Part 33

“The monster who has paid so dear for me, knowing that the day when I should know myself to be his would have no morrow--Nucingen has just left me, as drunk as a bear with his skin full of wind. For the first and last time in my life I have had the opportunity of comparing my old trade as a street hussy with the life of true love, of placing the tenderness which unfolds in the infinite above the horrors of a duty which longs to destroy itself and leave no room even for a kiss. Only such loathing could make death delightful.

“I have taken a bath; I should have liked to send for the father confessor of the convent where I was baptized, to have confessed and washed my soul. But I have had enough of prostitution; it would be profaning a sacrament; and besides, I feel myself cleansed in the waters of sincere repentance. God must do what He will with me.

“But enough of all this maudlin; for you I want to be your Esther to the last moment, not to bore you with my death, or the future, or God, who is good, and who would not be good if He were to torture me in the next world when I have endured so much misery in this.

“I have before me your beautiful portrait, painted by Madame de Mirbel. That sheet of ivory used to comfort me in your absence, I look at it with rapture as I write you my last thoughts, and tell you of the last throbbing of my heart. I shall enclose the miniature in this letter, for I cannot bear that it should be stolen or sold. The mere thought that what has been my great joy may lie behind a shop window, mixed up with the ladies and officers of the Empire, or a parcel of Chinese absurdities, is a small death to me. Destroy that picture, my sweetheart, wipe it out, never give it to any one--unless, indeed, the gift might win back the heart of that walking, well-dressed maypole, that Clotilde de Grandlieu, who will make you black and blue in her sleep, her bones are so sharp.--Yes, to that I consent, and then I shall still be of some use to you, as when I was alive. Oh! to give you pleasure, or only to make you laugh, I would have stood over a brazier with an apple in my mouth to cook it for you.--So my death even will be of service to you.--I should have marred your home.

“Oh! that Clotilde! I cannot understand her.--She might have been your wife, have borne your name, have never left you day or night, have belonged to you--and she could make difficulties! Only the Faubourg Saint-Germain can do that! and yet she has not ten pounds of flesh on her bones!

“Poor Lucien! Dear ambitious failure! I am thinking of your future life. Well, well! you will more than once regret your poor faithful dog, the good girl who would fly to serve you, who would have been dragged into a police court to secure your happiness, whose only occupation was to think of your pleasures and invent new ones, who was so full of love for you--in her hair, her feet, her ears--your ballerina, in short, whose every look was a benediction; who for six years has thought of nothing but you, who was so entirely your chattel that I have never been anything but an effluence of your soul, as light is that of the sun. However, for lack of money and of honor, I can never be your wife. I have at any rate provided for your future by giving you all I have.

“Come as soon as you get this letter and take what you find under my pillow, for I do not trust the people about me. Understand that I mean to look beautiful when I am dead. I shall go to bed, and lay myself flat in an attitude--why not? Then I shall break the little pill against the roof of my mouth, and shall not be disfigured by any convulsion or by a ridiculous position.

“Madame de Serizy has quarreled with you, I know, because of me; but when she hears that I am dead, you see, dear pet, she will forgive. Make it up with her, and she will find you a suitable wife if the Grandlieus persist in their refusal.

“My dear, I do not want you to grieve too much when you hear of my death. To begin with, I must tell you that the hour of eleven on Monday morning, the thirteenth of May, is only the end of a long illness, which began on the day when, on the Terrace of Saint-Germain, you threw me back on my former line of life. The soul may be sick, as the body is. But the soul cannot submit stupidly to suffering like the body; the body does not uphold the soul as the soul upholds the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the reflection which leads to the needlewoman’s resource--the bushel of charcoal. You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday, when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would marry me. It would have been a great misfortune for us both; I should have been still more dead, so to speak--for there are more and less bitter deaths. The world would never have recognized us.

“For two months past I have been thinking of many things, I can tell you. A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I went into the convent; men think her handsome, they make her serve their pleasure without thinking any consideration necessary; they pack her off on foot after fetching her in a carriage; if they do not spit in her face, it is only because her beauty preserves her from such indignity; but, morally speaking they do worse. Well, and if this despised creature were to inherit five or six millions of francs, she would be courted by princes, bowed to with respect as she went past in her carriage, and might choose among the oldest names in France and Navarre. That world which would have cried Raca to us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy, always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her ‘romances in real life,’ because she had two hundred thousand francs a year. The world, which grovels before money or glory, will not bow down before happiness or virtue--for I could have done good. Oh! how many tears I would have dried--as many as I have shed--I believe! Yes, I would have lived only for you and for charity.

