "I have been, as you are aware, condemned to five years' imprisonment for forgery. I love my liberty! I have, between evasions and recaptures, gone through my time, and I ought to be re-established in my rights as a French citizen. But if it were so, what could I do, subjected as I should be to the surveillance of the police. Now, sir, I have resolved to give up the mad struggle that I have carried on for now twenty years against society; you know my capacity, my skill, my courage, my knowledge of business—make me the servant of the power that must ever weigh down upon me. Three great families are now at my mercy—the letters, the possession of which allow me to address you as I now do, shall be handed over to you the moment you accede to my wishes. Bibi Lupin deceives the justice which he pretends to serve. One of his agents, as I can prove to you, was engaged in the assassination of the family Crottat; and I have also discovered the author of the murder at Nanterre, for which Theodore Calvi was about to suffer. If you will allow me to act, I will signalise my taking place under justice, by bringing all the guilty parties to their account before eight days are over. Give me Bibi Lupin's place, and you confer the greatest possible benefit upon society."
Jacques Collin remained before the magistrate, awaiting his decision, in a modest and submissive attitude.
"You have placed the letters at my disposal?" said the magistrate.
"You can send for them whenever you wish. Madame de Saint Estève will give them up to your commissioner, if he intimates that he is sent by the attorney-general. One word more, sir; the money of the deceased Esther was not stolen. At the removal of the seals, let the mattress under the bed be examined, the money will be found there."
"Are you certain of that? Lucien then was not guilty of a robbery? Go then," continued the magistrate, "you shall have Bibi Lupin's place, and Calvi shall not only not be executed, but shall be your assistant."
Jacques Collin bowed with the profound submission of an inferior before a superior. "I will surpass," he said to himself, as he walked away; "I will surpass, in what I shall do at the very onset of my career, all that Bibi Lupin ever did. I only live now to revenge Lucien. We shall be, thanks to our position, both armed alike, both protected alike! It will require some time before I can overthrow my enemy, but I shall not fail in the end."
When Jacques Collin found himself without the Palais de Justice, he felt an indescribable sensation of joy. He felt himself at liberty, and, as it were, new-born. His first steps were directed rapidly towards the church of Saint Germains des Près, where the funeral service over Lucien de Rubemprè had just been concluded.
Jacques Collin called a coach, and followed the mortal remains of the youth he had so much loved to the burial-ground. By the time the convoy had reached Père la Chaise, the ten mourning carriages had diminished to four, and there were scarcely twelve persons present when the body of Lucien was lowered into the grave of Esther.
"Two beings who loved one another in life will now not be separated in death," said Jacques Collin, "I, too, will be deposited there!" and the iron-hearted convict fell stiff and senseless on the ground.