Scenes from a Courtesan's Life - Honoré de Balzac (philippa perry book .txt) 📗

must be ready to do a good turn--we can do nothing single-handed----"

"That's true," said the felon.

His confidence was so strong, and his faith in the boss so fanatical, that he no longer hesitated. La Pouraille revealed the names of his accomplices, a secret hitherto well kept. This was all Jacques needed to know.

"That is the whole story. Ruffard was the third in the job with me and Godet----"

"Arrache-Laine?" cried Jacques Collin, giving Ruffard his nickname among the gang.

"That's the man.--And the blackguards peached because I knew where they had hidden their whack, and they did not know where mine was."

"You are making it all easy, my cherub!" said Jacques Collin.

"What?"

"Well," replied the master, "you see how wise it is to trust me entirely. Your revenge is now part of the hand I am playing.--I do not ask you to tell me where the dibs are, you can tell me at the last moment; but tell me all about Ruffard and Godet."

"You are, and you always will be, our boss; I have no secrets from you," replied la Pouraille. "My money is in the cellar at la Gonore's."

"And you are not afraid of her telling?"

"Why, get along! She knows nothing about my little game!" replied la Pouraille. "I make her drunk, though she is of the sort that would never blab even with her head under the knife.--But such a lot of gold----!"

"Yes, that turns the milk of the purest conscience," replied Jacques Collin.

"So I could do the job with no peepers to spy me. All the chickens were gone to roost. The shiners are three feet underground behind some wine-bottles. And I spread some stones and mortar over them."

"Good," said Jacques Collin. "And the others?"

"Ruffard's pieces are with la Gonore in the poor woman's bedroom, and he has her tight by that, for she might be nabbed as accessory after the fact, and end her days in Saint-Lazare."

"The villain! The reelers teach a thief what's what," said Jacques.

"Godet left his pieces at his sister's, a washerwoman; honest girl, she may be caught for five years in La Force without dreaming of it. The pal raised the tiles of the floor, put them back again, and guyed."

"Now do you know what I want you to do?" said Jacques Collin, with a magnetizing gaze at la Pouraille.

"What?"

"I want you to take Madeleine's job on your shoulders."

La Pouraille started queerly; but he at once recovered himself and stood at attention under the boss' eye.

"So you shy at that? You dare to spoil my game? Come, now! Four murders or three. Does it not come to the same thing?"

"Perhaps."

"By the God of good-fellowship, there is no blood in your veins! And I was thinking of saving you!"

"How?"

"Idiot, if we promise to give the money back to the family, you will only be lagged for life. I would not give a piece for your nut if we keep the blunt, but at this moment you are worth seven hundred thousand francs, you flat."

"Good for you, boss!" cried la Pouraille in great glee.

"And then," said Jacques Collin, "besides casting all the murders on Ruffard--Bibi-Lupin will be finely cold. I have him this time."

La Pouraille was speechless at this suggestion; his eyes grew round, and he stood like an image.

He had been three months in custody, and was committed for trial, and his chums at La Force, to whom he had never mentioned his accomplices, had given him such small comfort, that he was entirely hopeless after his examination, and this simple expedient had been quite overlooked by these prison-ridden minds. This semblance of a hope almost stupefied his brain.

"Have Ruffard and Godet had their spree yet? Have they forked out any of the yellow boys?" asked Jacques Collin.

"They dare not," replied la Pouraille. "The wretches are waiting till I am turned off. That is what my moll sent me word by la Biffe when she came to see le Biffon."

"Very well; we will have their whack of money in twenty-four hours," said Jacques Collin. "Then the blackguards cannot pay up, as you will; you will come out as white as snow, and they will be red with all that blood! By my kind offices you will seem a good sort of fellow led away by them. I shall have money enough of yours to prove alibis on the other counts, and when you are back on the hulks--for you are bound to go there--you must see about escaping. It is a dog's life, still it is life!"

La Pouraille's eyes glittered with suppressed delirium.

"With seven hundred thousand francs you can get a good many drinks," said Jacques Collin, making his pal quite drunk with hope.

"Ay, ay, boss!"

"I can bamboozle the Minister of Justice.--Ah, ha! Ruffard will shell out to do for a reeler. Bibi-Lupin is fairly gulled!"

"Very good, it is a bargain," said la Pouraille with savage glee. "You order, and I obey."

And he hugged Jacques Collin in his arms, while tears of joy stood in his eyes, so hopeful did he feel of saving his head.

"That is not all," said Jacques Collin; "the public prosecutor does not swallow everything, you know, especially when a new count is entered against you. The next thing is to bring a moll into the case by blowing the gaff."

"But how, and what for?"