“These are the thoughts that make death beautiful. So do not lament, my dear. Say often to yourself, ‘There were two good creatures, two beautiful creatures, who both died for me ungrudgingly, and who adored me.’ Keep a memory in your heart of Coralie and Esther, and go your way and prosper. Do you recollect the day when you pointed out to me a shriveled old woman, in a melon-green bonnet and a puce wrapper, all over black grease-spots, the mistress of a poet before the Revolution, hardly thawed by the sun though she was sitting against the wall of the Tuileries and fussing over a pug--the vilest of pugs? She had had footmen and carriages, you know, and a fine house! And I said to you then, ‘How much better to be dead at thirty!’--Well, you thought I was melancholy, and you played all sorts of pranks to amuse me, and between two kisses I said, ‘Every day some pretty woman leaves the play before it is over!’--And I do not want to see the last piece; that is all.

“You must think me a great chatterbox; but this is my last effusion. I write as if I were talking to you, and I like to talk cheerfully. I have always had a horror of a dressmaker pitying herself. You know I knew how to die decently once before, on my return from that fatal opera-ball where the men said I had been a prostitute.

“No, no, my dear love, never give this portrait to any one! If you could know with what a gush of love I have sat losing myself in your eyes, looking at them with rapture during a pause I allowed myself, you would feel as you gathered up the affection with which I have tried to overlay the ivory, that the soul of your little pet is indeed there.

“A dead woman craving alms! That is a funny idea.--Come, I must learn to lie quiet in my grave.

“You have no idea how heroic my death would seem to some fools if they could know Nucingen last night offered me two millions of francs if I would love him as I love you. He will be handsomely robbed when he hears that I have kept my word and died of him. I tried all I could still to breathe the air you breathe. I said to the fat scoundrel, ‘Do you want me to love you as you wish? To promise even that I will never see Lucien again?’--‘What must I do?’ he asked.--‘Give me the two millions for him.’--You should have seen his face! I could have laughed, if it had not been so tragical for me.

“‘Spare yourself the trouble of refusing,’ said I; ‘I see you care more for your two millions than for me. A woman is always glad to know at what she is valued!’ and I turned my back on him.

“In a few hours the old rascal will know that I was not in jest.

“Who will part your hair as nicely as I do? Pooh!--I will think no more of anything in life; I have but five minutes, I give them to God. Do not be jealous of Him, dear heart; I shall speak to Him of you, beseeching Him for your happiness as the price of my death, and my punishment in the next world. I am vexed enough at having to go to hell. I should have liked to see the angels, to know if they are like you.

“Good-bye, my darling, good-bye! I give you all the blessing of my woes. Even in the grave I am your Esther.

“It is striking eleven. I have said my last prayers. I am going to bed to die. Once more, farewell! I wish that the warmth of my hand could leave my soul there where I press a last kiss--and once more I must call you my dearest love, though you are the cause of the death of your Esther.”

A vague feeling of jealousy tightened on the magistrate’s heart as he read this letter, the only letter from a suicide he had ever found written with such lightness, though it was a feverish lightness, and the last effort of a blind affection.

“What is there in the man that he should be loved so well?” thought he, saying what every man says who has not the gift of attracting women.

“If you can prove not merely that you are not Jacques Collin and an escaped convict, but that you are in fact Don Carlos Herrera, canon of Toledo, and secret envoy of this Majesty Ferdinand VII.,” said he, addressing the prisoner “you will be released; for the impartiality demanded by my office requires me to tell you that I have this moment received a letter, written by Mademoiselle Esther Gobseck, in which she declares her intention of killing herself, and expresses suspicions as to her servants, which would seem to point to them as the thieves who have made off with the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs.”

As he spoke Monsieur Camusot was comparing the writing of the letter with that of the will; and it seemed to him self-evident that the same person had written both.

“Monsieur, you were in too great a hurry to believe in a murder; do not be too hasty in believing in a theft.”

“Heh!” said Camusot, scrutinizing the prisoner with a piercing eye.