"Do as I bid you; you will see." And _Trompe-la-Mort_ briefly told the secret of the Nanterre murders, showing him how necessary it was to find a woman who would pretend to be Ginetta. Then he and la Pouraille, now in good spirits, went across to le Biffon.

"I know how sweet you are on la Biffe," said Jacques Collin to this man.

The expression in le Biffon's eyes was a horrible poem.

"What will she do while you are on the hulks?"

A tear sparkled in le Biffon's fierce eyes.

"Well, suppose I were to get her lodgings in the Lorcefe des Largues" (the women's La Force, i. e. les Madelonnettes or Saint-Lazare) "for a stretch, allowing that time for you to be sentenced and sent there, to arrive and to escape?"

"Even you cannot work such a miracle. She took no part in the job," replied la Biffe's partner.

"Oh, my good Biffon," said la Pouraille, "our boss is more powerful than God Almighty."

"What is your password for her?" asked Jacques Collin, with the assurance of a master to whom nothing can be refused.

"Sorgue a Pantin (night in Paris). If you say that she knows you have come from me, and if you want her to do as you bid her, show her a five-franc piece and say Tondif."

"She will be involved in the sentence on la Pouraille, and let off with a year in quod for snitching," said Jacques Collin, looking at la Pouraille.

La Pouraille understood his boss' scheme, and by a single look promised to persuade le Biffon to promote it by inducing la Biffe to take upon herself this complicity in the crime la Pouraille was prepared to confess.

"Farewell, my children. You will presently hear that I have saved my boy from Jack Ketch," said _Trompe-la-Mort_. "Yes, Jack Ketch and his hairdresser were waiting in the office to get Madeleine ready.--There," he added, "they have come to fetch me to go to the public prosecutor."

And, in fact, a warder came out of the gate and beckoned to this extraordinary man, who, in face of the young Corsican's danger, had recovered his own against his own society.


It is worthy of note that at the moment when Lucien's body was taken away from him, Jacques Collin had, with a crowning effort, made up his mind to attempt a last incarnation, not as a human being, but as a _thing_. He had at last taken the fateful step that Napoleon took on board the boat which conveyed him to the Bellerophon. And a strange concurrence of events aided this genius of evil and corruption in his undertaking.

But though the unlooked-for conclusion of this life of crime may perhaps be deprived of some of the marvelous effect which, in our day, can be given to a narrative only by incredible improbabilities, it is necessary, before we accompany Jacques Collin to the public prosecutor's room, that we should follow Madame Camusot in her visits during the time we have spent in the Conciergerie.

One of the obligations which the historian of manners must unfailingly observe is that of never marring the truth for the sake of dramatic arrangement, especially when the truth is so kind as to be in itself romantic. Social nature, particularly in Paris, allows of such freaks of chance, such complications of whimsical entanglements, that it constantly outdoes the most inventive imagination. The audacity of facts, by sheer improbability or indecorum, rises to heights of "situation" forbidden to art, unless they are softened, cleansed, and purified by the writer.

Madame Camusot did her utmost to dress herself for the morning almost in good taste--a difficult task for the wife of a judge who for six years has lived in a provincial town. Her object was to give no hold for criticism to the Marquise d'Espard or the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, in a call so early as between eight and nine in the morning. Amelie Cecile Camusot, nee Thirion, it must be said, only half succeeded; and in a matter of dress is this not a twofold blunder?

Few people can imagine how useful the women of Paris are to ambitious men of every class; they are equally necessary in the world of fashion and the world of thieves, where, as we have seen, they fill a most important part. For instance, suppose that a man, not to find himself left in the lurch, must absolutely get speech within a given time with the high functionary who was of such immense importance under the Restoration, and who is to this day called the Keeper of the Seals--a man, let us say, in the most favorable position, a judge, that is to say, a man familiar with the way of things. He is compelled to seek out the presiding judge of a circuit, or some private or official secretary, and prove to him his need of an immediate interview. But is a Keeper of the Seals ever visible "that very minute"? In the middle of the day, if he is not at the Chamber, he is at the Privy Council, or signing papers, or hearing a case. In the early morning he is out, no one knows where. In the evening he has public and private engagements. If every magistrate could claim a moment's interview under any pretext that might occur to him, the Supreme Judge would be besieged.

The purpose of a private and immediate interview is therefore submitted to the judgment of one of those mediatory potentates who are but an obstacle to be removed, a door that can be unlocked, so long as it is not held by a rival. A woman at once goes to another woman; she can get straight into her bedroom if she can arouse the curiosity of mistress or maid, especially if the mistress is under the stress of a strong interest or pressing necessity.

Call this female potentate Madame la Marquise d'Espard, with whom a Minister has to come to terms; this woman writes a