“Do not suppose that I am compromising myself by telling you that the sum may possibly be recovered,” said Jacques Collin, making the judge understand that he saw his suspicions. “That poor girl was much loved by those about her; and if I were free, I would undertake to search for this money, which no doubt belongs to the being I love best in the world--to Lucien!--Will you allow me to read that letter; it will not take long? It is evidence of my dear boy’s innocence--you cannot fear that I shall destroy it--nor that I shall talk about it; I am in solitary confinement.”

“In confinement! You will be so no longer,” cried the magistrate. “It is I who must beg you to get well as soon as possible. Refer to your ambassador if you choose----”

And he handed the letter to Jacques Collin. Camusot was glad to be out of a difficulty, to be able to satisfy the public prosecutor, Mesdames de Maufrigneuse and de Serizy. Nevertheless, he studied his prisoner’s face with cold curiosity while Collin read Esther’s letter; in spite of the apparent genuineness of the feelings it expressed, he said to himself:

“But it is a face worthy of the hulks, all the same!”

“That is the way to love!” said Jacques Collin, returning the letter. And he showed Camusot a face bathed in tears.

“If only you knew him,” he went on, “so youthful, so innocent a soul, so splendidly handsome, a child, a poet!--The impulse to sacrifice oneself to him is irresistible, to satisfy his lightest wish. That dear boy is so fascinating when he chooses----”

“And so,” said the magistrate, making a final effort to discover the truth, “you cannot possibly be Jacques Collin----”

“No, monsieur,” replied the convict.

And Jacques Collin was more entirely Don Carlos Herrera than ever. In his anxiety to complete his work he went up to the judge, led him to the window, and gave himself the airs of a prince of the Church, assuming a confidential tone:

“I am so fond of that boy, monsieur, that if it were needful, to spare that idol of my heart a mere discomfort even, that I should be the criminal you take me for, I would surrender,” said he in an undertone. “I would follow the example of the poor girl who has killed herself for his benefit. And I beg you, monsieur, to grant me a favor--namely, to set Lucien at liberty forthwith.”

“My duty forbids it,” said Camusot very good-naturedly; “but if a sinner may make a compromise with heaven, justice too has its softer side, and if you can give me sufficient reasons--speak; your words will not be taken down.”

“Well, then,” Jacques Collin went on, taken in by Camusot’s apparent goodwill, “I know what that poor boy is suffering at this moment; he is capable of trying to kill himself when he finds himself a prisoner----”

“Oh! as to that!” said Camusot with a shrug.

“You do not know whom you will oblige by obliging me,” added Jacques Collin, trying to harp on another string. “You will be doing a service to others more powerful than any Comtesse de Serizy or Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who will never forgive you for having had their letters in your chambers----” and he pointed to two packets of perfumed papers. “My Order has a good memory.”

“Monsieur,” said Camusot, “that is enough. You must find better reasons to give me. I am as much interested in the prisoner as in public vengeance.”

“Believe me, then, I know Lucien; he has a soul of a woman, of a poet, and a southerner, without persistency or will,” said Jacques Collin, who fancied that he saw that he had won the judge over. “You are convinced of the young man’s innocence, do not torture him, do not question him. Give him that letter, tell him that he is Esther’s heir, and restore him to freedom. If you act otherwise, you will bring despair on yourself; whereas, if you simply release him, I will explain to you--keep me still in solitary confinement--to-morrow or this evening, everything that may strike you as mysterious in the case, and the reasons for the persecution of which I am the object. But it will be at the risk of my life, a price has been set on my head these six years past.... Lucien free, rich, and married to Clotilde de Grandlieu, and my task on earth will be done; I shall no longer try to save my skin.--My persecutor was a spy under your late King.”

“What, Corentin?”

“Ah! Is his name Corentin? Thank you, monsieur. Well, will you promise to do as I ask you?”

“A magistrate can make no promises.--Coquart, tell the usher and the gendarmes to take the prisoner back to the Conciergerie.--I will give orders that you are to have a private room,” he added pleasantly, with a slight nod to the convict.

Struck by Jacques Collin’s request, and remembering how he had insisted that he wished to be examined first as a privilege to his state of health, Camusot’s suspicions were aroused once more. Allowing his vague doubts to make themselves heard, he noticed that the self-styled dying man was walking off with the strength of a Hercules, having abandoned all the tricks he had aped so well on appearing before the magistrate.

“Monsieur!”

Jacques Collin turned round.

“Notwithstanding your refusal to sign the document, my clerk will read you the minutes of your examination.”

The prisoner was evidently in excellent health; the readiness with which he came back, and sat down by the clerk, was a fresh light to the magistrate’s mind.

“You have got well very suddenly!” said Camusot.

“Caught!” thought Jacques Collin; and he replied:

“Joy, monsieur, is the only panacea.--That letter, the proof of innocence of which I had no doubt--these are the grand remedy.”

The judge kept a meditative eye on the prisoner when the usher and the gendarmes again took him in charge. Then, with a start like a waking man, he tossed Esther’s letter across to the table where his clerk sat, saying:

“Coquart, copy that letter.”

If it is natural to man to be suspicious as to some favor required of him when it is antagonistic to his interests or his duty, and sometimes even when it is a matter of indifference, this feeling is law to an examining magistrate. The more this prisoner--whose identity was not yet ascertained--pointed to clouds on the horizon in the event of Lucien’s being examined, the more necessary did the interrogatory seem to Camusot. Even if this formality had not been required by the Code and by common practice, it was indispensable as bearing on the identification of the Abbe Carlos. There is in every walk of life the business conscience. In default of curiosity Camusot would have examined Lucien as he had examined Jacques Collin, with all the cunning which the most honest magistrate allows himself to use in such cases. The services he might render and his own promotion were secondary in Camusot’s mind to his anxiety to know or guess the truth, even if he should never tell it.

He stood drumming on the window-pane while following the river-like current of his conjectures, for in these moods thought is like a stream flowing through many countries. Magistrates, in love with truth, are like jealous women; they give way to a thousand hypotheses, and probe them with the dagger-point of suspicion, as the sacrificing priest of old eviscerated his victims; thus they arrive, not perhaps at truth, but at probability, and at last see the truth beyond. A woman cross-questions the man she loves as the judge cross-questions a criminal. In such a frame of mind, a glance, a word, a tone of voice, the slightest hesitation is enough to certify the hidden fact--treason or crime.

“The style in which he depicted his devotion to his son--if he is his son--is enough to make me think that he was in the girl’s house to keep an eye on the plunder; and never suspecting that the dead woman’s pillow covered a will, he no doubt annexed, for his son, the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs as a precaution. That is why he can promise to recover the money.

“M. de Rubempre owes it to himself and to justice to account for his father’s position in the world----

“And he offers me the protection of his Order--His Order!--if I do not examine Lucien----”

As has been seen, a magistrate conducts an examination exactly as he thinks proper. He is at liberty to display his acumen or be absolutely blunt. An examination may be everything or nothing. Therein lies the favor.

Camusot rang. The usher had returned. He was sent to fetch Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre with an injunction to prohibit his speaking to anybody on his way up. It was by this time two in the afternoon.

“There is some secret,” said the judge to himself, “and that secret must be very important. My amphibious friend--since he is neither priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor Spaniard, though he wants to hinder his protege from letting out something dreadful--argues thus: ‘The poet is weak and effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in diplomacy, and you will easily wring our secret from him.’--Well, we will get everything out of this innocent.”

And he sat tapping the edge of his table with the ivory paper-knife, while Coquart copied Esther’s letter.

How whimsical is the action of our faculties! Camusot conceived of every crime as possible, and overlooked the only one that the prisoner had now committed--the forgery of the will for Lucien’s advantage. Let those whose envy vents itself on magistrates think for a moment of their life spent in perpetual suspicion, of the torments these men must inflict on their minds, for civil cases are not less tortuous than criminal examinations, and it will occur to them perhaps that the priest and the lawyer wear an equally heavy coat of mail, equally furnished with spikes in the lining. However, every profession has its hair shirt and its Chinese puzzles.

It was about two o’clock when Monsieur Camusot saw Lucien de Rubempre come in, pale, worn, his eyes red and swollen, in short, in a state of dejection which enabled the magistrate to compare nature with art, the really dying man with the stage performance. His walk from the Conciergerie to the judge’s chambers, between two gendarmes, and preceded by the usher, had put the crowning touch to Lucien’s despair. It is the poet’s nature to prefer execution to condemnation.

As he saw this being, so completely bereft of the moral courage which is the essence of a judge, and which the last prisoner had so strongly manifested, Monsieur Camusot disdained the easy victory; and this scorn enabled him to strike a decisive blow, since it left him, on the ground, that horrible clearness of mind which the marksman feels when he is firing at a puppet.